In a city synonymous with Creole and Cajun cuisine, Italian food too often gets left out of the conversation. But look close, and you’ll see traces of Italy everywhere in New Orleans—in the classic muffuletta sandwich, in the breadcrumb-stuffed artichokes on holiday tables, and in business names like Delmonico and Monteleone. 

Droves of Sicilian immigrants arrived in the Crescent City around the turn of the 20th century, when the city’s restaurant culture was just finding its footing. They planted, foraged, fished, sold, and cooked much of the food locals ate. But just as these immigrants introduced locals to Italian foods and flavors, so too was New Orleans influencing the way Italians cooked: at home and in restaurants, Italian American chefs began adding Gulf Coast ingredients and Creole spices to their traditional fare, creating bold dishes that would go on to become New Orleans classics. Soon the Creole Italian restaurant—the kind of family joint with striped awnings and neon signs, where tables were piled high with fried fish and spaghetti—was born. 

In New Orleans, the past often seems preserved under cloudy glass. With fourth-generation Italians at their helm, many storied institutions have remained little changed for decades, which is part of their charm. But these old-school checkered-tablecloth restaurants haven’t had it easy: Survivors have weathered hurricanes and a pandemic, gentrification and crumbling infrastructure. Yet they somehow continue to churn out delicious conundrums like “spaghetti Bordelaise,” BBQ shrimp (more on that later), and Creole-style “red gravy” (tomato sauce enriched with dark roux). In today’s larger, more diverse restaurant scene, these historic Italian spots hold a distinct charm that newcomer chefs respect—but know better than to try to replicate.

In a changing city, outside influence looks a little different than it did a century ago. Fast-forward to the present, and there’s a new crop of Italian restaurants bringing in contemporary flavors and technique—think fresh snapper crudo instead of veal parm, bottles of natural Frappato in lieu of Chianti Classico. Take a journey through New Orleans’ Italian restaurants, old and new, and find in each one a distinct taste of the Crescent City; this is, after all, a place that knows better than any how to take on a myriad of flavors and make them its own.

Mosca’s

4137 US-90 West, Westwego
504-436-8950

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A deep-pocketed customer once chartered a private plane from Houston to New Orleans solely to dine at this 77-year-old rustic Ligurian restaurant, whose pan-roasted chicken à la grande with whole garlic cloves has national notoriety. Mosca’s is an unassuming roadhouse on a lone stretch of I-90 across the Mississippi River, which makes it all the more popular with in-the-know locals and celebrities who want to keep a low profile. Renowned chefs like Alon Shaya come for the jukebox, martinis, and dinner. “I dream about putting garlicky and buttery oysters Mosca over my angel hair pasta bordelaise,” he told me over email. “A dish like this only exists here.”

Angelo Brocato’s

214 N. Carrollton Ave.
504-486-0078

Cannoli (filled to order), Neapolitan-style babas au rhum, mezzo cremas, and napoleons dazzle sweet-toothed customers at one of the oldest Italian businesses in the city. The line is often down the block for Sicilian granita and gelato, which Angelo and his brother learned to scoop as teenage apprentices in the ice cream parlors of Palermo. Torroncino, a vanilla gelato with cinnamon and almonds, was the first flavor at their 1905 establishment, but stracciatella, with its perfectly layered ribbons of chocolate, is a longstanding favorite.

Margot’s 

1243 Frenchmen St.
504-224-2892

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This warm corner restaurant feels inviting with its contemporary color palette and amaro-heavy cocktail list, but Margot’s centerpiece is the wood-fired pizza oven. Settle in for standout pies such as the squash pizza, which layers ricotta, pesto, and garlic confit on a sourdough crust. Of all the restaurant’s natural wines and Italian-inspired drinks, my favorite libation is the Dante’s Garibaldi cocktail, whose two ingredients—Campari from the north, and orange juice from the south—are said to represent the unification of Italy.

Adolfo’s

611 Frenchmen St. 
504-948-3800

There are nights when you fall in love with New Orleans and its strange magic all over again, like when a friend leads you up the crooked stairs to Adolfo’s, a converted one-bedroom apartment perched above the busiest music street in the city. In the crowded dining room, the aroma of garlic always lingers, and the maximalist Creole Italian “ocean sauce”—a creamy medley of shrimp, crawfish, and crabmeat—comes on everything from veal to flounder to linguini. 

Mandina’s

3800 Canal St.
504-482-9179

A step off the streetcar and into Mandina’s transports you back to a time of bow-tied waiters and handshake deals (both of which are alive and well here). A Palermo immigrant named Sebastian Mandina opened Mandina’s as a grocery store in this big pink house in 1898. The menu is large (as are the portions) and covers both Italian and Creole staples that run the gamut from eggplant parm and spaghetti to shrimp remoulade and fried fish amandine. I love the oyster and artichoke soup with its blond roux, herbs, and oyster liquor—Italian-New Orleans fusion at its finest.

Pascal’s Manale

1838 Napoleon Ave.
504-895-4877

In 1913, the Defelice family bought a corner store on Napoleon Avenue and went on to invent an iconic dish: New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp. The recipe often confounds outsiders, as the shrimp is neither barbecued nor saucy but rather sautéed with plenty of butter, spices, and a kick of Worcestershire sauce. The restaurant is under new ownership, but happily there are few changes. In the cocktail lounge, the world’s friendliest shuckers hold court at a marble-topped bar; pleasant old-school rituals, like using the round oyster tokens to pay for your dozen, keep the Pascal’s charm alive.

Osteria Lupo 

4609 Magazine St.
504-273-1268

Osteria Lupo is a deliberate departure from Italian American restaurants of the past: There are no tablecloths here, no red sauce or veal. Primi and secondi are served family-style, and the moody blue interior is sophisticated but warm with converted garage doors opening up onto Magazine Street. The cuisines of central and northern Italy inspire the menu, as does local produce, which often gets charred in the wood-fire oven. Expect a variety of fresh pastas and focaccie, and plenty of Gulf seafood brightened with local citrus, Calabrian chile, and spicy nduja.

San Lorenzo at the Hotel Saint Vincent 

1507 Magazine St.
504-350-2450

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A maze of palm trees, red brick courtyards, and rattan, this luxury property seems to straddle The Garden District and the Amalfi Coast; dishes like squid ink pasta and textbook-perfect carbonara make you feel like you’re on a dream Italian vacation. While celebrity-spotting by the pool, sip Cappelletti-spiked “Italian margaritas” and spring for what’s likely the city’s best Caesar salad, piled high with chile breadcrumbs and white anchovies.

Casamento’s

4330 Magazine St.
504-895-9761

Forty miles off the coast of Palermo, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, sits Ustica, a tiny island with an outsized role in New Orleans history. The city is home to the world’s highest concentration of Usticesi immigrants and their descendents, who historically were an integral part of the local oyster (and subsequently, seafood restaurant) industry. One such restaurateur was Joe Casamento, who founded his namesake eatery in 1919. Not much has changed since: Oysters are the main event, and shuckers lay them on ice along the large bar in front at breakneck speed. Patrons line up early to eat them either raw, char-grilled, or fried, or piled between two slices of “pan bread,” Casamento’s specialty resembling Texas toast.

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When you arrive in New Orleans, the smell of fresh water from the Mississippi River intermingles with aromas of paprika, oregano, and deep-frying beignets. Here, all of your senses remind you you’re in a distinctive part of the American South. There are great food cities in America—and then there’s New Orleans.

The Big Easy draws over 18 million visitors per year, as eager to drink merrily down Bourbon Street as they are to gobble up po’boys, crawfish pies, and bowls of gumbo.

