Phone
(504) 522-6746
Location
1212 Royal St
New Orleans, LA 70116
hours
Thurs-Mon 5pm-9pm(ish)
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday
Sorry, we do not accept reservations. We do not have delivery available at this time.
A New Orleans staple for Italian-American cuisine located in the beautiful and quiet Lower French Quarter
***Night of 1000 Mona Lisa’s! Saturday, 8/16/25 at 5:30pm. It’s a celebration, y’all! Thank you so much to our wonderful, long-time customers Zach Hunt and Ian Emmett for organizing this amazing event. What started as a rally/protest to help us stay open has turned into a celebration that we’ll be sticking around to provide amazing food, irreverent banter and salty snark for the foreseeable future! This night wouldn’t have seen the light of…well, night, without them, so if you see them, please give them all the thanks. Expected turn-out will be several hundred people, and the street around the restaurant and Golden Lantern will be closed off so we can have a block-party. We’ll have beer and wine as well as some pizza for those outside enjoying the sultry New Orleans Summer. We will be open for dinner service that night as usual, running our tails off to do what we do best and feed the soul of our people. That being said, those that know us know that part of the draw is that we are a small, intimate dining spot. Unfortunately, that means we may not be able to handle having everyone join us inside to dine for the evening. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t love to have you come by, have a drink, and party with us. See you tonight. Cheers!
***We would like to give a heartfelt thank-you to everyone for supporting us during this time. The response from the community has been overwhelming and humbling, and we cannot express enough what it means to us. Without your vocal support and aid in sharing our story, this could have turned out very differently for us. That being said, we have some good news to share. The new building owner has agreed to work with us on a new lease, so it seems as though we’ll be staying! We love this city and the community, and couldn’t imagine not being a part of it. Now, it seems as though we won’t have to! Thank you again. We’ll see you soon for some good food and snarky banter.***
Off the beaten path of the more crowded and raucous Upper French Quarter, and only a block from historic Bourbon Street, Mona Lisa has served as a neighborhood staple for more than 35 years. The building having variously served, among others, as a cigar shop and machine-works building, the current incarnation still retains many of the features of its colorful past.
Mona Lisa's interior is as quirky and colorful--and romantic--as the city in which it exists. Adorned with hundreds of Mona Lisa's from as many patrons, the intimate space serves as a perfect backdrop to our unique and delicious take on Italian cuisine.
Mona Lisa’s Post-Katrina Smile: by Farrow Stephenson
Article first appeared in Quarter Kaleidoscope, Aug 2025
.In August of 2004, my now husband and I decided to take a little vacation to New Orleans.
My New England native husband had never set foot upon the streets and back alleys of Orleans Parish. And although as a self-respecting Southerner, my parents had taken me several times, the only thing I really remembered was being held by the hand of my strict Methodist good-woman aunt as she marched down Bourbon Street, her head piously bowed, eyes locked downward.
Having lived in California for over 15 years, I had forgotten how hard humidity and Southern family repression hits one in the face. Walking back to the Fairmont Hotel after wine cocktails and absinthe, the full moon on my 44th birthday set a buttery, bewitching and baleful glow over Pirates Alley.
“We should probably just move here,” husband says.
“Back to the South?” I grimaced.
“Not really the South, more like the kingdom of . . . ” he tried.
“Okay, sure. Let me see what kind of therapy I can get on retainer.”
By December 23, after a harrowing, anxiety-filled exercise in purging and packing, we were sweating like broken water fountains trying to drag overstuffed boxes from the U-haul on the street up the 15 stairs into our never-before-seen apartment.
Once we dropped off the truck and headed out for rations, a chilly, wintry breeze had started to wrap itself around town. I remember the weatherman saying there was a chance of frozen precipitation, but he wasn’t counting on much more than flurries.
I woke up around 5am on December 25 to a scene out the window rivaling “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where George Bailey is standing on the bridge trying to decide his fate. Anyone who was around at that time has, of course, mentally noted that this is the last time there was a white Christmas in this town.
“Gonna be a bad hurricane season,” said a stranger walking by, as I tried to persuade my dogs to at least go around the block.
Puzzled, I shrugged, “Why’s that?”
“Cause it’s snowing on Christmas. That’s what’s called an omen.”
“Yeah, I get it, I’m familiar with an omen.” I turned to head back inside.
“You got any lotion?” he called as I opened the door.
I shook my head, bewildered, and went back in the house.
