Popular Café Louie rebrands as Louie's Italian American - Houston Chronicle

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Café Louie, the winning East End café and bakery is transitioning to an Italian dinner restaurant beginning this weekend.

The same space at 3401 Harrisburg (in the converted warehouse dubbed The Plant in the East End District) is being rebranded as Louie’s Italian American by brother and sister partners Angelo and Lucianna “Louie” Emiliani.

Spurred by the success of the Emilianis’ Red Sauce Sunday series launched at the all-day café, the conversion to a dinner restaurant made good business sense as it tried to find its dinner footing, the partners said.

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“My sister and I remain eternally grateful for all the love we received with Café Louie, but the all-day café concept just didn’t work fter we rolled out our dinner service,” said Angelo Emiliani stated in a press release. “Louie and I grew up with Italian American cooking, and we launched Red Sauce Sundays at Café Louie to honor that tradition. Little did we know it would resonate so much with seemingly everyone, and we had to take a good look in the mirror when Sundays started to regularly outperform Saturday nights. We poured our hearts into Café Louie, but we must be responsible as small business owners and give the people what they clearly want.”

When it opened in May, Café Louie quickly became a hit with diners for its selection of pastries, croissants, cakes, kolaches, sandwiches and house-made breads. Café Louie was No. 21 on the Houston Chronicle’s 2022 list of Top 100 restaurants in Houston.

The menu at Louie’s Italian American includes handmade pastas glossed with sauces including vodka sauce, meatballs and gravy, and cultured butter-based sauces. There will be chicken parm, redfish piccata, steak and shrimp fra diavolo, house-made sausage and peppers, and vinegar chicken. Appetizers include radicchio salad, Caesar salad, frutti di mare, shrimp cocktail, garlic mozzarella bread, meatballs, and burrata and prosciutto. For dessert there’s tiramisu, Meyer Lemon custard, cheesecake, and gelato. The restaurant also will debut its first cocktail program with drinks such as house martini made with passion fruit, Aperol spritz, and frozen negroni.

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The Café Louie space has been redesigned for the new restaurant with floral wallpaper, wainscotting, bistro-style wood chairs, lace curtains, and vintage hand-illustrated recipes set in reclaimed wood frames. 

Louie’s Italian American will be open Thursday through Monday 5 to 10 p.m.

Greg Morago writes about food for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Send him news tips at greg.morago@chron.com. Hear him on our BBQ State of Mind podcast to learn about Houston and Texas barbecue culture.

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Popular Café Louie rebrands as Louie's Italian American - Houston Chronicle
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