I’ve been going to New Orleans since I was a kid. My parents, natives of Baton Rouge, would take us into the “Big City” for family events. We’d drive down streets with French names filled with second line parades and outdoor funeral marches, all of which were pretty unusual for a seven-year-old from Houston. It would be years until I could fully appreciate the city’s pulsing and dynamic culture, but as far back as I can remember, I’ve always adored its food.

New Orleans’ world-renowned cuisine is an amalgamation of flavors and spices from places as diverse as West Africa, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. When enslaved West Africans were forcibly migrated to the city’s port beginning in the 18th century, they brought with them the ingredients, skills, and techniques that would forever shape the city’s foodways. Today, immigrants from Southeast Asia and Latin America are pushing the city’s dining forward, and restaurants like Lengua Madre and Tân Định embody New Orleans’ reverence for novelty and heritage in equal measure. Businesses here have survived devastating hurricanes and complex city politics—all to keep locals and travelers satiated with generous bowls of shrimp Creole, crawfish étouffée, and far more dishes that simply can’t be captured in one list, much less one trip. But grab a table at these standbys, and you’ll be off to a running start.

Central Grocery and Deli

923 Decatur St.
504-523-1620

When 113-mile-per-hour winds hurled a 10-foot brick wall into the roof of Central Grocery and Deli during Hurricane Ida, the future of this French Quarter Italian cornerstone was put in jeopardy. Though the grocery has been shuttered since that fateful week in 2021 (yet hopefully not for much longer), you can still grab their primordial muffuletta sandwiches nearby at Sidney’s Wine Cellar, where the colossal sandwiches—layering antipasti, olives, cheese, and Italian cold cuts—are sold for $30 (a half goes for $15). Owner Lupo Salvatore created the sandwich in 1906 before refrigerators were commonplace, which means it can be refrigerated or kept at room temperature, making the sandwich a perfect edible souvenir.

Dakar NOLA

3814 Magazine St.
504-493-9396

Despite the resounding influence West Africans imparted on New Orleans cuisine, few from the current diaspora have made as much of a splash as Seringe Mbaye. The young Senegalese chef weaves his heritage into dishes like soupou kanja (a gumbo thickened with okra roux brimming with seafood, Louisiana rice, and palm oil) and Akara black-eyed-pea fritters (filled with Gulf shrimp and topped with kaluga caviar). Dakar NOLA shows off the range of West African and Creole cooking, and encourages visitors to rethink any white-male-centric notions they may have of fine dining. 

Dooky Chase Restaurant

2301 Orleans Ave
504-821-0600

When Dooky Chase opened in 1941, its founder Leah Chase revolutionized the perception of Creole and African American cooking in the United States through dishes like red beans and rice and shrimp Creole. Her elegant Tremé restaurant was a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement and played host to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he needed a safe place to organize with fellow activists. Chase would go on to feed generations of the city’s African American community, several U.S. presidents, and a steady community of travelers. Today, the restaurant’s walls are emblazoned with vivid artwork from local African American artists, articles celebrating the restaurant history, and other fascinating memorabilia including a gift from Disney proclaiming the inspiration Chase provided for Disney’s first Black princess. It’s the food, however, that continues to draw an endless stream of tourists eager to try shrimp Clemenceau (an old-school Creole staple of potatoes, peas, shrimp, and aromatics), Creole gumbo, and red beans and rice—just a few dishes perfected over a lifetime.

Sneaky Pickle & Bar Brine

3200 Burgundy St.
504-218-5651

Plant-based food can be hard to come by in a city often defined by its po’boys and gumbo—but not at Sneaky Pickle & Bar Brine. Here, you’ll find dishes like grilled okra sprinkled with sesame seeds and spooned over creamy cashew sauce, and maccherone bathed in cashew-butternut cheese and tossed with cucumber, zucchini, and vegan chorizo. This scruffy watering hole boasts an uber-friendly waitstaff, and a pretty-in-pink bar where you can sip impressive cocktails while listening to a thoughtful playlist featuring everything from the wistful lyrics of The Police to the rhythmic beats of Outkast. If you happen to be in town on a Monday, take advantage of the “Orange You Glad It’s Monday” special that’s all about orange-hued cocktails and wines. 

Vaucresson’s Creole Cafe & Deli

1800 St. Bernard Ave.
855-727-3653

New Orleans native Vance Vaucresson learned to make sausage from his father, Sonny, who (with his family) ran one of the nation’s first Black-owned sausage plants. Hurricane Katrina decimated the original business, but Vance’s recent outpost is an extension of his family’s history. The deli sells sausage links of many varieties, like Creole hot, jerk chicken, and Creole crawfish, but unless you’re traveling with a cooler, the move at this family-run shop and deli is to order a sausage roll, shrimp and fry basket, or sausage plate accompanied by flavorful sauces like mango mustard and Creole green onion.

NOLA Poboys

908 Bourbon St.
504-522-2639

NOLA Poboys is open until 1 a.m., ensuring you can end a night of revelry on a full stomach. Po’boy options include the classic fried shrimp and oysters as well as other, more adventurous, hoagies like one filled with crispy fried alligator chunks. Heat lovers, this is your moment: These po’boys are well-seasoned and spicy—unless you go “Yankee” (mild). Dig into other city favorites here, too, like crawfish pies and boudin balls, which you can savor in a booth or on a walk down Bourbon Street.

Plume Algiers

1113 Teche St.
504-381-4893

Tyler Stuart and Merritt Coscia have transformed their home into a celebration of the couple’s southern Louisiana roots and love of Indian cuisine. The menu hinges on weekly market finds, but dishes like Chingri Malai shrimp—simmered with turmeric, coconut milk, and toasted red chiles—and raj kachori, a featherlight fried puff filled with pomegranate seeds, aloo bhujia, and cilantro, rarely come off the menu for a reason.

Compère Lapin

535 Tchoupitoulas St.
504-599-2119

Nina Compton likely needs no introduction. The Top Chef favorite and James Beard Award-winning chef flaunts her St. Lucian roots at this gorgeous restaurant housed in the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery. The sweet potato gnocchi with curried goat and cashews illustrate Compton’s knowledge of Creole, Cajun, and Caribbean flavors, as do fan-favorite cocktails. Two to consider: the Page of Swords (gin, Salers, dry vermouth, orange blossom, and curaçao) and the tropical Holy Trinidaiq (rum, coconut, Angostura, and lime).

Liuzza’s by the Track

1518 N. Lopez St.
504-218-7888

When I visited this snug bar and restaurant with New York Times food writer Brett Anderson, he waxed poetic about the decadent po’boys. But for me, it’s the gumbo that consistently stands above. The family-owned restaurant sautées the shrimp just before it’s served, and despite my aversion to okra in gumbo (a point of contention among many of us Southerners), Luizza’s makes a compelling case for its inclusion.

Commander’s Palace

1403 Washington Ave.
504-899-8221

A perennial party complete with live bands and a joyous staff lures the crowds to Commander’s Palace, but it’s the attention to detail that has made the restaurant a favorite among locals and visitors alike since 1893. Don’t let the idea of turtle soup scare you—it’s a longtime New Orleans tradition, and is enlivened here with chopped egg, lemon juice, and a dash of sherry. Creole bread pudding, finished tableside with warm whiskey cream, is a comforting way to wrap up an inevitably rich and indulgent meal. Don’t forget to wear your best; shorts aren’t allowed.

