Remembering one of the MS Coast’s most popular fine dining restaurants of the 2000s

The Mississippi Coast’s culinary history runs deep, with the region having seen many popular restaurants come and go over the years.

This has given generation after generation their own unique and favorite spots, but the memories of former establishments will always remain.

One of the finer, more intimate restaurants the Coast has offered over the years had its home in Pass Christian during the 2000s. Tigre’s was opened by two men in their early 20s, who had to wait until they were old enough for a liquor license to open the restaurant.

Victor Pickich and Thomas Genin were 22 and 21 years old when they opened Tigre’s at the corner of Market and Second Streets. They used experience working under a celebrity chef and running Annie’s in Henderson Point to bring high-class dining at affordable prices to the town they grew up in.

Tigre’s offered seafood, steak and specialty dishes. The menu shifted from time to time based on availability of fresh food and on customer preferences.

The two owners were also the chefs and prided themselves in their specialties.

“If I bring in fresh New Zealand lamb or fresh snapper and serve it with a lemon pepper pasta, you’re not going to come to me and say, ‘I really just want the steak,’” Pickich told the Sun Herald in 2002.

Tigre’s had a popular plank chicken dish, as well as Alantic salmon and angus rib-eye.

The vanilla creme brulee was especially well received. It was topped with whipped cream and homemade caramel and cooked with a thin layer of crust encasing the custard.

For over three years, Tigre’s hosted events, sold wine by the bottle and cultivated a relaxing, slow-paced dining experience.

That came to an end in 2005 with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Tigre’s was destroyed along with the majority of the Coast’s tax base.

The ownership pair wasn’t quite ready to lay the concept to rest. He opened up Tigre’s Supper Club several months later at The Oaks golf course with a fixed-price menu.

Customers would come in, pay $50 and enjoy whatever five-course meal Genin concocted on that particular day. The Sun Herald visited in 2006 and received an experience that started with a Caesar salad. The next course was southern barbecue shrimp with Parmesan and goat cheese grits.

Crab meat mushroom prosciutto over angel hair pasta followed for course three, then grilled filet of beef tenderloin with sauteed vegetables and horseradish beurre blanc. The finale was turtle cheesecake for dessert.

Genin had plans to expand the brand across the Coast, but eventually chose to go a new direction. Following the Supper Club’s closing, Genin helped launched Shaggy’s Harbor Bar and Grill in Pass Christian — a brand still popular on the Coast today.

Shaggy’s inherited its name from Shaggy’s Corner, a bar that once sat at the original Tigre’s location.

Genin is now the owner of The Blind Tiger and its rapidly expanding empire across three states. He also owns TBT Backyard Butcher Shop & Seafood Market and the Beergarden in Bay St. Louis.

Though Tigre’s is no more, its influences and origins still remain present on the Coast today.

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