FLAT ROCK - When Blue Ruby Bistro and Bakery owner Jesse Roque was in college in Boca Raton, Florida, waiting tables at a busy restaurant, she asked one of the chefs if she could work in the kitchen.

As a long-idled building comes back to life in downtown New Orleans, it will have a new restaurant from a rising star chef and scion of an influential local hospitality family. Edgar "Dook" Chase IV, ...