Mosquito Supper Club

3824 Dryades St.
504-517-0374

Melissa Martin grew up in Cajun country and celebrates that culinary heritage at Mosquito Supper Club. At her Uptown restaurant, guests dine communally on the bounty of Louisiana waters through dazzling plates of Cajun seafood. While removing crawfish heads or digging for every last bit of meat in her stuffed crabs—all in a room illuminated with strings of lights and filled with the laughter of joyful patrons—you’ll likely meet new friends from places as near as the Audubon neighborhood and as far as halfway around the world. The experience is pricey, and worth a flight across an ocean for a reason: Martin works with local seafood purveyors; uses fresh, quality ingredients; and constructs dishes that rival those at even the city’s oldest and most respected restaurants.

Bacchanal Wine & Cheese

600 Poland Ave.
504-948-9111

The self-proclaimed “backyard party” of New Orleans is a terrific spot to stock up on wine and cheese, but I like sticking around to nibble a made-to-order charcuterie board on the beautiful patio (often to the backdrop of live music). If cheese isn’t your jam, bacon-wrapped dates and gambas served with crostini are just as excellent. Don’t rush the experience here—at Bacchanal, the bons temps are truly meant to rouler.

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New Orleans R&B legend Ernie K-Doe once remarked, “I’m not sure, but I’m almost positive that all music came from New Orleans.” The same could be said of all cocktails. 

Famously, visitors drive cross-country and fly over oceans to try New Orleans’ famous beverages in their birthplace: a Sazerac at the mural paneled Sazerac Bar; a Vieux Carré at the spinning Carousel Bar, a crimson hurricane on Pat O’Brien’s flaming fountain-lit patio. Don’t be too cool to do the same; there’s a reason many of these institutions have been in business for actual centuries. 

With that kind of history, the classics loom large, but New Orleans bars hit so many other notes, too, from new designer dens to timeworn, dank dives. And there’s just as much to appreciate in a frozen daiquiri on a steamy summer afternoon, or in a can of Paradise Park, as there is in a well-executed Brandy Crusta. 

For those of us lucky enough to live here, we know a special part of the city’s soul lives in our neighborhood bars. Stitched into residential blocks, they function as community centers connecting generations of residents and catalyzing conversations. In my corner of the Bywater, my neighbors take volunteer shifts pressing fresh ginger juice for gingeritas at Vaughan’s Lounge (some even pick up their mail there). At other longstanding locals, Mardi Gras Indian tribes gather to sew feathers and beads onto their celestial suits before they march through the streets.

With so much of the cityscape left over from long ago, the temptation to see New Orleans as a static relic pulls strong. But consider our cocktail culture like the city’s live music scene. A traditional jazz performance at Preservation Hall proves an essential experience, but there’s so much more to hear: George Porter Jr. at the Maple Leaf, 79rs Gang at BJ’s, Los Guiros at Saturn Bar, a brass band on the street. Likewise, when it comes time to venture beyond the Quarter—or see its newer haunts—these 12 B-sides to the city’s more popular names will resonate.

Peychaud’s

727 Toulouse St,
504-884-4783

When the chance to create a bar in the former home of Antoine Amedée Peychaud (of Peychaud’s bitters) appeared, the owner of new-guard fixtures Cure and Cane & Table couldn’t say no, even in the midst of the pandemic. In homage to its history, Peychaud’s delves deeper into New Orleans’ originals like the 1800s-era Roffignac, a raspberry-speared armagnac punch named for the mayor who paved the Quarter’s roads. Barely a block off Bourbon Street, the emerald-painted shoebox opens onto a serene, shaded courtyard that feels a world away from the nearby ruckus—especially when you’re splitting a silky Ramos Gin Fizz for two beside the babbling fountain.

Bar Pomona

2352 St Claude Ave,
504-224-9644

Monday in the Marigny neighborhood means lasagna night. Locals pack into this sardine-tin-size wine bar for the dinner deal—a square with homemade noodles and ricotta, a side salad, and a slice of garlic bread—as a start-to-the-grind reward. I’m just as fond of the martini with anchovy-stuffed olives, which serve as a foil to the sweet, fig-leaf-steeped vermouth. The bar’s co-owner Sara Levasseur uses the open kitchen stove for her Jamboree Jams, small-batch made in copper pots (hence Pomona’s nickname, the “Jam Shop”). Her favorite fruits, like damson plums and Ponchatoula strawberries, juice up seasonal spritzes and daiquiris.   

Mosquito Supper Club

3824 Dryades St,
504-517-0374

Even proactive planners can find slim pickings for reservations at Melissa Martin’s deeply personal, coursed-out Cajun dinners during high season. Luckily, there’s a walk-in-friendly four-seat bar and twinkly front porch. The cocktails and wines are decidedly divergent from the “grandma cuisine” ethos of the à la carte menu. The mixed libations lean citrusy, making the most of Louisiana’s lemons, limes, and the like, as exemplified by the Haitian daiquiri sweetened with cane syrup or the Mosquito Daisy with mezcal, persimmon, orange liqueur, lemon, and bubbly. 

BJ’s 

4301 Burgundy St,
504-945-9256

Frenchmen Street steals the spotlight for live music, but just a short drive away, some of the city’s (and region’s) best musicians play this tiny Bywater dive. The pineapple margarita and longneck domestics aren’t winning anyone mixology awards, but when the Grammy-winning Louis Michot or Leyla McCalla are crooning in the backyard, or acclaimed author Jami Attenburg is hosting a barside book signing, who cares? Local blues guitarist Little Freddie King (that’s his face painted on the side of the building) performs most Fridays, and, in February, few moments contain more pure Mardi Gras magic for me than Al “Carnival Time” Johnson taking the stage while potluck offerings pile up on the pool table. 

Little People’s Place

1226 Barracks St,
504-205-1940

When Lent arrives, fried fish Fridays soothe the post-Mardi Gras comedown. Plate lunches and dinners appear everywhere from churches to bars (there’s even an online tracker to see all the various congregations’ offerings). Little People’s Place has one of the best: a styrofoam clamshell container loaded with crispy catfish, a scoop of potato salad, peas, and white bread. The tiny family-owned joint’s hand-painted, butter-yellow facade is a fixture in the Tremé, one of the country’s oldest Black neighborhoods. Photographer L. Kasimu Harris documented Little People’s Place in his project Vanishing Black Bars, illuminating the immeasurable cultural significance of Black-owned establishments like this one and the challenges they face to stay open. 

Manolito

508 Dumaine St,
504-603-2740

World-renowned bartender Chris Hannah’s opus Jewel of the South was an instant classic, but just across the quarter, his charming, taller-than-wide Cuban bar serves his cocktails in a chiller setting, doubly so when you order an icy guava daiquiri. Much of the menu expounds on the daiquiri’s different forms, but I often stick with the Bywater, a Hannah-invented standard, with rum, green Chartreuse, Amaro Averna, and Velvet Falernum. 

Anna’s

2601 Royal St,
504-766-8376

When the beloved tapas bar Mimi’s in the Marigny closed in 2020, one of the city’s best beverage directors, Anna Giordano, had the chance to reimagine the bar where she had once been a regular. Now it’s her namesake. The towering, two-level building’s party-downstairs, salon-upstairs dual personality manifests on the menus scrawled across antique mirrors. On the ground floor, neighborhood characters drink fancy frozens (the Carda-marg combines mezcal, orange, and cardamom tea), Salty Dogs, and boilermakers; balcony-level Mimi’s Spanish influence lingers in the sherry Negroni and wide-ranging vermouth selection. 

