Lost Coyote is a pool and dining oasis on the edge of Treme | Food and drink | Gambit Weekly

When Colin Kennedy signed the lease to open Lost Coyote at 1614 Esplanade Ave., he inherited a goat. 

Rosita was a resident goat when the circa-1870 building was the Mexican restaurant Joe Joe’s on the Ridge. 

“She was going to be the guest of honor — on a spit — at a Cinco de Mayo party last year,” says Kennedy, a 20-year hospitality veteran. “The daughter of the previous owner saved her. She came with the building.”

At first, he wasn’t particularly thrilled to have a goat living by the back parking lot, but Rosita grew on him. 

“Of course, we love her,” he says. “We’re even thinking of getting her a friend because goats are very social.”

Rosita sees a lot of action from her spacious pen, and guests sometimes feed her lettuce after their meals. A steady stream of sun worshipers pass her all day and into the evening, heading to the sparkling pool that’s behind the restaurant.

For $20, they get a day pass to the pool, a towel and a glass of bubbles. They also can munch on pool menu items like a poached local shrimp roll with stone fruit aioli and an egg sando with Boursin on brioche.

The Lost Coyote is Kennedy’s first owner-operated restaurant. That’s also true for his chef and partner, Nicole Theriot and the rest of the veteran hospitality management team, Jessica Rann, and Victoria Theriot, who trained at restaurants including Shaya and Broussard’s.

“We’ve all made money for other people for years,” Kennedy says. “This is our own place. It’s scary, but we’re going for it.”

Kennedy’s background includes managing multiple French Quarter restaurants, including Broussard’s and Curio, and working as a corporate chef at Bonefish Grill.

Theriot, who’s from Terrebonne Parish, went to the John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University. She worked with Nina Compton at the recently shuttered BABs. For the past decade, she was executive chef of Tommy’s Cuisine and the Bombay Club, where she often worked with Kennedy.

“I wanted a well-rounded background,” Theriot says. “I didn’t want to just be looking at a prep list and a cutting board my whole career. I knew at some point I’d want to open something. I wanted to understand the job from all sides so I could have empathy for the team.”

Theriot says her cooking style is rooted in the Cajun dishes she ate as a child. “I call it globally inspired Cajun,” says the chef. “I pull from other cultures. I like to take comfort dishes and elevate them with ingredients and technique.”

The menus are cross-pollinated with some of the chef’s favorites. “I like to take childhood favorites and translate so they are elegant enough for a date night or celebration,” Theriot says.

She shows her fine-dining chops by adding a Dijon velouté to a beef pot pie baked in a buttery crust. Local Gulf fish arrives with a butternut squash puree and a maltaise sauce, which is Hollandaise brightened with blood orange juice. Pomegranate seeds add a sweet tang to a side of fried Brussels sprouts.

The makings of a muffuletta are folded into a tortilla and deep fried for a crunchy, salty treat that pairs perfectly with a cold beer. A standard wedge salad gets the Waldorf treatment with the addition of pickled grapes, with dill adding herbal notes to the buttermilk blue cheese dressing.

Lost Coyote is an ambitious endeavor. After doing some renovations to the space themselves, the partners quietly opened earlier this year. Situated in a historic manse on the edge of Treme, the restaurant is tucked behind the gas station at the corner of Esplanade and Claiborne avenues, with the Claiborne overpass in view.

Inside, it’s a calm and welcoming all-day space, where neighbors are regulars and the pool offers an urban oasis. Besides the pool menu, there is weekend brunch with bottomless mimosas and a more formal dinner menu served in the evenings from 5 to 10 p.m. During the season, Theriot does crawfish boils by the pool.

The 100-seat restaurant includes a long, wooden bar, where for now, guests in bathing suits come in to order drinks. Kennedy acknowledges this disconnect from a finer dining experience, and he’s working on it.

“We’re putting bathrooms in outside and will have separate bar service, hopefully by the end of the month,” he says.

As for the name, the partners swear they paired every imaginable word together before settling on Lost Coyote.

“There are coyotes sighted sometimes around the city,” Theriot says. “We are a place where even a lost coyote can come in and feel at home.”