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…
What happens when taco appreciation, culinary curiosity and entrepreneurship come together in a new restaurant concept? For Dinner Lab and Ace Hotel alum Brett Jones, the result is Barracuda. Already popular with families, hospitality types and millennials, this blink-and-you-miss-it Tchoupitoulas…
Discussing food, cooking and restaurants is a part-time sport for New Orleanians. From breakfast to brunch, lunch to cocktail bites, dinner to late night eats and desserts, we’ve got a lot to talk about. Enjoy our selection of the best…
If you’ve driven down St. Claude Avenue lately, chances are you’ve seen a crowd clustered around the corner of Music Street. They are waiting for seats at Morrow’s, a polished new restaurant serving classic New Orleans comfort food with a…
New Orleans is a city of distinct neighborhoods each with its own personality, flavor and favorite haunts. Yet even food writers can slip into a rut of covering the same beats – Warehouse District, Magazine Street and the Quarter –…
Choosing a restaurant in the French Quarter can be tricky – there are all too many places geared to the tourist trade that overcharge and underdeliver. Give thanks, therefore, for French Toast – the latest outpost in a mini-chain of…
The New Orleans food scene continues to diversify, spinning out a widening array of offerings that make eating out here more surprising than ever. Add to this growing list kolaches, a humble Texas pastry with Czechoslovakian roots. They fill a…
Spring is here and with it comes thoughts of the great outdoors and festival weather. Leave it to a certain trio of restaurant pros to plant a new “destination square” on this checkered blanket of our mass consciousness. When…
Chances are you’ve seen New Orleans singled out in “Places to Visit” lists across the national media landscape recently, culminating with the #1 spot on the New York Times “52 Places to go in 2018.” Messaging like this doesn’t just…
New Orleans’ reputation as a dining destination stems in part from its legacy restaurants, a clutch of national treasures whose roots reach back well over 100 years. One place on this list which is often overlooked is Pascal’s Manale. Now…
Shrimp remoulade with fried green tomatoes. Buffalo oysters topped with Parmesan. A pasta dish bursting with crawfish, shrimp, sausage and crispy chicken in a cream sauce. If you are a fan of the big, front-loaded flavors of ‘80s Creole cuisine,…
The sharp anise-like notes of basil and the aromatic hook of cilantro. A squeeze of lime and the umami of Golden Mountain sauce, a uniquely Thai variant of soy. Add the firepower of raw chilis and the crunch of peanuts…
It can be easy to forget that the French Quarter is a neighborhood. Not a normal one, but a neighborhood nonetheless. As such, it has a neighborhood’s needs, like a place to relax without yard-long beers or novelty shirts. Leave…
Edgar Caro has made a career out of introducing New Orleans to the cuisines of South America and the Caribbean. His first restaurant, the forward-thinking Baru Tapas, brought Caribbean-inspired small plates to Magazine Street alongside its lively cocktail menu. Later…
Harahan just upped its breakfast game with Ya Ya’s, a new restaurant from first-time owner and chef Conner Mullins. This is not your average spot for ham and eggs. For starters, Mullins spent the last six years honing his chops…
With so much going on in the restaurant scene these days, it can be easy to overlook the kinds of places that helped make New Orleans unique in the first place. I’m talking about the neighborhood poor boy shop. Serving…
BEST OF THE BEST Bywater American Bistro Nina Compton’s Caribbean-inspired cuisine at Compère Lapin has been surfing a wave of accolades since it opened, and this year she won the James Beard Award for Best Chef South. So a second…