Mercedes’ Place

5200 Burgundy St,
504-944-8727

Across the St. Claude Bridge in the Lower Ninth’s Holy Cross neighborhood, the barroom Mercedes Gibson started in 1990 has been a haven for longtime residents whose pictures decorate the walls. It was also one of the first businesses in the neighborhood to rise up after Hurricane Katrina. A Sunday Saints game makes for the ideal time to stay a while and order a set-up, New Orleans’ answer to bottle service: a half-pint of booze (or large beer) plus a mixer (e.g., rum and pineapple juice or whiskey and Coca-Cola), served in an ice bucket with go-cups.

Fives

529 St. Ann,
504-399-6954

A seductively simple raw bar designed around an olive marble horseshoe counter, Fives is an archetypal cocktail-and-oyster spot, which the Quarter had been sorely missing until its opening in July. Hidden in the circa-1839 Pontalba Building among the tarot card readers of Jackson Square, Fives’ location in tourist ground zero fades away inside with just the steeple of St. Louis Cathedral peaking over the cafe curtains. Classics like the Absinthe Frappé join in-house inventions like the Fives Swizzle, with mezcal, yellow Chartreuse, pineapple, and five-spice. 

Pete’s Out in the Cold

701 Sixth St.,
504-895-8993

The quieter cousin to nearby Irish Channel icon Parasol’s is typically slammed with game-watchers braving long lines for roast beef po’boys. From the broken tile floor to the wood-paneled walls to the possibly haunted, cash-only jukebox (not to mention the tenant calico, Foxy), Pete’s embodies the quintessential no-frills neighborhood bar. Built in 1848, Pete’s once provided lodging and provisions to port workers; now, the vestige of the Channel’s working-class roots sits in one of the city’s hottest real-estate areas. Pull up a stool, then grab yourself a gin and soda or an ice-cold Abita. 

Bar Brine

3200 Burgundy St.,
504-218-5651

Known for smart vegan, vegetarian, and sustainable seafood dishes integrated into a genre-defying menu (think smoked tempeh reuben or spear-caught snapper crudo), Bar Brine has an ever-changing drink selection that casts just as wide a net. Umbrellaed, tropical-tilting frozens meet seaweed bitter-spiked martinis served with a “garnish adventure,” a skewer of lemon peel, olive, cucumber, and lime. Negroni ideations come in pour-your-own mini bottles. Just as thoughtful, the refreshing zero-proof section with tonics like the Beam Me Up, combining gentian tea, celery cordial, lemon, and aquafaba. 

Pal’s Lounge

949 N Rendon St.,
504-488-7257

An afternoon at urban waterway Bayou Saint John, a peaceful playground for po’boy picnics and paddling, often begins or ends with a stop at Pal’s, where the buzzer door opens to busty nudes covering the walls and, sometimes, the resident rooster, Cheeto. With a regularly rotating roster of pop-ups, the scene indoors and out on the patio is always spirited—but things get supercharged on game days. The $6 gingerita special goes down easy, as does the “house salad” cocktail, ice-cold vodka shaken with basil, cucumber, and lime.

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Even a casual gumbo eater might raise an eyebrow at the thought of a breakfast gumbo. “Eggs? Bacon? What?” Don’t worry, this is not a stunt recipe to reinvent traditional gumbo with breakfast ingredients—my New Orleans citizenship would probably be revoked. That said, gumbo doesn’t have to be confined to dinner. The heart of Louisiana cuisine, a thoughtfully crafted bowl of gumbo is the perfect eye-opener to kick off Mardi Gras morning.

Mardi Gras, of course, needs no introduction, but how many people start celebrating the day before?

In recent decades, Lundi Gras has become a major part of New Orleans’ Fat Tuesday festivities. The “Fat Monday” celebration, which takes place on the Mississippi riverfront, commemorates the arrival of that year’s King and Queen of Zulu, symbolic monarchs presiding over the citywide revelry. Like the rest of the local Mardi Gras festivities, Lundi Gras has been canceled this year as a result of the pandemic. Ordinarily, it’s a colorful and boisterous celebration of local music, art, and performances organized by The Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, the local Black-run community group also behind the world-famous Zulu krewe parade. Combined, the two events are a spectacle of culture, grass skirts, and a shower of colorfully painted coconuts thrown into crowds in place of the beaded necklaces ubiquitous at the other events around town.

Lundi Gras is also a day of tough decisions: Which parties (and afterparties) do you attend? What’s the game plan for the next day? Events last late into the night, so enjoying the Zulu parade on Tuesday morning can be challenging. What time do you go home—if at all—so you can be sure to find a choice vantage point for the parade in the morning? A dedicated few (my friends and I among them) take extreme steps; we have a tradition of setting up an overnight camp along the parade route on St. Charles Street’s “neutral ground”, Mardi Gras-speak for the median in the center of New Orleans’ widest streets. Here, there’s always plenty of space to carrouse with our crew and tend to our bubbling pots of gumbo.

For us, the Mardi Gras breakfast gumbo is usually sort of the main event (besides the Zulu krewe, of course.) Now, don’t let the “breakfast” in its name fool you—we don’t adulterate our legendary state dish with eggs and bacon. We stick to the classic: We start with a strongly flavored stock, made with either seafood, chicken, sausage, or even rabbit, which we thicken with dark roux, tender okra, earthy filé powder, or some combination of the three.

A dish that combines ingredients and techniques from so many different influences, gumbo has long been a powerful symbol for the blend of African, Native American, and European culinary practices that infuse and inform Louisiana’s cuisine.

Like any good soup or stew, the dish requires plenty of time to bring out its deep, rich flavors; preparation is key. So what better time to start slowly nurturing that cauldron of Mardi Gras gumbo than on the night of Lundi Gras, on our patch of neutral ground?

When we first started our breakfast gumbo tradition back in 2009, my friends Anthony and John and I were in college. We had started a catering company on the side that year and had been hosting pop-up events all over the city, so we already had all the necessary equipment to cook right on the street.

But cooking a proper, party-sized gumbo outdoors in the dark? Advance planning would be vital. We were aiming for freshness—which meant there could be no pre-cooking—so we packed up our ingredients: green peppers, onions, and celery, along with andouille sausage, chicken, and plenty of homemade stock. We also brought along an arsenal of cutting boards, burners, pots, and pans. We set up camp at around seven o’clock that night, getting caught up in the tail end of a few of the day’s final parades before the real work started. By nine, as the other revelers dispersed to the evening’s after-parties, our heavy lifting began.

First, I got a roux going: I lit one of our gas burners to warm some butter, stirred in a scoop of flour, and cooked the mixture gently until it turned toasty and nut-brown. As our Holy Trinity of diced onions, peppers, and celery softened in the roux, Anthony lit another burner, seared off the andouille, then browned a heap of chicken thighs in the sausage fat that remained. He then set the meats aside in a hotel pan, while he deglazed the pan with stock, scraping the crispy sausage and chicken bits into the liquid. We transferred this steaming, flavor-boosted broth into my stockpot of roux and veggies.

Once the aromas of our cooking permeated the streets, we perked up at the thought of warm, fresh gumbo for breakfast. Drawn by the smells from our set-up, late night party goers and our fellow campers started popping by to ask if we had any gumbo to share—too soon. There are many ways to make a good gumbo, but none of them are fast: It’s essential to give it plenty of time to simmer and to develop its full flavor. As New Orleans’ cold night air set in, we rotated shifts, stirring the pot and keeping an eye out for any passers-by who might try to help themselves to a bowl. By four or five in the morning, we were hungry, tired, and longing for a taste. But then, by six, as the morning parade crowd started to arrive and families began setting up their kids’ controversial and colorful ladder chairs, we got back into our groove.

