It’s fitting that expectations are challenged at the mention of the name. Mister Mao is decidedly not a Chinese restaurant. Named in honor of their cat, owners Sophina Uong and William “Wildcat” Greenwell instead describe it as “a tropical…
New Orleans is a food town. We love to incorporate food and cooking into almost all of our celebrations, get-togethers, family reunions, festivals and so much more. This year, the city and our beloved dining institutions, neighborhood bars and gathering…
New Orleans’s culinary richness is rooted in its cross-cultural pollination. The city’s long colonial history and its strategic value as a port of entry assured a steady flow of goods, services and international influence over time. When we sit down…
Seeking an expertly laminated French croissant? Or perhaps memories of a trip overseas have put you in the mood for a sleek ham and cheese sandwich layered with salted butter and briny-sweet pops of cornichon. Yet it is Sunday,…
Get ready to peel n’ eat – there is a new seafood spot in town. Seafood Sally’s swung its doors open this spring on Oak Street, welcoming a post-pandemic crush of New Orleanians looking to get their hands dirty…
Situated along a commercial stretch of Veterans Boulevard is The Larder Gourmet Market + Eatery, an independent outpost surrounded by a sea of big box chains. Owned and operated by Alison Vega-Knoll and Chris Wilson (the former also owns…
New Orleans is a melting pot in more ways than one. Like its music, the food often expresses itself through improvisation. Starting from a common point, chefs play with form, rolling in local influences and ingredients to spread the…
Like restaurants nationwide in a year like no other, the Ella Brennan Lifetime Achievement Award has pivoted for 2021. This year, in lieu of a single individual receiving this year’s New Orleans Wine and Food Experience (NOWFE) honor, 13…
Aficionados of Middle Eastern cuisine have a compelling option in Saj, a picturesque new restaurant on Magazine Street that opened quietly during the pandemic’s peak last summer. With its crisp, contemporary design featuring splashes of bold color and elegant tile,…
fdg Budsi’s Authentic Thai, a vibrant and buzzy newcomer in the Marigny, steps into two niches simultaneously. It is both unfamiliar (with a distinctively singular regional Thai menu) and rooted in the pleasures of home (i.e. the cooking that owner…
Most cities have their neighborhood joints, casual places where you can get a sandwich or splurge a bit more for an entrée. But only one has Chef Susan Spicer working the line, helping to come up with “Thank You Baby…
Opening a new restaurant is never easy. Opening during a pandemic, well… Yet, throughout this crisis we’ve seen several startups take root across the pockmarked landscape of the New Orleans culinary scene. Among these is Cho Thai, a Thai restaurant…
New Orleans is a food town, with a dedicated population that holds on tightly to old favorite haunts, while embracing and celebrating new traditions and new faces. For our annual December list of restaurant, food and drink “bests,” our team…
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that the little things matter. Food doesn’t need to be complicated to taste good. And few things exemplify this principal more than barbeque, where it is the quality of the ingredients and…
At the start of 2020, Mawi Tortillas was a company on the move. A successful family enterprise spearheaded by chef Will Avelar, Mawi’s focus was purveying fragrant corn tortillas served in an impressive collection of New Orleans restaurants. In January…
On one hand, you could refer to Plume as a new Indian restaurant in Algiers. On another, you could say it is an expression of personal experiences born of travel and discovery during a long sojourn across India, as its…
New Orleans cuisine is often described as a melting pot where various influences converged to create a unique panoply of flavor. Typical descriptors fork broadly along two tines – Creole and Cajun. More generally, in toss-away phrasing, New Orleans cuisine…
Saying the last several months have challenged restaurants to adapt would be an understatement. Some became mini-groceries and others battened down the hatches to wait things out. Others have been lost entirely. Alison Vega, the chef and owner of Station…
Italian cuisine has always played an outsized role in the New Orleans restaurant landscape. Sicilian immigrants helped shape the mercantile history of the French Quarter in the late 19th century, contributing definitive local dishes like the Muffuletta as well as…
Tough times don’t create character, they reveal it. Just a few months after opening Junior’s, a neighborhood eatery on Harrison Avenue in Lakeview, the coronavirus delivered its devastating nationwide blow. Luckily for the team at Junior’s, owners Nick Hufft and…
Chinese-American cuisine strikes a resonant chord. Equal parts nostalgia, comfort and flavor, it has a particularly broad appeal. So what happens when you get a couple of guys with Link Group-experience who decide to do their own take on it?…
It’s not often that a new Greek restaurant opens in New Orleans, let alone one that elevates this cuisine to the level of fine dining. Rockrose, which opened last fall, steps gracefully into this niche. Here at the International House…
It’s Carnival time once again. And should you be looking for a restaurant in which to celebrate, consider Jack Rose. With its prime time location in the Pontchartrain Hotel on the St. Charles parade route, Jack Rose also possesses an…
John Folse is a difficult guy to categorize. Is he a chef? Undoubtedly. He made a name for himself with Lafitte’s Landing, an ambitious Cajun restaurant in an out-of-the way spot capable of drawing customers in from far and wide.…
Looking to take a step off the beaten path? Then Bakery Bar belongs on your list of places to check out. Located in the Lower Garden District just a stone’s throw from the GNO Bridge, this savory/sweet mashup opened back…
There are plenty of Vietnamese restaurants in New Orleans, but there is only one like the Em Trai Sandwich Company. Recently opened by chef and owner Tung Nguyen, Em Trai cleverly melds traditional Vietnamese, American barbecue and local poor boy…
For our annual December list of restaurant, food and drink “bests,” our team of writers, plus our editorial staff, met with the difficult task of honoring a few of our favorites. The restaurants, people and places listed within mark some…
Many sushi restaurants are cookie-cutter, offering interchangeable lists of the same sushi and sashimi choices. Perhaps they are differentiated by a selection of specialty rolls but, more often than not, one seems much like the other. This is most certainly…
Barbeque is a curious thing. It carries with it not just a method of cooking but also some serious cultural trappings. You don’t often see a restaurant spill out of its dining room to encompass patios, music stages, boat docks…
Katrina had a profound effect on the restaurant scene in New Orleans. In the years that followed a profusion of establishments filled niches that were underrepresented or even non-existent. But it was about more than just places to eat; whenever…
