Walk Maple Street this month and you will pass two storefronts mid-transition within a hundred yards of each other. At 7507 Maple, the lights are still on at Hot Stuff, though the meat-and-three spot from the Turkey and the Wolf team has already told regulars it will close around October. A few doors down at 7700 Maple, the old Starbucks sits behind paper-covered windows, gutted for a renovation that will bring PJ's Coffee back to the street where the company started serving guests in 1978.
One of those storefronts is closing. The other is coming home. If you only read the headlines, it would be easy to mistake this for a corridor in decline. It isn't. It's a corridor old enough and steady enough that a national coffee brand is fighting to get back onto it, while one restaurant, from one of the city's most decorated chefs, simply couldn't make the math work at one specific address.
What's Actually Closing
Hot Stuff opened in May 2024 at 7507 Maple Street, the work of Mason Hereford and chef Nate Barfield. The format was old-school New Orleans: a steam table where diners chose mains and sides for a quick, home-style plate. The menu leaned into stewed chicken, red beans and rice, fried pork chops, smoked wings, buttermilk-and-hot-sauce fried chicken, and a bananas foster pudding for dessert.
It's closing around the start of October, and Hereford has said plainly that the restaurant wasn't doing enough business to keep going. That's a notable admission from a chef with an outsized national reputation. Hereford founded Turkey and the Wolf in the Lower Garden District in 2016, and Bon Appétit named it the number-one Best New Restaurant in America the following August. He also runs Molly's Rise and Shine, a Magazine Street breakfast cafe that Food & Wine listed among its Best New Restaurants, and Hungry Eyes, a martini-and-drinking-food spot he opened on Magazine Street with his wife Lauren Agudo and chef Philip Cenac in April 2023. In January 2025, the James Beard Foundation named him a semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, citing that same portfolio.
Hereford has said he hopes the steam-table dishes find a second life somewhere else in the city. Whether that happens or not, the closure reads less like a referendum on Maple Street and more like a specific format that didn't find enough daily traffic at one specific address, even with a well-known name behind it.
The Homecoming a Block Away
PJ's Coffee's return to Maple Street carries more history than a typical franchise opening. Founder Phyllis Jordan started the company on this street in 1978, and it stayed there through decades of growth before Ballard Brands, based in Covington and Mandeville, acquired the brand in 2008 and expanded it past 200 locations nationally. The original Maple Street flagship closed in January 2025, which meant the block where PJ's built its name went without a PJ's for the first time in nearly half a century.
The new location, set to debut this fall at 7700 Maple in the former Starbucks building, will keep the patio and off-street parking that came with that space. In its own announcement, the company put the sentiment simply:
"Maple Street has always been integral to our brand story."
That's not just nostalgia talking. It's also a bet that the corridor's mix of Tulane and Loyola students, longtime residents, and regular foot traffic still supports a coffee shop worth renovating a building for.
What Moved on Maple Street in 2026
A quick look at what's actually changed on the block this year, set against what triggered the change:
| Business | Move | Approximate Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Hot Stuff | Closing | Around October 2026 |
| PJ's Coffee | Reopening at 7700 Maple (former Starbucks) | Fall 2026 |
| Origami Sushi | Relocated from Freret Street to Maple Street | 2026 |
Three moves, three different reasons. A restaurant that couldn't sustain its business. A coffee brand returning to its roots. A sushi spot that picked Maple over Freret. None of it points in the same direction, which is itself the point.
The Storefronts That Haven't Moved
For everything shifting on Maple Street this year, most of the block looks exactly like it did last year and the year before that. Walk past 7623 Maple and Maple Street Cafe is still serving its Italian-leaning dinners in a split-level dining room with a patio out back. At 7808 Maple, Jamila's Cafe is still doing Tunisian and Creole plates, with belly dancers on Saturday nights, a detail that has made it a fixture rather than a novelty. Ciro's Coté Sud at 7918 Maple keeps its French bistro menu going, and Satsuma Café at 7901 Maple is still the spot for organic juices and fair-trade coffee before either university lets out for the day.
The retail side is just as steady. Angelique Boutique at 7725 Maple remains one of the more consistently busy women's clothing shops on the strip, and Swap Designer Consignment at 7716 Maple continues to draw the resale crowd. Meyer Provisions, the small gourmet grocery that opened on Maple in recent years carrying produce and meat from Mississippi's Two Dog Farms and Tangipahoa's Covey Rise Farms, is still stocking its shelves for neighbors who want a real butcher counter within walking distance instead of a drive to a bigger store.
None of these businesses made headlines this year. That's exactly why they matter to this story. They're the baseline against which the closures and openings get measured, and the baseline hasn't moved.
Why One Closing Doesn't Read as a Trend
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only see the news that a James Beard semifinalist's restaurant is closing: a single closure by a single operator at a single address is not the same signal as a corridor losing its footing. PJ's Coffee can absorb the cost of renovating a former Starbucks and reopening on a street where it already has brand equity built over nearly fifty years, because the company is spreading that risk across 200-plus locations. An independent restaurant, even one backed by a chef with three other successful concepts, has to make its numbers work inside four walls with no other location to lean on if the format doesn't land.
That's the actual story of Maple Street in 2026. It's not a street on the way up or on the way down. It's a street mature enough to have both, at the same time, on the same block, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other.
What This Means for Your Next Walk Down Maple
If you're headed to Maple Street for dinner in the coming weeks, get to Hot Stuff before the doors close in October if the steam table has been part of your routine. If you're a coffee regular who lost your spot when the old PJ's location closed in January 2025, the wait for a fall reopening at 7700 Maple is almost over, and the patio and parking you remember will still be there. And if you've been meaning to try Origami Sushi, you'll now find it on Maple instead of Freret.
Everything else on the block, from Jamila's Saturday belly dancers to Meyer Provisions' butcher counter, is exactly where it's always been.
Maple Street's mix of longtime family businesses and revolving newer concepts is part of what makes Uptown worth paying attention to, whether you're grabbing dinner tonight or thinking ahead to what a block like this means for a home nearby. The Martzolf Group keeps a close eye on these details because they shape how a neighborhood actually lives day to day, not just how it looks on a map. If you're curious what that kind of local read means for your own property, we're always glad to talk.