Crowds began gathering around us, so John weaseled through the throngs for a much-needed coffee run while Anthony and I manned the rice, gumbo’s classic dance partner. Exhaustion is no excuse for mushy or undercooked rice, and since we were making such a huge batch of gumbo (60 quarts!), attention to detail at this point was critical.

Around us, police sirens began to sound, the first sign that the day’s inaugural parade would soon thunder by. In the distance, we heard the growing rhythm and beats of Zulu’s marching bands, signaling it was time to taste our hard-earned gumbo. After a restless night, was it finally ready? Did we add the chicken and andouille at the right time to avoid an oil slick floating on top? Was the roux-thickened broth homogenous and smooth? Was the okra subtle, or was it sticky and gelatinous?

With my first taste, I knew we had hit the mark. Our breakfast gumbo was deeply flavored, with a rich broth and all the hallmarks of a true, classic gumbo.

We soon found ourselves surrounded by thousands of parade-goers, asking us why we were making gumbo for breakfast. “Why are you drinking beer for breakfast?” I joked back, the smiles and good vibes already flowing. Anyone who wanted gumbo got a bowl; this is why we brought the big pots, after all. We took turns doling out servings from the pot, layering heaping scoops of rice with generous portions of gumbo, and topping it all with a handful of diced green onion.

Over the din, we kept hearing some version of “this is the best breakfast I’ve had.” As the beads and coconuts started flying off of the floats, it was finally time for us to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We ate quietly, taking it all in: the richness in our bowls, the cacophony around us. Like other New Orleanians, I’ll be missing Zulu (and partying with my friends) this year—but luckily our celebratory dish scales down to a home-sized batch just as well. Mardi Gras comes but once a year, and with it, breakfast gumbo.

Bryan Ford is a baker, chef, and writer living in New Orleans. He is the author of the best-selling cookbook, New World Sourdough, and owner of the blog Artisan Bryan.

The post Eating in the Street: A New Orleans Breakfast Gumbo Tradition appeared first on Saveur.

Navigating ethical eating practices is more complex than ever. In order to help raise awareness of global issues affecting our health, communities, and what winds up on the dinner table, we’re launching Equal Portions, a new monthly column by Saveur’s editor at large.

“I am grateful for having a car because I didn’t feel like walking today,” says culinary intern Jala Prout.

At the beginning of each new semester, students and interns at Cafe Hope gather for a ceremony they call “Grateful.” It sets the tone for each day. Participants acknowledge thanks for whatever comes to mind: the clothes on their back, a bed to sleep in, or a hot meal. Prout’s appreciation for a car underlines the difference having your own wheels can make commuting to school or work in a city where public transport doesn’t always go where you need to get (especially during a mandatory hurricane evacuation). Founded in 2010, this 16-week culinary arts program for youth aged 17-24 from the Greater New Orleans area teaches more than knife skills; before donning aprons to prep mise en place, they start with sessions on anger management, financial literacy, and healthy eating.

“Not everybody has had an opportunity to eat at Commander’s Palace,” says executive director Luis Arocha, who grew up around the food business. (His father’s first job was waiting tables at Antoine’s, New Orleans’ oldest family run restaurant.) “There are plenty of people here who still don’t eat off a fork and knife.”

New Orleans has one of the nation’s highest official poverty rates—23.7 percent—among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, where 20 percent of residents are food insecure and 64 percent of children are income-eligible for federal nutrition programs like SNAP. Access is equally problematic, with some neighborhoods reliant on corner stores and hot plate joints for basics. Only one in five New Orleanians reports eating five or more servings of fresh fruit or vegetables daily, the USDA nutritional standard. In a city venerated for its culinary heritage, Cafe Hope newcomers often can’t differentiate between Creole and Cajun cooking, let alone recognize a fresh vegetable.

“Some don’t understand where food comes from,” says Arocha. “We once sent kids out to our community garden to gather radishes, and they came back without them, saying, ‘we looked in every tree.’ That’s when we realized the problem was way deeper than we first thought. But we’re now trying to teach that you don’t need enough room to grow a tree to grow a radish.”

New Orleans has three culinary outreach programs, including Liberty’s Kitchen and Café Reconcile, but Cafe Hope is the only one functioning beyond the inner faubourgs. On the west bank of the Mississippi River, opposite the affluent Garden District, the social entrepreneurship non-profit normally operates its food-and-beverage program at a country club in Gretna, the Jefferson Parish suburb where many displaced Ninth Ward residents relocated after losing their homes to Hurricane Katrina. In the storm’s immediate aftermath, Gretna police denied access, at gunpoint, to evacuees attempting to walk over the Crescent City Connection—an infamous civil rights roadblock in a region known for its racial inequality.

Almost 80 percent of Cafe Hope participants are Black and/or Hispanic. Arocha explains the program is a stabilizing factor for those who need a sense of structure and a safe space, because many lack a solid support system at home. “They didn’t choose their parents,” he says. “Some kids thought they wouldn’t live to be 20. Saying ‘I’m a success, I made it to 20’ is a pretty pathetic goal.” Arocha speaks from personal tragedy. His own son was murdered in 2011, and grief alchemized his activism. “If we keep one of these kids from committing a crime, it can save two families from destruction.”

“Ultimately, I really don’t care if they go into the business,” says Arocha. “But the life skills you pick up in a restaurant—where you have to learn to communicate and organize—as long as you can transfer those skills, they’re invaluable for any job.”

“Not everyone is ready to work at Emeril’s,” he continues. “Some kids can’t handle that pressure, so we also place them at mom-and-pops, doughnut shops, even onboard the steamboat Natchez.”

Jason Goodenough, who serves on the Cafe Hope board and trained its current executive chef and instructor Garin Siekkinen, has hired several graduates over the years, including his sous chef, Seth Chauvin, to work at his Uptown restaurant, Carrollton Market. “I saw something in Seth, there was a spark that appealed to me,” he says. “I hire based on attitude. No program, not even the Culinary Institute of America, is an immediate transition to work on my line. The learning curve is going to be a lot steeper in a place like mine than slinging hot dogs at the Superdome.”

Goodenough stresses how critical it is to reach wayward youth, not just those living in urban areas, before they spiral into depression and suicidal ideation.

“For kids like this? To see that somebody cares is so important.”

Program coordinator Jansom Jones teaches accountability, starting with basics like clocking in and out. “Our day usually ends on another note like Grateful,” he says. “After classes, and when the restaurant closes, we all sit down and have a family dinner, whatever the main course—stuffed catfish or a pan of red beans and sausage—because when there’s no food at home, that may be the last meal of their day.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, Cafe Hope pivoted to preparing curbside takeaway and meals for seniors in lockdown. Because the restaurant is attached to a golf course, considered a socially distant sport, it came back online fairly quickly. Life skills classes are still conducted online. When they graduate to the front and back of house in-person sessions, interns are required to test negative for COVID-19, practice safety protocols, and undergo a temperature test before serving guests.

Jala Prout is a fan of Binging with Babish on YouTube. A student at Delgado Community College, his Cafe Hope internship will count toward course credit, but it has also shifted his career plans from civil engineering to hospitality. “I was always in the kitchen at my Gramma’s house,” he says. “Asking why she sautéd onions before putting them in soup.”

The 19-year-old likes making Alfredo sauce and reinventing po-boys, but also dreams of dining in one of New Orleans’ emblematic restaurants.

“If I had the money, I would go to Antoine’s. We had a trip there in sixth or seventh grade, and I remember the food was amazing. I kept thinking, ‘this is so good I need to learn how to make this.’”

