He trained with James Beard chefs and is opening Coastal cuisine restaurant in South MS
A new Coast restaurant will incorporate all the things the chef admires about the restaurants he’s worked and dined in over the years, said Josh Walczak.
He’s shooting for an April opening of Czak’s Coastal Cuisine, pronounced “Zack’s” with a silent C.
The building at 617 Krebs Ave. in downtown Pascagoula was so nondescript he barely noticed it in the 12 years he worked on that street, he said.
“I saw it was for sale. Something led me there,” he said.
Now he has the building, which he’s renovating for indoor and outdoor dining.
He has the experience. After graduating from Pascagoula High School, he and his wife, Claire, ended up in Oxford. There he trained under chef John Currence, owner of City Grocery Restaurant Group and restaurants City Grocery, Bouré, Snackbar and Big Bad Breakfast, along with Vishwesh Bhatt. Both chefs are James Beard Award winners.
He has the training from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Atlanta.
He helped open Off the Hook restaurant there on Krebs Avenue and now he’s joining the renaissance in downtown Pascagoula by adding his own restaurant to the mix.
“I remember what Pascagoula was when I was a child. I’ve seen it come back,” he said. He doesn’t know if he would have opened a restaurant there 4 or 5 years ago, he said, but now the downtown is revived with apartments, new restaurants, shops and a hotel, and he’s ready.
What’s on the menu?
Walczak already has a following for his gumbo that he makes and sells every Christmas and his barbecue shrimp with goat cheese and grits that recently won a people’s choice contest.
His bread pudding is so good, he said, “It’s like French toast and crème brûlée had a baby.”
The new restaurant will start by serving lunch Monday through Friday, followed soon by a Sunday brunch with mimosas and then dinner on Thursday and Friday.
Sharing a sampling of the menu, he plans buffalo and crab claws among the appetizers, and hand-helds like flatbread shrimp bread with peppers and cream cheese, along with goat cheese pepperoni pizza flatbread.
He’ll serve baskets and burgers that get switched up regularly to add black and bleu or pepper jelly to the burger menu. His Vancleave smash sandwich will be a smash burger with crab.
“If my door’s open, you will be able to get gumbo,” he said. It starts with a recipe from Doc Thompson, his wife’s grandfather, and Walczak adds his own ingredients and expertise that he says gives the gumbo a balance of how grandma cooked and an elevated approach.
Mississippi shrimp and as much local seafood as possible will be on the menu, he said.
“Coastal comfort foods” is how he describes his dishes like chicken and dumplings or red beans and rice, made from scratch like a great chef would do, he said.
There are not many chef-driven, chef owned restaurants anymore, he said. “To me it’s different when you’re the one cooking the food.”
For dinner he plans cast iron steaks finished in the oven, lamb shepherd’s pie, his pretzel coated pork chops with a mustard cream sauce and his wife’s favorite brown butter pasta with pine nuts and goat cheese — “not something you can necessarily get in Pascagoula,” he said.
In addition to his bread pudding, he’s thinking key lime pie and caramel pie for dessert, he said.
Creating a gathering place
“I do plan on having a full bar,” Walczak said, and a couple of nights a week he may add a bar menu of tapas and flatbread.
“I’m a lifelong chef. I was raised in restaurants,” he said. His mother was a server at restaurants in the Pascagoula area and he said, “I was always the kid running around in the back of house.”
In addition to the main dining room, his restaurant will have a private dining room named Rosie’s after his mom. It will seats about 30 people and an outside private deck will have with space for 30 or 40. An outdoor service window will make it easy for takeout or dining outdoors.
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
