The Big Easy is an embarrassment of dishes. From world-class culinary art to down-home bayou cookery, the city has curried the favor of global gourmets and local epicures, as well as the food lover merely passing through town. For more than 150 years local kitchens have been tantalizing palates with culinary pleasures worthy of opium dreams. A mere short list of New Orlean’s famous indigenous foods prompts even the seasoned restaurantgoer to marvel at the mélange of local culinary riches: jambalaya, gumbo, pommes soufflé, oysters Bienville and Rockefeller, po-boy and Muffuletta sandwiches, courtbouillon, crawfish étouffée, trout amandine, soft-shell crab meunière, shrimp remoulade, blackened redfish (or blackened anything, for that matter), barbecue shrimp, spicy andouille, boudin sausages, and red beans and rice. The City that Care Forgot never forgets dessert, from classic crème brûlée and bread pudding with whiskey sauce to flaming bananas Foster and chocolate pudding– filled, seven-layer doberge cakes. Just for the record, all of the above were invented here. And many of them are washed down with traditional cafe brûlot, a local potation of coffee flamed with cinnamon sticks, cloves, orange, and lemon rind with brandy and Grand Marnier. Can there be any doubt that in New Orleans, dining is no mere pastime but rather a way of life?
A multiethnic melting pot, the city’s dining joie de vivre owes a gustatory debt to the time-honored cooking traditions of its early Native American, French, West African, Spanish, West Indian, and Acadian inhabitants. Almost from the moment the ramparts were built around the colonial swampland settlement, New Orleans seemed destined for great culinary possibilities. Early on, pots full of tasty sustenance simmered with the bounteous harvest of indigenous foodstuffs culled from nearby bayous and rivers—crawfish, oysters, shrimp, crab, finfish, and other southeast Louisiana delicacies. Gumbo, or “gombo,” is the West African word for okra—a signature ingredient in one of the region’s mainstays. Jambalaya can trace part of its roots to the French and Spanish words for ham, “jambon” and “jamon,” respectively. And the legendary trapping and fishing skills of resourceful bayou Cajuns, exiled from Nova Scotia in the 1700s, moved “one-pot” cooking to the front burner with andouille sausage jambalaya and chicken macque choux.
The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the arrival of Americans from the colonies as well as Irish, German, and Italian immigrants. One of the city’s oldest grocery stores, Central Grocery Co. (established in 1906) is owned and operated by descendents of the original Italian family that founded this French Quarter landmark. Here visitors sit elbow-to-elbow munching on the New Orleans-born Italian bread feast called the Muffuletta, stuffed with provolone cheese and deli meats and topped with tangy olive salad. Further spicing up the local dining scene of this cosmopolitan city has been the arrival in recent decades of people from Cuba, Central America, Vietnam, the Caribbean, and other regions of the world. Bennachin, on Royal Street, tempts taste buds with the rich flavors of Cameroon and Gambia found in such dishes as nsouki ioppa, the traditional West African gumbo with sausage and smoked turkey. Scandinavian cuisine may, in fact, be the only thing missing from New Orleans menus. OK, so maybe it is impossible to find kochanina (pork gelatin) or aggost (egg custard with herring). But stay tuned.
The Big Easy is a hedonist’s Valhalla. As such, it seems only fitting that the city should lay claim to a grand choice of places to eat, ranging from sparkling lairs of world-class cuisine to dimly lit nooks serving up down-home grub. Many cities can boast of having “something for everyone in every price range.” But competition among Big Easy restaurants for diners’ dollars is so fierce that it seems the bad spots are usually forced to shut their doors in about 15 minutes. The best of the bunch meantime enjoy the awards and accolades that pour in with astonishing regularity. In fact, literary pageants of devotion flow from the pens of the nation’s food cognoscenti.
The choices of dining spots in this chapter have been restricted to those that have stood the test of time. With few exceptions, each has been on the local scene at least a year or longer, while many can point to long histories inextricably entwined in the cultural fabric of the city. If you dine in the courtyard at the Bistro at Maison deVille Hotel, for example, you may well imagine hearing the clinking of ice in Tennessee Williams’s Sazerac glass. The playwright lived in No. 9 and enjoyed the New Orleans-born cocktail as he sat in the courtyard working on A Streetcar Named Desire. Antoine’s, the city’s oldest restaurant, opened in 1840 and since that time has hosted everyone from Mark Twain and Enrico Caruso to five U.S. presidents.
Unless otherwise noted, the restaurants in this chapter accept most major credit cards. Those that accept cash only are so designated. For convenience this chapter is divided by the following neighborhoods: Esplanade, Faubourg Marigny, French Quarter, CBD/Downtown, Warehouse District, Uptown, Carrollton/Riverbend, Mid City, and Lakefront/Bucktown/Lakeview. Restaurants are listed alphabetically under each neighborhood. Keep in mind that virtually everything in the city, including its restaurants, is at most no more than a 15-minute drive or cab ride from where you’re staying. So don’t let distance be a hindrance to adventurous dining.
Like most cities in subtropical climates, New Orleans tends to run on the casual side in both attitude and dress. Even nighttime attire, weather permitting, is usually no more than jeans, T-shirts, shorts, short-sleeve shirts and blouses, sundresses, walking shoes, and so on. Still, as this is the South, some women wouldn’t be caught dead transgressing the unwritten fashion law of no white shoes between Labor Day and Easter. But if you’re not from the South, really, don’t sweat it. Travelers will want to dress accordingly for the special occasion of breaking bread at some of the city’s finer establishments. Jackets and ties for the gents and evening dresses for the ladies will usually suffice. If hitting one of the chic bistros downtown or in the Warehouse District, dress in black (if you want to blend in with the waitstaff), or slip into the stylish threads you packed for such an occasion. But what you’ll find in New Orleans, even in some of the better restaurants, is a mostly relaxed and laid-back dress code. As always, if in doubt call ahead.