Foley Lindsley, another intern, prefers working front of house. A shy 18-year-old, she battles anxiety to interact with strangers, but the program has begun to instill her with new confidence.

“I used to be scared to go places, but my mentor talked me into it,” she says. “This program sounded like what I need, so I took that leap and they’re teaching me how to polish myself.”

A week ago, Goodenough shuttered Carrollton Market permanently, the uphill battle to feed his clientele in a pandemic finally overwhelming his passion for the craft.

He says he lost heart.

“There’s a covenant between restaurant and guest that I felt was broken.”

If he can’t find a way forward right now, what does it signal for the next generation trying to enter the restaurant world, and the future of fine dining itself? Goodenough doesn’t have easy answers. “How do we rectify teaching kids the way out of poverty is to enter an imploding industry? The fear is that we return to business as usual after this is over.”

How long these programs—and the hospitality sector they serve—remain viable is anyone’s guess. (Liberty’s Kitchen recently scaled back, closing its dining rooms and suspending catering operations.) As so many children struggle with despair during this “what a time to be alive” moment, those who can strengthen life skills—and their gumbo game—may have a better chance to survive an uncertain future. Foley Lindsley is working toward moving into a place of her own, and saving to buy a car. Jala Prout has convinced his father that cooking makes him happier than building houses.

And when we can once again gather around a table at Commander’s Palace or Antoine’s without creating a superspreader event, perhaps some Cafe Hope graduates will be working there (at a living wage) to recite specials of the day, while others are in the back prepping the eggs Sardou and oysters Rockefeller.

Let’s all hope so.

Here’s how to donate to Cafe Hope’s mission.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly used the phrase “at-risk” in reference to the students at Cafe Hope. This phrase is increasingly considered outdated, stigmatizing, and stereotypical when identifying factors that adversely affect the circumstances of some people. For more information, see The Glossary of Education Reform.

The post Cafe Hope is Giving New Orleans Youth a Chance at a Culinary Future appeared first on Saveur.

In New Orleans around Mardi Gras, the king cake options are as plentiful as the post-parade beads lodged in the trees. Do you wake at dawn, schlepp to New Orleans East, and stand in line for an hour at Dong Phuong, the Vietnamese bakeshop that does a brisk sellout of a whipped-cream-cheese-bathed brioche so flaky you’d swear it was a croissant? Or do you swing by Louisiana’s homegrown grocery chain, Rouses, for their no-frills, yeasty, cinnamon-roll version—always fresh, always economical—topped with just the right amount of purple, green, and gold sugar crust? Maybe you hit third-generation bakery Haydel’s , beloved among some for its annual edition of a painted porcelain charm. Or call ahead to HiVolt Coffee to ask if their shipment of pillowy soft cakes from Hi-Do Bakery in Gretna has arrived. You could go out on a limb this year and try Piety and Desire Chocolate’s “Da Crown”, filled with earl-grey-and-pink-peppercorn ganache and topped with a satsuma glaze. The berry and chantilly cream filling at Bywater Bakery? Manny Randazzo’s pecan praline center? Could there possibly be room for one more king cake in this crowded annual sugarfest?

Three years ago, Christina Balzebre was baking at Willa Jean (owned at the time by John Besh, who was forced to step down later the same year over accusations of sexual harassment) while managing her own pop-up, a sought-after weekly offering of luscious fruit galettes, soft rolls stuffed with prosciutto and gruyere, chocolate chunk cookies, and the like, from the kitchens of the city’s popular Mosquito Supper Club. Her operation, dubbed Levee Baking Company, was selling out every Saturday and had already garnered a handful of wholesale clients. Balzebre was just contemplating calling it quits at Willa Jean to go full-time when she decided to add a king cake to the offerings. Meanwhile, news of Besh’s behavior was beginning to break, along with a wave of #metoo revelations, finally lifting the curtain on the toxic environment pervasive in so many restaurants. “I thought to myself, ‘Why? Why does it have to be a KING cake?’” Balzebre recalls. “I decided I’d call them Queen Cakes. It seemed like just the right time to flip the script.”

The recipe takes its inspiration from the French galette des rois, a layer of frangipane sandwiched between two circles of puff pastry. Instead of the almond paste, Balzebre uses Louisiana pecans, toasted until dark and fragrant, then mixed with sugar, butter, eggs, and candied citrus. Whichever fruits the three citrus vendors at the Crescent City Farmers Market have on offer—kumquats, blood oranges, tangelos, Meyer lemons—is what she uses that week.

Levee settled into its first permanent home—a pale green building just off Magazine Street, with exposed brick and an airy, open feel inside—last summer. As a result, this Mardi Gras, Balzebre was able to up their production of Queen Cakes from 20 a week to 20 in a single day. Since the season officially began on January 6th, Levee has sold around 450, each with its own porcelain charm, or fève, handmade by local artist Jackie Brown (@jackiebrownceramics on Instagram).

Are Levee’s Queen Cakes popular? Yes. Anyone queuing up at dawn for them? No, as you can call ahead to put your name on one. Still, Levee had to put a cap on orders the week leading up to Mardi Gras this year. Explains Balzebre, “Jackie can only make so many of her beautiful charms in a season. We were starting to run low.”

The post Queen of the King Cakes appeared first on Saveur.

New Orleans plays host to an incredible spectrum of Vietnamese food, from staples like Dong Phuong, to the decades-old tradition of Vietnamese “po’ boys,” to the crispy pig knuckles with chile and lime at chef Marcus Jacobs’s Marjie’s Grill. All over the city, locals and visitors alike can trace how Vietnamese flavors have become an integral part of what is considered “New Orleans cuisine.” “There’s a serious appreciation of Vietnamese food among the people of New Orleans,” says Liz Williams, the founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. “And food is the gateway to culture.” Not only has the proliferation of Vietnamese flavors become a powerful means of visibility for the vibrant Vietnamese community, but it has also turned New Orleans, a city that’s already associated with so many iconic local foods, into a destination for Vietnamese cuisine. Here are six Vietnamese and Vietnamese-inspired restaurants that have woven themselves into the city’s culinary fabric—and are worth the trip to New Orleans.

Dong Phuong

Dong Phuong is known for its bakery, which supplies banh mi shops all over the city with its excellent crusty loaves. It’s also attached to a restaurant of the same name that serves minimal, traditional iterations of Vietnamese dishes. While the dining room boasts backlit aquariums and gilded wood paneling, the real draw is the banh mi counter.

For less than $5, you can get a perfectly balanced, made-to-order banh mi filled with French cold cuts, BBQ chicken, or even a shrimp patty. A longtime New Orleans institution, Dong Phuong was honored with a James Beard “America’s Classic” Award last year.

Pho Tau Bay

The family-run Pho Tau Bay has been serving some of the best phở in New Orleans since the 1980s, when owner Tuyet Tacacs emigrated from Vietnam with her G.I. husband Karl. The restaurant was named after a chain of soup shops in Saigon that Tuyet’s father Vu Van Y ran in the 1960s and ‘70s and lost during the Vietnam War. In addition to faithfully recreating Vu’s phở recipe, Pho Tau Bay listed banh mi on its menus as “Vietnamese po’ boys,” to help familiarize New Orleanians with the concept. “[In Vietnam,] banh mi was always just a simple item that you could pick up at a food cart,” explains Tuyet and Karl’s son, Karl Takacs Jr. “When we made them, a lot of people didn’t know what banh mi was, so we made a comparison. It’s like a po’ boy.” The restaurant also serves traditional dishes including gỏi cuốn (summer rolls) and cabbage salad, but makes a point to use local ingredients like Gulf shrimp. “I think it’s important to use the local products,” says Karl. “I personally like the products better, and it’s good to be in community with the local fishermen.”

