Scene: New Orleans, 2014.
Enter: A couple of pop-ups. A menu built around wings, sliders and fries. One fried chicken sandwich added at the last minute.
More than a decade later, there’s a restaurant, a vintage food truck, a menu full of names and a few awards on the shelf. The sandwiches built the following, and the people around it are still a big part of the story.
Stephen + Bee
Food guy. People person.
Stephen Maher and Bee Hollingsworth didn’t start Bonafried with a grand plan to become a New Orleans chicken sandwich institution.
Stephen grew up cooking. Bee grew up in the theater. Somewhere between falling in love and building a life together, they created Bonafried.
Stephen obsesses over the food, the process and the details. Bee makes sure Bonafried feels like the kind of place where somebody knows your name, your order or, possibly, the sandwich named after you.
The Beginning
The Sandwich Was Almost an Afterthought.
Bonafried began as a series of pop-ups in 2014. The original idea centered around wings, sliders and fries. Then, the day before one of those early openings, Stephen decided the menu needed a fried chicken sandwich.
Back before the Chicken Sandwich Wars, Bonafried saw an opening and made one the way Stephen thought it should be made: fresh chicken, from-scratch recipes and a process worth obsessing over.
That sandwich became The Southern. It is still on the menu.
That last-minute addition ended up changing the direction of Bonafried.
The Food Truck
Then Things Got Rolling.
A couple of years after the first pop-ups, Stephen and Bee found an old Wonder Bread truck and brought it home. In 2016, Bonafried officially took to the streets.
Over the years, the truck became part of Bonafried’s identity. It showed up at events, festivals, film sets and neighborhood gatherings. The sandwiches developed names and stories of their own. Some were created by Stephen. Others came from customers experimenting with sauce combinations at the counter.
That is how the Chris Special happened.
Chris ordered the Special with Mack sauce. Bonafried named the sandwich after him, and the idea stuck. Come up with a combination no one has ordered before, and Bonafried may name the sandwich after you.
The restaurant
The right place at the right time.
For years, people asked Stephen and Bee when Bonafried would open a permanent restaurant.
They knew they wanted one, but they also knew they did not want just any space. They wanted the right neighborhood, the right building and the right reason to stay.
They found all three in a former washateria near the Fair Grounds. The building had served the neighborhood for decades, and the same family had owned it for years. When the laundry closed, they offered the space to Bonafried.
That felt less like taking over a building and more like being handed the keys to the next chapter of a neighborhood story.
So Stephen and Bee did not try to erase what came before them. They let the building be the building. Pressed tin details remained. Pieces of the old laundry stayed. A washing machine door was repurposed as a window into the kitchen, and the team even has a name for the former “resident” they swear came with the place: Yoo-Hoo.
The building kept its character; but these days, it smells a lot more like fried chicken.
An Award-Winning Sandwich
Turns Out, the People Had Opinions.
Bonafried spent years building a loyal following before opening its brick-and-mortar restaurant, but the sandwiches have also picked up some hardware along the way.
The Chris Special won Best Use of Chicken in a Dish at the 2022 National Fried Chicken Festival.
Then, in 2024, Bonafried took home the festival’s inaugural People’s Choice Award.
The awards are nice. But is there anything more Bonafried than the fact that one of its most celebrated sandwiches exists because a customer walked up and asked for a different sauce combination?
Today
Come See What the Fuss Is About.
More than a decade after those first pop-ups, Bonafried has a permanent home near the Fair Grounds, the food truck is still rolling, and The Southern is still on the menu.
Locals know the sandwiches, the sauces and the favorites they already order by name. Visitors hear about Bonafried from the people who actually live here and add it to the list of places they want to try while they’re in New Orleans.
A lot has changed since 2014, but the things that matter have stayed pretty simple: Stephen still obsesses over the food, Bee still makes people feel at home, and Bonafried keeps giving people a reason to come back.
And if you get creative enough with the sauces, they might even name something after you.
Mid-City · Bayou St. John
Come Say Hi
Questions about the menu, catering, hours or anything else? Get in touch with Bonafried.
If Yoo-Hoo answers, don’t panic. She’s been here longer than we have.