A legendary Mississippi Coast restaurant has made a long-awaited return

An hour after doors opened Thursday, nearly every table at chef Rickey Peters’ revived restaurant in Waveland, Mississippi, was filled with locals and plates piled high with fried artichokes, ciabatta sandwiches and barbecue shrimp.

It had been a week since the return of Rickey’s on Coleman, but seemed as if it never closed. Mayor Jay Trapani sat at a corner table and ate lunch with his family. Peters occasionally stepped out of the kitchen to greet old friends, exchanging handshakes and brief remarks, while servers took orders in soft Southern drawls.

The popular restaurant served New Orleans fare for nearly six years until Hurricane Katrina dismantled it in 2005. But locals never forgot the classic dishes made by Peters, a Chalmette native trained by famed chef Paul Prudhomme.

The crowds filing into the lone restaurant on Coleman Avenue made that clear, packing the original spot for fried trout with shrimp, crawfish and crabmeat tossed in cream sauce and seafood pasta with tasso and andouille sausage.

“They’ve been waiting for it. They really missed him. (Peters) was such a staple here before Katrina and after Katrina,” said Scott Sutherland, a co-owner of Rickey’s.

Peters has revived the restaurant before, reopening six months after the storm in Bay St. Louis where it ran for nine years before closing as he battled severe burnout. Years later, he tried again with a rebranded version, Rickey’s Off the Track, which also eventually closed.

But the idea to reopen in 2025 began taking shape last year, when Thomas Genin, a restaurateur in Bay St. Louis, who once owned the building housing Rickey’s before selling it in September, asked Peters if he wanted to bring the restaurant back.

His response? “Hell yeah.”

A resurgence on Coleman

Since then, its opening date has been highly anticipated. Sutherland compared the excitement to the comeback of Hubig’s Pies bakery — the maker of New Orleans’ iconic sugar-glazed hand pies that was destroyed in a fire — playfully adding, “Rickey is our Hubig’s pie.”

The restaurant launched the week of Cruisin’ the Coast, which drew hundreds into the restaurant on its first few days. Peters said Coleman Avenue “looked like Mardi Gras on Canal Street,” nodding to another New Orleans tradition.

The return of Rickey’s marks the rebirth of a local staple but also foreshadows the resurgence of a small coastal city, and a street that never fully healed after the storm. Before Katrina, Coleman Avenue was lined with three restaurants, two bars, condos, a convenience store and other neighborhood fixtures.

Then it became a ghost town: grassy lots, crumbling foundations, prolonged stillness. In recent years, though, developers have begun breathing life back into what was once the heart of Waveland with a Katrina museum, a bakery and now, Rickey’s.

New Orleans dishes

Rickey’s is an ode to what it was before the storm.

Near the entrance is a wall covered in photographs and old newspaper features about the restaurant. Like its former location, the interior is decorated with nautical touches — manila rope wrapped around columns and tarpon replicas mounted on the wall.

The menu resurrects beloved dishes, including veal Parmigiana and trout treasures, and Peters’ dedication to quality remains unchanged.

There are a handful of appetizers, including one named the crabby cheese crostini, with layers of melted cheese over crabmeat dressing on toasted ciabatta bread.

Lunch entrees include fresh salads and six sandwiches on ciabatta bread. Served with a bowl of au jus, the French dip sandwich is stuffed with roast beef and provolone cheese, while another features all the fixings of a dressed fried shrimp po’ boy — shredded lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise — minus the French bread.

But most of all, the crowd remains the same as it was 20 years ago, with regulars walking through the doors of a restaurant they long missed.