Hoàng Gia

Located in the largely-Vietnamese neighborhood of Village de l’Est, Hoàng Gia is a karaoke joint that serves great Vietnamese food. The kitchen is helmed by Bac Sau, a Vietnamese refugee in her late seventies who came to the U.S. in 1989. While she and her son operate Hoàng Gia together, Sau is responsible for the restaurant’s inventive Vietnamese and Louisiana mashups, including a ceviche-like dish she refers to as “sushi,” in which local fish is cured in lemon juice, tossed with sesame seeds, and served alongside giant leaves of lemon verbena.

Banh Mi Boys

Peter Nguyen started Banh Mi Boys as a way to introduce New Orleanians to Vietnamese food beyond phở. His counter-service restaurant became a venue for experimentation with banh mi, which Nguyen wanted to meld with the New Orleans po’ boys he also grew up eating. He uses hoisin like barbecue sauce in his pulled pork banh mi, dresses fried chicken with a lemongrass-infused caramel fish sauce, and even incorporates Korean bulgogi, Japanese katsu, and Chinese char siu into his sandwiches.

Marjie’s Grill

Chef Marcus Jacobs is well-known for his Vietnamese-inflected creations at Marjie’s Grill. Salads typically showcase whole fresh herbs, a nod to how mint and basil are used in Vietnamese cuisine, and fried Southern classics are often served with Jacobs’s take on nước chấm sauce. According to Jacobs, for folks who grew up in New Orleans, Vietnamese food has long been embedded into everyday eating. “The more that we continue to go down the road of cross-pollinating our cuisines, the more people can become aware of a culture’s influence on regional cuisine,” he says.

Magasin Kitchen

While the first thing you might notice about Magasin Kitchen in New Orleans’s posh Central Business District is its sleek, angular decor, the food is just as impressive. New Orleans native Kim Nguyen serves variations on familiar Vietnamese fare, from spring rolls and banh mi to phở and bun.

The post Where to Eat Vietnamese Food in New Orleans appeared first on Saveur.

In the antique kitchen of his family’s restaurant, C.J. Gerdes slips a handful of corn-floured oysters into one of the six blackened pots on the stove. The fat froths like sea foam. Two minutes later, he pulls them out, their crisp coats crinkled and golden. Sandwiched between thick, buttered slices of “pan bread”—Casamento’s version of Texas toast—the oysters crackle as you bite into them, the crust crumbling down into the creamy centers.

I’ve been eating at Casamento’s, a New Orleans institution that turns 100 this year, since I was a child, but, somehow, I’ve never asked what C.J. fries his seafood in.

“It used to be we couldn’t tell people, or they’d make a face,” Linda Gerdes, C.J.’s wife, says with a laugh. “But then lard came back in style.”

At the turn of the 20th century, C.J.’s grandfather, Joe Casamento, traveled to New Orleans from Ustica, a small Italian island four hours by boat from Sicily, and fell into food service. Moving from job to job across the city, he became convinced that he could build a better restaurant. Many places that served deep-fried seafood never bothered to change their grease, and some over-battered their oysters—drowning them in eggs and milk—before frying.

“He thought that was blasphemy,” C.J. tells me. “You’re gonna wash the brine off an oyster? No, Joe was an old-school Italian. Everything simple, so you can taste your food.”

What Joe hated most, though, was how much food was wasted. New Orleans French bread—the long, soft loaves used for po’boys—would grow hard by the afternoon. The pillowy white sandwich bread from Sunbeam Bakery, however, only became more toothsome the longer it sat. Joe would have Sunbeam pull loaves off the conveyor belts before they hit the slicer and cut them into thick slabs in Casamento’s kitchen. Brushed with butter, the bread turned golden brown under the broiler while the oysters fried.

Thus, Casamento’s oyster loaf came to be—a thing so simple, it seems silly. Just oysters, white bread, a dash of hot sauce, and a squeeze of lemon. You couldn’t even get lettuce and tomato on it while Joe was alive. It sits at the heart of an equally simple Creole Italian menu—oyster stew, spaghetti and meatballs, seafood gumbo—that has hardly changed since 1919. But that simplicity is what has kept this restaurant running for a century, through four generations of Joe’s family, and three generations of mine.

While we wait in line with the other regulars for a table, my daughter begs to be lifted onto my father’s hip to watch the oyster shucking, just as I used to when I was a child. With a swift slip of his knife, Anthony O’Neal Rogers, who’s been shucking oysters here for 22 years, pries one open, teetering the blade between the two halves of the shell. My daughter stares, searching for pearls. Arnold takes down a foggy plastic tub from the wall behind him, which is hung with T-shirts autographed by the likes of Nicole Kidman, Jimmy Carter, and Guy Fieri. He rattles its contents—about a dozen pearls the size of coarse salt—then plucks one with his fingers and places it in my daughter’s palm.

Anthony can shuck oysters at blazing speed when he’s put to it, but C.J.’s uncle, Joseph Casamento—named after his father—was even faster. C.J. tells of a time when he, Joseph, and Robert Washington, Anthony’s predecessor, raced to shuck a dozen. Joseph beat them both, opening all 12 in 45 seconds.

Casamento’s was one of the first restaurants my mother ever brought me to as a baby, and Joseph’s gloved hand cupping an ice-cold oyster is one of my earliest memories. In those days, C.J.’s mother, Mary Ann, served our dinners. Her picture now hangs on the wall behind the oyster bar, just below the autographed T-shirts. It’s 1919, and she is a little girl in loose curls, being held securely by her aproned father as she sits on the front counter of her family’s new restaurant. Her feet in their little black booties swing for the camera. The tile floor under Joe Casamento’s feet—long mosaic rows of red and green leaves—is still there, and only a little worn now, a century on.

Thirty years after that photo was taken, in 1949, Joe decided to tile the walls too, lining his restaurant top to bottom, inside and out, with so much green and white tile that he had to source it from four different suppliers. Since tiling the restaurant would take nearly three months, Joe scheduled the job for summer, when oysters weren’t at their best and business was light. That was when Casamento’s started closing every summer, a scheduling quirk that adds to New Orleans’ seasonal rhythm. “At that time,” C.J. tells me, “we were open Tuesday through Sunday, double-shifts, and Joe enjoyed that time off, so we just kept doing it. It wasn’t until about five years ago that I talked to Linda and I said, ‘I’ve never been anywhere in the wintertime!’ ”

The tile also accounts for the fact that despite the restaurant’s daily frying, the place never smells of grease. Every May, when the restaurant closes for the season, the staff climbs up on ladders and scrubs every square inch clean.

It was during Casamento’s annual summer vacation in 2005 that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As the storm approached the city, Joseph evacuated with a friend to Vicksburg, Mississippi, while C.J. and Linda took a scheduled vacation to Las Vegas.

“I had talked to Joseph that day,” C.J. says, “and he was in a panic, thinking we were going to lose the restaurant, thinking that thing is a Category 5, and everything he owned was upstairs.” Joseph had been born in the apartment above the restaurant, and after a tour in the Pacific during World War II, he never lived anywhere else. The experience was too much for him: “I got a call later that night saying that Joseph had died in the hotel room. He’d had a heart attack.”

Joseph’s was one of the many uncounted casualties of Katrina, his death caused by the stress of the evacuation and the levee breaks. C.J. wonders if Joseph would have had the strength to reopen the restaurant had he survived. The roof was damaged, and much of the equipment had to be replaced. But despite the expense, and having to drive back and forth between New Orleans and Baton Rouge to handle the transfer of the estate, C.J. lit his stove again on November 5, 2005, while half the city was still dark.