If snow on Christmas wasn’t enough of an omen, by my next birthday, August 28, 2005 – my 45th if you’re counting – we were scheduled to meet the owners of the Mona Lisa Restaurant and work out the details of our purchase of a small, easily-run turnkey little 50-seat restaurant on the edge of the lower French Quarter.
“It’ll be fun,” I was telling myself as we sat at the coffee shop on Esplanade, watching the constant stream of cars heading out of town.
By the next morning, Sheriff Harry Lee was walking around in a life preserver and Mayor Ray Nagin was saying anyone who stayed around better have an axe to chop our way through the roof when the rising water forced us into the attic.
We figured the Pop-Tarts we bought would last until we got back home on Tuesday and decided to immerse ourselves into the raging hot pressure cooker that is a hurricane evacuation from New Orleans. After loading up two dogs, two changes of clothes, a pillow and my container of coffee beans, we headed to my sister’s house in Memphis. She’s not a serious coffee drinker, and the thought of two days without was an absolute horror show.
Of course, it took 16 hours and six weeks to get back to the worse-for-wear city. Everyone remembers the dead refrigerator smell, the spotty mail delivery, the eight hours on, eight hours off electricity.
But one of the most noticeable things to me was the island of ordinariness that the French Quarter had become.
Yes, there was plywood over windows that expressed dismay and fear at Katrina’s arrival. Yes, you were never sure if a particular store would be back open unless you actually went there, but to someone like me who had only lived here six months prior, the 13-block-by-7-block radius provided me with a sense of normalcy and community; a feeling that everything was going to work out. Probably not too quickly, but overall, it was going to be okay if you just didn’t worry too much about it.
Almost a year to the day that we were unloading U-Hauls, we were meeting in a downtown office tower to sign the papers for the final transfer of the Mona Lisa Restaurant into our hands. We had discussed it and decided that it might be exciting to be a part of the rebuilding of a whole city – and a whole way of life, really.
That first night we opened the restaurant, it seemed to me like we should have thought this thing through. Customers were walking in and sitting down, looking at me with raised eyebrows and curled upper lips.
“Where’s Fatima?” one asked.
“I don’t know why you’re bringing me a menu. I always get the same thing,” said someone else.
“I think we’re about to run out of pizza dough,” someone, probably an employee, passed on to me.
It was then I began to realize this was going to be my new normal. I considered slipping out the back and making a trail over to the train station, but I realized the City of New Orleans wasn’t running, and if I wanted to make my escape, it would have to be in something less dramatic than a Honda Civic with over 50,000 miles on it.
I went into the cramped, chaotic kitchen and looked at my husband, who was already making pizza and putting out orders. He seemed oddly at peace, like this foxhole was where he intended to stake his claim, and there wasn’t gonna be any question.
I shrugged and figured, we’ve already been through a Category 5; it’s not like there’s much more they can throw at us. All we have to do is boil some noodles, fire some pizza and smile – how easy is that? I just need to find a place to back up my dump truck and load up all the cash that’s gonna be coming out of this little gold mine.
At the end of the night, I noticed how murky and humid December of 2005 was. No one was predicting snow. At least in the Quarter, air conditioners were blasting. The sporadic, colorful Christmas decorations seemed out of place given the condition of city these past few months. But something I still can’t put into words was hovering in the shadows.
No one seemed to really be cognizant of the contradiction. I had literally been told by a woman when I said we didn’t have any tiramisu: “Don’t give me that Katrina excuse bullshit, it’s been four months! You should have this figured out by now.”
I probably was astounded, or offended, or at least annoyed at the time, but in retrospect I feel like, yeah, that’s how it had to happen. This tiny little rise in the swamp would never have become the daiquiri to-go cup capital of the free world if all those before us had not taken a pinch of snuff and sallied forth.
Maybe it’s some sort of connection to our past, a camaraderie with the spirits roaming the drafty, moldy, dank rooms of our homes and businesses. Or maybe we’re just so attached to the uniqueness, we can’t even imagine how to begin to pull up stakes and homesteading elsewhere.
I won’t try and claim that I have become accustomed to French Quarter life. I have to admit I’m still surprised when a Mylar balloon shuts down our clean water supply or when a pothole opens up in front of the restaurant big enough to crack the axle of a small pickup, rendering it immediately useless in the middle of the street.
It’s not for me to decide whether we’re all nuts or just lazy – that’s something for the AI robots of 2124 to determine. I’m kinda glad I won’t be here to find out what they come up with.