Perkins Road's New Restaurants Moved Into Someone Else's Dining Room

"Personally, I love dim sum," Stacy Zheng told 225 Magazine a few days after her new restaurant opened on Perkins Road. "And there is no real dim sum yet around here."

Her answer to that gap went into a building many of us already know. Mudan Modern Asian Cuisine sits at 9460 Perkins Road, in the 150-seat room that was Southern Pearl Oyster House for years. Most of what's new on Perkins Road this year follows the same pattern. The restaurants come from people who already run something successful elsewhere, in New Orleans, in Kenner, or across a chain with more than a hundred locations, and they open inside dining rooms that someone else built. The road's food is changing faster than its buildings.

Four Addresses, Three Second Acts

Here is the 2026 turnover on the stretch, side by side.

Each of the three openings took over a space that had been a restaurant or shop. None of the three started out on Perkins Road. And the closing in that table doesn't mean the business is gone. The Advocate reported that the Perkins shop was Beignet Baton Rouge's second location, and its other location stayed open.

Mudan Turned an Oyster House Into a Dim Sum Hall

Southern Pearl posted that it was closing for good on Jan. 1, 2026. The Advocate described it as a local version of Biloxi's Half Shell Oyster House. The room sat empty for about nine months. Then Mudan opened there on Oct. 6.

The team behind it already had a track record. Stacy and Danny Zheng run Daruma Ramen, which began in Prairieville and opened a second location on Government Street in February. 225 reported that they are also renovating their King Buffet on Bluebonnet Boulevard. Their partner, Bihai Liu, owns Yummy House, a dim sum and Cantonese restaurant in Kenner, and he now works in Mudan's kitchen to make sure the food is made the traditional way. So the recipes come from a proven kitchen near New Orleans, the operators already know the Capital Region, and the building was a working restaurant on its last day as an oyster house.

The space has changed a lot inside. According to 225, it now has warm grays and tans, wrought iron and red lantern light fixtures, bamboo accents, and a large digital wall screen showing a Chinese street scene. The main room mixes booths with round tables that have manual lazy Susans. A separate private room has two extra-large round tables with motorized servers, and 225 notes that a party of 14 can gather around one.

A few things are good to know before a first visit:

• Dim sum is served all day. The Advocate counts more than 50 dishes on the dim sum menu alone. They come steamed, deep-fried, braised and pan-fried.
• You order on a tablet, not from carts. 225 reports that every table gets an iPad, so you can keep ordering as you go.
• Start with the classics. 225 suggests potstickers, shu mai, beef short ribs, chicken feet, bao, egg tarts and sesame balls. Soup dumplings have their own section of the menu.
• Bigger dishes are worth it with a group. The Advocate lists curry cuttlefish and black pepper short ribs among the braised dishes.
• Hours. Mudan's website lists 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

225 also wrote that a grand opening "will follow soon" after the soft opening, so this may still count as the restaurant's early weeks.

Vals Came for the Parking Lot

The Mudan pattern showed up on Perkins Road three months earlier, at the other end of the stretch. Vals opened at 7242 Perkins Road on July 1 in the former Rock Paper Taco and painted the space in its signature blush pink. It began in Uptown New Orleans, inside an old gas station with plenty of outdoor seating. Partners Turk Dietrich and Matthew Kohnke are also partners in Cure, the New Orleans cocktail bar that won a James Beard Award.

Dietrich told 225 Magazine what made the Perkins site an easy choice, and it wasn't the patio, because there isn't much of one. It was the parking lot. To make up for the limited outdoor seating, Vals added two rooms on either side of the restaurant. On the left, tall sliding glass doors open onto a fenced, turfed area with lawn games. On the right is a small patio with a few tables, which Dietrich expected to be at its best once fall weather arrived. In early November, that patio season is here.

Dietrich also said plainly that the food isn't Tex-Mex. "We are decidedly not Tex-Mex," he told 225, and he described dishes drawn from Tijuana and Mexico City and a chef who spent about a year in Mexico. The food and drink menus match the New Orleans location. His picks are the elotes, the shrimp quesadilla, and the sweet potato and cauliflower tacos. The margaritas use fresh-squeezed juice, and the large horseshoe bar copies the one in New Orleans.

ViVi Replaced Bubble Tea With Bubble Tea

The most direct swap on the stretch happened at 8342 Perkins Road, Studio C, next to Rotolo's and Bao Vietnamese Kitchen. The 2,200-square-foot space used to be King Kong, another bubble tea shop. ViVi Bubble Tea took it over with a soft opening Oct. 22 and a grand opening Oct. 26.

ViVi brings the most outside experience of anyone on this list. The Advocate reports that the brand started in 2007, has more than 100 locations worldwide, and has run its first Baton Rouge shop at 11230 Florida Blvd. since 2018. So Perkins Road is the brand's second try in this city, seven years after the first.

The menu goes beyond drinks. It draws mostly on Taiwanese and Korean food, with street food, bento boxes and more than 65 beverages. Inside there are waving cat figurines, a couple of armchairs, games like Giant Uno and Jenga, and a board by the door where customers leave sticky notes. If you're coming from Mudan, a mile or so down the road, it makes an easy dessert stop.

The Next Arrival Is Designed for Smaller Spaces

The next project announced for the stretch follows the same logic as the first three. In August, Walk-On's Sports Bistreaux announced a new restaurant at 8150 Perkins Road. WBRZ reported that the company calls it the debut of its next-generation sports bar prototype, with an opening targeted for early 2027.

What stands out is the size. The new format will be 3,500 to 4,500 square feet, compared with the 7,000 to 8,000-plus square feet of a traditional Walk-On's, or roughly half. The company is aiming for a development cost under $2 million and says the design is meant to lower financial barriers and open up new site options for franchise operators. "This isn't a smaller Walk-On's. It's a smarter one," founder and CEO Brandon Landry told WBRZ.

That puts a Baton Rouge brand right back where it started. Landry founded Walk-On's here in 2003, and it now has nearly 80 locations nationwide. The Perkins Road restaurant will be the ninth in the Capital Region and the 20th in Louisiana. Like Vals, Mudan and ViVi, it's an operator with plenty of experience, and this time the restaurant itself was redesigned to fit more locations. Early 2027 is a target date, not a confirmed opening.

The Zhengs are expanding too, though not on Perkins. The Advocate reports that their revolving sushi bar, Zuma, is expected to open at 4914 Government St. in 2027.

Part of my job is keeping track of how corridors like Perkins Road change, including which buildings turn over, who moves in, and what that does to the daily routine on nearby streets. If you live near this stretch and want to talk about how it's changing, or you're thinking about a move nearby, Jodie B. Strain would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.