The Dish: Old Gretna
In these times of dueling sensibilities, when we’re eager for a change of pace yet wary of ever more uncertainty, adventures close to…
Author: Jyl Benson
The Best: Support Small Locally Owned Restaurants, Nourish Your Body and Feed Your Soul This Week
I have enjoyed many fine meals at kin(sic), Hieu Than's diminutive yellow powerhouse of a restaurant overlooking a charmless drainage ditch in Gertown across from Xavier University. It is on my regular "route" around town and a tug of…
The Best...and the Worst
In some very exciting news for New Orleans the New Orleans Wine and Food Experience (NOWFE) has been nominated for "Best Wine Festival" by USA Today newspaper. As the final award recipient will be decided via people's choice, you…
The Best Ways to Celebrate A Birthday This Weekend
Soooo, Saturday is my birthday. I was super excited about going to check out Big Freedia's new live cooking show in the Kitchen Garden at City Park tonight with my gal pal Jennifer. Every Thursday evening in July and…
The Best Reasons to go to Clancy's This Weekend
My sister, Beth, has been going through a really rough time lately, dealing with even more uncertainty and upset than the rest of us while also dealing with the same uncertainty and upset the rest of us continue to…
The Best Options for a Festive Fourth of July Without a Big Bash: Advice from Author Beth D'Addono
I usually spend the Fourth of July at my brother's compound near the Louisiana/Mississippi border hanging out in the woods around a massive swimming pool, slurping frosty beverages and arguing politics while my sister-in-law's many siblings, their children and…
The Dish: Get Out!
Photo By Margo Smart I broke my New Orleans confinement a few weeks ago when I ventured over to Abita Springs and Covington with a friend for an…
The Best Reasons to Spend a Weekend in Old Mandeville
Western St. Tammany Parish was first settled by Choctaw, Tchefuncte, Acolapissa and Houma Indian tribes, which were drawn to the northern shores of Lake Pontchartrain for the area's dense oxygen-rich pine forests, abundant natural beauty, and "curative" spring waters.…
The Best Things to Do with the Dads in Your Life This Weekend
Happy Fathers' Day to all of the fathers and grandfathers, both biological and chosen, in our extended community. I would like to issue a particularly heartfelt shout out to my husband, Andrew Martin Fox, for the crucial role he…
The Best Things to do in City Park, New Orleans' Finest Urban Jewel, This Weekend
City Park was established in the mid -1800s on land fronting what is now City Park Avenue along the remains of Bayou Metairie, a former distributary of the Mississippi River that once ran from present day River Ridge to Bayou St.…
The Best Places for a Socially Distant Good Time
I am going to go out on a limb and assume everyone reading this is OVER IT. Over feeling anxious, over the terms "socially distant" and "social distancing," over feeling guilty about mail carriers and delivery drivers, over your…
Fun Times with Fin Fish at Home
In an effort to support his suffering purveyors Michael Nelson, Executive Chef at GW Fins, recently began offering a large selection of fresh seafood as well as many of the restaurant’s signature sides, sauces and desserts – all packaged to take…
The Best: A New Restaurant; Re-Opening of a Treasured Afro-Creole Eatery; A Crawfish Boil Fundraiser; and $6 Poor Boys to the Rescue
Though this is hardly an ideal time to launch a new restaurant concept in New Orleans this is exactly what Chef Serigne Mbaye— one of the hardest working, most ambitious people I have ever known— did last week when…
Cross the Pond for a Visit to Abita Springs
On so many occasions throughout this lockdown I have felt immense gratitude for the home and garden I love, in a neighborhood I love, in a city I love. Things could be so much worse for me. Despite my…
The Best of Oak Street
My maternal grandmother, Cecilia Fletchinger, born in 1908, hailed from a large German-Irish Catholic family that lived in the building that now houses Camellia Grill on Carrollton Avenue in the Riverbend area. She attended Matter Dolorosa School and she…
Leave No Mom Alone: The Best Things to Share with the Women in Your Life
"Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel." James Taylor, Shower the People Every year around Mother's Day I try to spend one-on-one time with each of the women who have served as…
To the Rescue: Beth Bayer Brings the Masks, Michael Nelson Brings The Fish, Link & Stryjewski Bring the Bugs
A home health nurse, Beth Bayer has long had a side hustle making colorful custom aprons in cotton prints featuring from sports or holiday themes, political figures, botanical or culinary prints, sexy pinups, you name it. On March 10…
The New Canseco’s
From his open kitchen Chef Antonio Saladino presides over a culinary operation devoid of mood lighting, fine linen, courtly tableside service or soothing music. The floors of his establishment are polished to a high shine offset by megawatt overhead lighting.…
The Best Place to Find Chef Frank Brigtsen and Soft-Shell Crabs This Weekend
This particularly glorious Spring continues to roll along while we continue to be required to avoid those places where we might best enjoy it, places like the Botanical Garden at City Park. Last year the Botanical Garden became ever…
The Best Options for Delivery and Takeout This Week
I am weeks behind the rest of the country in zealously cleaning out and organizing my pantry, closets and cupboards and scrubbing down every surface with sanitizer until it gleams but that is pretty much where I am this…
Let's Be Grateful for What We Can While Keeping Local Businesses Alive
Every day my gratitude for what I have deepens as I continue to lose things I used to take for granted. Today I took a solitary one mile walk down Magazine Street from my home to Audubon Park, so…
Disaster May Save Us
Disaster can illuminate how we are connected and how we rely on one another. This is what is happening in my life, my relationships, and in my Uptown neighborhood near Magazine Street and Jefferson Avenue. By day the streets…
Rockrose
The menu at Rockrose, the contemporary Greek restaurant in the International House Hotel, recently unveiled a new spring menu to reflect the abundance of Gulf seafood and regional produce now coming into season while retaining the signature enhancements of bright…
At Your Service: You've Got a Deeply Flawed Friend in Me
Until two weeks ago this weekly column/blog was largely dedicated to a combination of dining specials and fun things, usually free, to do in New Orleans in your free time. Now that most of us have nothing but either…
Sur le menu: Spicy Adventure
Located 10 miles south of New Iberia, Avery Island is a 2,200-acre salt dome packed hundreds of feet thick with the mineral and mined since the 18th century. It is also home to Tabasco hot pepper sauce, founded by Edmund…
Celebrate St. Joseph's Day with an Attitude of Gratitude and Dinner at Home
Today is St. Joseph's Day, a big deal here in New Orleans, but my advice to you is quite different this week then it was last. Last week I was encouraging you to visit St. Joseph altars and restaurants:…
The Best Outings for the Next Week: Get Out and About While You Can
With corona virus cases ticking up in New Orleans and mass public gatherings, such as the Irish Channel St. Patrick's Day parade, cancelled for this weekend, some will choose to hunker down while others will want to take precautions…
The Best Meatless Specials to Try for Lent
For Catholics, the practice of forgoing the consumption of meat during Lent (Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday) has its roots in the early days of the church and the Black Fast, when the righteous were expected to partake of…
Raising a Glass to Alice Weiss
“Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel.” James Taylor, “Shower the People” We saw ourselves in one another. Alice Weiss, a fierce fighter, moved to New Orleans in the 1970s to work as…
Roadside Dining: River Life
Several factors make Roberto's River Road Restaurant in Sunshine memorable. For starters, the location — it is nearly impossible to find to the extent that it can start to feel like a prank as you drive and drive, seemingly going…
