August 29, 2025
It’s been 20 years since Keisha Mackie relocated to Atlanta from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Her Everythang Nola Cafe in Atlanta pays homage to a city she will forever love.
Inside Everythang NOLA Café, you may find a brass band one day and a Mardi Gras Indian the next. Sometimes, staff at the Atlanta eatery will host crawfish boils when they’re in season, and they participate in the celebratory street processions known as Second Lines. The café’s owner, Keisha Mackie, proves that even when you take a girl out of New Orleans, you can never take NOLA out of her heart.
“I often hear from people who come into my shop that it feels like home,” she tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “We really try to bring as much of our culture here.”
Everythang NOLA Café is a love letter to her home. You can hear in the way she dotes on the city’s hospitable culture and cuisine that New Orleans is a city she cares deeply about, but did not have the chance to say goodbye to properly. Mackie was one of tens of thousands of people who evacuated as Hurricane Katrina’s threat became imminent.
Hurricane Katrina: A Storm That Felt Different
Mackie, who hails from the city’s Ninth Ward, says the urgency of getting people to evacuate New Orleans felt different than any other storm she lived through.
“I didn’t want to leave at all, because we normally don’t leave,” she recalls. “In the past, we would ride out the storm, but I decided to leave at the very last minute. I was seven months pregnant.”
Her instinct to evacuate was right. By the time she packed up her car and left with her two oldest children, state leaders had declared a state of emergency, and the interstates were completely shut down. She got out just in time, but so many others were not as lucky.
Hurricane Katrina: One of the Deadliest Natural Disasters in the United States
To date, Hurricane Katrina is one of the deadliest natural disasters in the United States. The storm’s powerful storm surge and winds, combined with the catastrophic failure of the city’s levee system, caused a majority of the city to flood.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reveal that Hurricane Katrina is the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States, surpassing Hurricane Andrew from 1992. Additionally, Katrina is one of the five deadliest hurricanes to have ever struck the United States. In all, Hurricane Katrina was responsible for 1,833 fatalities and approximately $108 billion in damage.
According to the Data Center, the storm displaced approximately 1.5 million people from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in 2005. It was the largest internal displacement in U.S. history since the Dust Bowl. While some returned home quickly, a significant number, estimated at up to 600,000 households, were still displaced a month later, and thousands, like Mackie, never returned to their homes.
Everythang NOLA: Rebuilding In Atlanta After Hurricane Katrina
Returning to New Orleans was not an option for Mackie and her family because redeveloping the city was a mountainous task.
“What we were seeing as far as rebuilding was very slow. It was depressing to witness,” she recalls.
Her father was living in Atlanta, and she felt it was the right time to make a change. In addition to the support, she credits successful Black residents in Atlanta for motivating and encouraging her to rebuild her life in a new city.
When her favorite restaurant, where she could find the iconic New Orleans sno-ball (not to be confused with a snow-cone), closed in Decatur, she knew it was time to make her lifelong dream of opening a New Orleans-inspired café a reality. Mackie officially launched the restaurant in 2019, where people could find the very foods that draw millions of people to New Orleans each year.
Displaced Again, But Not Deterred
Unfortunately, there have been some setbacks. It’s been 20 years since Mackie, then pregnant, moved to Atlanta, and she has recently found herself displaced once again. The original café location recently closed after a change in building ownership. Ironically, as she prepares to commemorate 20 years since relocating to Atlanta due to the hurricane, she was recently displaced from the building.
Luckily, Everythang Nola Café has a new home inside Atlanta’s first Black-owned food hall on the Southwest side of the city. She’s now raising money to help with a smooth transition to the new building because it’s been shut down for several months
Some things will stay the same: New Orleans’ character and heart will be etched into the walls and energy. Mackie is also planning to expand the menu to feature other iconic dishes from the Big Easy, such as Po’ Boys and homemade beignets. Long-term, she would love to host chefs from New Orleans a few times a year.
As she prepares to reopen the café in a new location by the fall, she remains undeterred. From her experience, that is one of the good things she says Hurricane Katrina taught her.
“Having a business and being an entrepreneur is not for the weak. So if you’re not strong and willing to keep going, you won’t make it,” says Mackie. “I think for me, enduring all of those things New Orleans has made me extremely resilient and focused, which has helped me in my entrepreneurial journey. I’m very, very grateful for that.”
The new location for Everythang NOLA Café is 1332 Metropolitan Parkway in Atlanta.
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