Clancy's

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Corner That Has Always Fed the Neighborhood

The building at the corner of Annunciation and Webster in uptown New Orleans has housed a restaurant or a bar — often both — since the early 1900s. Clancy's, in one form or another, has occupied that corner since the late 1940s, when Ed and Betty Clancy ran it as a neighborhood bar and po-boy spot, the kind of place that once anchored nearly every New Orleans block.

From Po-Boys to White Tablecloths

The transformation came in 1983, when a group of uptown businessmen — Billy Slatten, Bryan Wagner, and Judge Marciel Livaudais — purchased the property and reimagined it entirely. What they opened became one of the first Creole bistros in the city, a format so influential it effectively set the template for the most prevalent style of New Orleans restaurant that exists today. French technique married to Louisiana ingredients, served in a room that felt both refined and genuinely local.

In 1987, Brad Hollingsworth — who had worked at Clancy's since that 1983 reinvention — took ownership. Under his stewardship, the restaurant deepened its commitment to classic Creole cuisine and built a wine program that earned the Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence, a recognition that reflects the seriousness and depth of the cellar. That wine list remains one of the most respected in New Orleans.

Family-Run, Properly So

Clancy's today is operated by the Hollingsworth and Larson families. Chef and proprietor Brian Larson leads the kitchen, continuing a tradition of French-inflected Creole cooking that has made this address a quiet constant in a city that takes its restaurants seriously. Lunch runs Thursday and Friday; dinner is served Tuesday through Saturday. Reservations are required and accepted one month in advance — a detail that says something about how consistently the tables fill.

The room, illustrated in a watercolor by Peter Briant that the restaurant has made its own emblem, carries the warmth of a place that knows exactly what it is: a neighborhood restaurant that, over decades, became something more.