In August 2022, William Rester and chef Lauren Joffrion opened Radish on the state’s Gulf Coast, celebrating the best of the region’s ingredients. The name comes from the Long Beach radish, a variety that helped earn the town the title of Radish Capital of the World. Residents of the Northeast enjoyed them as a bar snack before Prohibition led to a decline in popularity.
Now the humble radish is one of many seasonal and local ingredients to go into the restaurant’s menu. The colorful and beautifully plated dishes include rotating pasta and fresh catch items such as Gulf shrimp scampi and cornbread-crusted redfish, and staples like the pork chop with molasses-glazed collard greens atop grits from Grit Girl in Oxford.
“We had spent all these years before we had kids going around and finding really great places to eat in New Orleans and Mobile and different places and taking things from each of those,” Rester says. “So the idea for me when I got started would be this collection of memories because I would come home and try to re-create things.”
The pair had opened a small coffee shop and breakfast sandwich place right before Covid-19. “I have impeccable timing,” Rester says with a laugh. During the pandemic, they shifted and became a food truck and catered before the future space for Radish opened up on Long Beach’s well-traveled Jeff Davis Avenue, just four blocks from the beach. “It was one of those locations where it’s on the frontage of a downtown area that you can’t miss driving by, with a huge traffic count,” says Rester.
With 31 seats inside, including the bar, the restaurant isn’t big on space, but that’s part of the appeal: When you’re sitting down to eat, you’re going to get to know the people next to you. “It’s a very familiar 31,” Rester says. “We’ve had some really cool relationships develop between diners that will all come as a group now because they’ve gotten to know each other just by sitting together in the restaurant.”
Can’t Miss At Radish
Mississippi Mule
This refreshing sipper is made with Mississippi’s Cat – head honeysuckle vodka, ginger beer, lime, and mint.
Crab Beignets
Lump crab meat fills these fried nuggets, which are set atop a beurre blanc and topped with a zippy pepper jelly.
Gulf Fish Entree
The daily catch comes in fresh and is served with fried grits, green tomato salsa, and a lemon beurre blanc.
Get Radish’s Roasted Radishes with Whipped Goat Cheese and Chimichurri Recipe
