Photo courtesy of Hilton Jackson (Photo: Photo courtesy of Hilton Jackson , Photo special to The Clarion-Ledger )
A Louisiana restaurant known for its chargrilled oysters is coming to Jackson this fall.
The Drago's Seafood Restaurant location in Jackson will be the first out-of-state restaurant for the Cvitanovich family who opened their first restaurant in 1969 in Metairie's Fat City. Since then, the family has opened another popular restaurant at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. In addition to the oysters, Drago's menu includes lobster, shrimp and po-boys.
The Drago's in Jackson will be adjacent to the Hilton on County Line Road in the old Huntington's Grille. More than $1.5 million will be spent to renovate the space into a 400-seat restaurant that will look and feel like the Drago's locations in Louisiana. The seafood restaurant is expected to create more than 150 jobs for Jackson and the County Line area, according to Skipper Westbrook, general manager of the Hilton Jackson.
Westbrook said the Drago's location in New Orleans is the highest-grossing restaurant in a Hilton in the world. On a busy day, the restaurant can serve more than 900 dozen oysters.
Drago's is moving to Jackson in part because of a decade-old friendship between Blake Brennan, food and beverage manager at Hilton Jackson, and Drago's co-owner Tommy Cvitanovich. In January, Brennan contacted Cvitanovich to inquire about opening a Drago's location in Jackson.
"I couldn't wait," said Cvitanovich, who has noticed a large majority of his credit card recipients come from Jackson.
Two days after the initial phone call, Cvitanovich drove to Jackson to check out the Huntington Grille space.
"He fell in love," Brennan said. "We fell in love."
For the next few months they tried to make the new location the best-kept secret in Jackson and New Orleans. Huntington Grille shut down May 31 and moved its employees to temporary jobs at the hotel. Demolition and construction will begin in coming weeks, and the hope is to open the restaurant by late October.
The designers of the restaurant are planning to make it look and feel just like the other locations. That was part of the deal for Cvitanovich. Everything had to be the same. Same menu, same wine list and same prices.
"If it happens in Metairie, it happens in Jackson," he said. "Everything has to be the same. I'm not going there to reinvent the wheel."
Drago's trucks will deliver fresh seafood from the same supplier as the other two Drago's locations. Fresh lobsters will be stored in a 1,000 gallon tank. A 50-foot grill will be the centerpiece of the restaurant where customers will be able to watch the oysters being cooked.
Fans of the restaurant's other locations will even recognize a familiar face. Cvitanovich plans to drive to Jackson at least once a week. He said he wants to continue the Drago's family tradition of being involved with the community.
"I intend to know Jackson, Mississippi, and I intend for Jackson, Mississippi, to know Drago's," Cvitanovich said.
In 2010, Cvitanovich was awarded The Loving Cup by The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, in part because he and his staff gave away nearly 80,000 meals after Hurricane Katrina.
And the Cvitanoviches are no strangers to Mississippi. When Cvitanovich's parents and original founders of Drago's Seafood Restaurant, Drago and Klara Cvitanovich, immigrated to the United States from Croatia, some of their relatives lived on Mississippi's Gulf Coast. They still have relatives living in the state, and once a year Cvitanovich visits Jackson to cook for the doctors at the Central Mississippi Medical Center.
"We definitely embrace community whether it's in Metairie, New Orleans or our home away from home, Jackson, Mississippi."
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