For close to three decades, streetcars have rumbled passed the Trolley Stop Café, where at all hours of the day or night you’d find a cross section of New Orleans life slurping gumbo, digging into breakfast plates or just taking a break. But the Trolley Stop has poured its last cup of Joe.
The restaurant is permanently closed, manager Darren Hartman announced in a social media post. The property at 1923 St. Charles Ave. was sold while the restaurant was closed from Hurricane Ida, he explained, and the restaurant was told to cease operations.
The Trolley Stop Cafe opened in 1995 on St. Charles Avenue, serving a mix of diner fare and New Orleans standards. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune)
“After 26 years of good times it’s time to pack it in,” Hartman wrote, listing COVID challenges and long power outages over the past two years after hurricanes Zeta and Ida.
“My heart goes out to all other small businesses who struggled alongside us to stay in the game and keep their employees on payroll,” he wrote.
The Trolley Stop Cafe opened in 1995 on St. Charles Avenue, serving a mix of diner fare and New Orleans standards. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, Nola.com | The Times-Picayune)
Restaurant owner Ragnar Karlsson said he would not comment on the closure beyond the social media post.
The restaurant was founded by the current owner’s grandfather, Hans Karlsson. Public records show this elder Karlsson owns the property.
Trolley Stop Cafe serves a ham and cheese omelet with toast.
According to the Trolley Stop’s own historic account, it was the Swedish-born Hans Karlsson who first opened the restaurant in 1995 along with members of the Cascio family. In 2017, his son Paul Karlsson and grandson Ragnar Karlsson bought the business.
Built in a former gas station, the restaurant was a longtime fixture along a stretch of St. Charles Avenue that is seen a great deal of change in recent years. On the boundary between Central City and the Lower Garden District, and along the route connecting Uptown with downtown hotels, hospitals and nightlife, it was a crossroads spot for tourists and locals.
As restaurants have reopened, New Orleanians have been welcoming back old favorites left and right. At the same time, we’ve also been seeing n…
It was a place for regular morning meetings and off-the-clock solo sojourns, for a family meal after church or some comfort food redemption after a night on the town.
Always low-key, it had an ill-fated brush with fame in 2018 for a realty TV show.
GORDON RAMSAY'S 24 HOURS TO HELL AND BACK: Chef / Host Gordon Ramsay (L) with the staff in the Trolley Stop Cafe season two premiere episode of GORDON RAMSAY'S 24 HOURS TO HELL AND BACK airing Wednesday, Jan. 2 (8:00-9:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. © 2019 FOX Broadcasting.
The hot-tempered celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay conducted a makeover of the Trolley Stop for his show “24 Hours to Hell and Back.” The revamped menu provoked disdain from longtime regulars. When the journalist Jarvis DeBerry, then a columnist with The Times-Picayune, visited in 2018, an unrecognizable catfish po-boy convinced him that “(n)ot every change counts as progress. Some things don’t need updating.”
Steak and eggs at the Trolley Stop Cafe, 1923 St Charles Ave., New Orleans. File photo.
The restaurant soon begin adding back many of its old dishes.
For most of its history, though, the Trolley Stop was a steady presence along the avenue.
It was a place for steak and eggs, liver and eggs, and grits with anything, for po-boys and patty melts and red beans and rice. Perhaps most of all there was the no-pretense vibe, a classic American diner with New Orleans character, and with the characters drawn to such places, either for a meal or a job.
Just a few blocks down the street, another old 24-hour stalwart, the St. Charles Tavern, closed in 2020 during the pandemic. Plans are underway for the Uptown restaurant Tito’s Ceviche & Pisco to open a second location at the former St. Charles Tavern address.
Future plans for the former Trolley Stop Café are as yet not known.
As restaurant operators assess the damage wrought by Hurricane Ida, some have determined that they have to close for good, including the LaPla…
They are going door to door, though often those doors are off their hinges and the roofs that once covered them are gone.
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End of the line for Trolley Stop Café, another old school New Orleans diner closes - NOLA.com
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