After more than a year of construction, the Historic New Orleans Collection has completed its $6.4 million renovation of the former K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in the heart of the French Quarter and renamed the building for longtime owner and culinary icon Paul Prudhomme.
Located at 416 Chartres St., the Chef Paul Prudhomme Building, as the three-story structure is now known, will be used by the HNOC for back-of-house functions like constructing and staging exhibits and housing IT systems. Two dozen staffers recently moved in.
Completion of the project is an important milestone for the HNOC, which has expanded its French Quarter footprint in recent years. The nonprofit now has 14 buildings spread over several blocks in the French Quarter, including a free museum, research facility, lecture halls and shops. The Chef Paul Prudhomme Building will enable the organization to separate its support operations from its public-facing museums and research spaces, where it plans to focus on growing and attracting new visitors.
“What we now have is a complicated campus of buildings throughout three blocks in the French Quarter,” said HNOC President and CEO Daniel Hammer. “We’ve been moving different functions of our operations around it over the years in order to find space for things as we’ve grown.”
The renovated restaurant, he said, represents the “last piece of the puzzle.”
Daniel Hammer of the Historic New Orleans Collection leads a tour of the $6.4 million renovation of the space which once housed K-Paul’s restaurant in the French Quarter. The building neighbors the HNOC’s Williams Research Center on Chartres St. The HNOC bought the property in late 2023. The renovation, which is nearing completion, will serve the collection’s research and staging space. in New Orleans, Thursday, July 3, 2025. (Staff photo by John McCusker, The Times-Picayune | NOLA.com)
Remnants remain
While the building will not be open to the public, some remnants of the culinary landmark that helped bring Louisiana cooking to a global audience have been preserved.
One of the few remaining original pepper-shaped handles from the restaurant was used to create a mold, allowing for replicas to be placed on all the doors in the building. And a version of the box that used to display K-Paul’s daily menu on the front of the building now features a short history of the site.
K-Paul’s dining room on the ground floor has been reconfigured into large rooms for assembling museum exhibits. It also includes space for the facilities staff that maintains the nonprofit’s portfolio of historic real estate, which includes some of the city’s oldest buildings.
On the second floor, the restaurant’s former bakery now houses HNOC’s network infrastructure, digital content production and fundraising staff. The third floor, where K-Paul’s had a liquor closet, now features a studio space for creating multimedia content.
The Historic New Orleans Collection restored the original menu box from K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, 416 Chartres St., to hold a commemorative plaque describing the history of the site, which was first purchased in 1786 by Julie Brion, an emancipated former slave.
The Chef Paul & Lori Prudhomme Foundation and Magic Seasoning Blends, the Elmwood-based spice company that Prudhomme founded, made a joint contribution toward the museum to ensure the name of the famed chef would remain on the 175-year-old building.
“We are grateful to see his name and story honored in such a meaningful way and we applaud the Historic New Orleans Collection for preserving the place where so much of his creativity came to life,” Magic Seasoning Blends President Marty Cosgrove, said in a statement following a dedication ceremony on Wednesday.
The undisclosed donation will contribute to the HNOC’s ongoing $33.5 million renovation of its original location, the 37,000-square-foot complex of seven historic buildings and five courtyards at 533 Royal St., Hammer said.
Scheduled for completion in 2029, the project will replace outdated mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, address flooding in courtyards and allow for the entire space to be opened to the public.
“This is really the ultimate culmination, if you will, of making these Royal Street buildings, which are our most historic buildings, fully capable of engaging the public,” Hammer said.
Members of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce toured the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Chef Paul Prudhomme Building, 416 Chartres St., following a fall 2025 board of directors meeting.
K-Paul’s rise and fall
The former restaurant was originally part of a series of four-story brick buildings built in 1834. Early tenants included a printing company, woodworkers, tire dealers, storage space and a chewing gum factory.
The buildings suffered heavy damage from the 1915 hurricane, with one later used as a printing shop and parking garage and the other turned into the Austin Inn restaurant.
Paul Prudhomme and his wife, Kay Hinrichs, opened K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in 1979. It soon gained national attention for spotlighting bold Cajun flavors amid a new wave of American cooking that spotlighted regional flavors. Prudhomme became a celebrity ambassador for Louisiana cooking, opening a seasoning company and a new location in New York, authoring a best-selling cookbook and hosting shows on public television.
In the early 1990s, an extensive renovation of K-Paul’s combined the two buildings — 416-18 Chartres and 420 Chartres — into the 12,000-square-foot structure now dubbed the Chef Paul Prudhomme Building.
Paul Prudhomme stands outside of K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen.
After Prudhomme died in 2015, his niece, Brenda Prudhomme, and her husband, executive chef Paul Miller, took over the restaurant. It closed permanently during the pandemic.
The HNOC purchased the property for $5 million in December 2023, after a Colorado developer’s plans to turn it into an all-day breakfast spot fell through. Its location, adjacent to the HNOC’s Williams Research Center and annex, made it too good to pass up.
“It’s not every day that the building right next door to you is put up for sale,” Hammer said. “So certainly there was an element of opportunity there that we couldn’t have planned for.”
Construction complexity
The renovation of the K-Paul building took about 18 months and was not without its complications, Hammer said.
Crews had to reconcile a significant difference in elevation between the front and rear of the building, install acoustic isolation above a ground-floor woodshop and address moisture intrusion in its brick masonry.
“The existing structural components of two different building frame types literally meeting in the middle of the building was the most challenging aspect of this project,” Katie Boyer, director of operational excellence for Ryan Gootee General Contractors, said in a statement.
Crews work on renovations at 533 Royal St., part of the Historic New Orleans Collection’s $33.5 million project to fully open its original campus to the public by 2029.
Now that building is complete, Hammer does not foresee acquiring any additional buildings any time soon. The organization’s focus now is on completing the renovation of its flagship complex on Royal Street.
“We’re really looking forward to the 500 block of Royal Street being the center of museum activity in the French Quarter, focused on the history and culture of New Orleans,” he said.