“The timing worked out perfectly,” C.J. says. The fisheries disrupted by the storm had finally reopened. “Oysters had come back in just the week before.”

Returning home that fall from New York, where I’d landed during the evacuation, the neon pink of the Casamento’s sign throbbed like a heartbeat over Magazine Street. I pushed through the familiar door, its Venetian blinds askew over the window, shaking with relief. If the oyster beds were back, if C.J. and Linda were back, if Casamento’s was back—maybe there was a chance we’d all return someday.

Linda greeted us, led us to our table, and took our regular order. The oyster loaf was medicine made of bread and salt and fry—the first meal I’d been able to finish since the storm made landfall. As I stepped up into the kitchen to hug C.J. and thank him, I was careful not to slip on the corn flour that once again dusted the tile.

When my family sits down for dinner, we never get menus. Linda places beers on the table, little glasses clanging on the bottles’ necks like bells. “Dozen raws, dozen charbroils. French fries, extra crispy. Soft-shell crab for you?” Linda asks my mother, then rattles off the rest of our order, pointing her pen at each of us in turn. “Oyster loaf, shrimp loaf, oyster loaf, oyster loaf, oyster loaf dressed.” This last loaf is for my husband. He likes lettuce and tomato on his sandwich, and we mock him for it every time.

Our ways are as calcified as those of Casamento’s itself (which is saying something), and the oyster loaf satisfies as it always has. The restaurant is a place absolved from time—a crucible of community, where the walls wipe clean and lard never goes out of style.

The post Celebrating 100 Years of Oysters at New Orleans Restaurant Casamento’s appeared first on Saveur.

There are only so many vacation days in a year, so where to travel right now to maximize them is a hard enough question to answer. But when food enters the equation—as it does in the minds of all of the SAVEUR staff—the pressure mounts.

That said, we’re the types that skip the food tours on vacation but have just as much fun scouting local pantry staples, breaking bread with locals, hanging at the town roastery, or tracking down the best bakeries in Paris as we do trying the top dining experiences in big cities from New York and Tokyo to Rome.

Here are the cities, countries, and off-the-beaten-track excursions—largely based around food—that our staffers can’t wait to head (or return) to.

Nagano, Japan

London, England

Israel

New Orleans, Louisiana

Jamaica

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Dundee Hills and McMinnville, Oregon

Paris, France

Tokyo, Japan

Scotland

The post 10 Memorable Food Trips to Expand Your Horizons appeared first on Saveur.

In all my visits to the fabled dining room at Dooky Chase, I had never seen the avalanche.

Over the course of nearly twenty years, I’ve taken my fair share of trips to the midday buffet line, slurped my way through gallons of sublime crab soup, and even seen the room packed to the rafters for Ms. Chase’s legendary Holy Thursday lunch service. But in all my time at table, I don’t remember witnessing the simple-yet-glorious act of refilling the warming pans with a piping hot batch of golden-brown, freshly fried chicken.

I happened to be walking the length of the buffet—taking a quick survey of the day’s offerings—when I saw a deep stainless tub emerge from the kitchen, piled high with a flock’s worth of Leah Chase’s trademark fried chicken. After a few seconds of wrangling, the runner lined up the two pans edge-to-edge and tipped one edge of the kitchen pan to the ceiling in a slow, steady motion.

The next few seconds shifted into slow motion as I watched a batch of New Orleans‘ finest foodstuffs tumble onto the lunch line. The front-of-house attendant guided the slide of Platonically perfect poultry with quick tong-work, making sure the tumbling thighs spread out in a more-or-less even layer while keeping wayward wings from bouncing onto the burgundy tablecloth. Bits of crust flaked off during the transfer and clicked into the serving pan, and when the last mahogany brown drumstick settled into place, time shifted back to normal speed. The whole process took maybe fifteen seconds, but felt like twenty minutes of poetic poultry in motion.

I somehow managed to keep my salivation within the bounds of civilized folk. Barely.

When I snapped out of my trance, I made quick note of the offerings of the day—baked pork chops, red beans and rice, corn maque choux, hot sausage chunks in a silver terrine—and sat down to wait for the Good Doctor.

A lunch date with Dr. Jessica B. Harris—author, food historian and all-around force of nature—is a treat under normal circumstances, but dining with her at Dooky Chase (the restaurant that Ms. Leah has run daily since 1941, named for her late husband) is one of life’s great joys. During the last few decades, Dr. Harris has become a fixture on the New Orleans food scene through scholarship and steady presence, despite maintaining a primary residence in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Since retiring from Queens College last year, she’s been spending more time at her place in the Faubourg Marigny, a short cab ride from Dooky’s dining room.

And it being January 2nd, it would be the perfect time for a belated New Year celebration and a quick audience with Ms. Leah, just a few days before her birthday on January 6th—known locally as Twelfth Night, and the official kickoff for Carnival and Mardi Gras season. Festivities, well wishes, good conversation—nothing better to kick off 2019.

With a few minutes to kill before Jessica’s arrival, I tucked into my copy of The Dooky Chase Cookbook to distract me from my newly-ignited fried chicken obsession. This next month, I knew I’d be spending quality time with Ms. Chase’s stories and recipes, so I decided to do a quick matching of text and space.

Paging through the chapter heads, I could spot printed renditions of artwork around the dining room—Richard Thomas’ drawing of trumpet kids (Breads and Breakfast Foods, p.19–20), Rock Teacher by Windston Falgout (stained glass piece, p. 97) among others. Ms. Chase’s African-American art collection, gathered over a lifetime, makes selective appearances in between recipes and remembrances, but to see the walls brimming with varied color, style, and history is nothing short of amazing.

I listen to the the dining room’s friendly clatter and peruse the recipes for her red beans (p. 169), pork chops with sauteed onions (p. 106) and, of course, the obsession-worthy fried chicken (p. 154). With each page, i found myself leaning slightly closer to the buffet tables.

And just on time, Dr. Harris arrives in all her workaday glory. At once charismatic, stately, and commanding, Jessica sweeps into the room with greetings to everyone on staff and a jingle of silver bracelets. Once she enters, the room feels that much more like home.

We settle in and give the laminated menu a perfunctory glance—because we’re just gonna go for the buffet, right? It’s common sense. I did a quick avalanche flashback and almost lunged.

The Good Doctor looks over the menu and makes a few suggestions, just as I’m about to sprint to the tower of empty serving plates.

“The buffet is fine,” she says in a tone that implies a qualifying clause, “but I like to order off the menu to get the hottest chicken.”

This stunned me a bit, because… you know… the avalanche.

“I’ll order the chicken and red beans,” she said. “I’ll share. You should get the Shrimp Clemenceau. It’s one of her classics. I’d love to eat it, but i have a seafood allergy.” Shrug.

And with that, it was settled. Instead of making several runs at the long line of Creole amazement, I’d settle into a single bowl of Clemenceau—garlicky Louisiana shrimp sauteed in butter with brabant potatoes, peas, and mushrooms (p.70).

What followed was an hour of New Year catch-up conversation, savory New Orleans goodness and a couple glasses of wine to ring in 2019. The Clemenceau was amazing as promised (soon to become a shrimp season staple at my house), and The Good Doctor, in all her wisdom, probably saved me from eating myself into a fried chicken coma. Inspired by her restraint and elegance, I ate a single crispy, perfect thigh as I watched other diners return for second, third and fourth helpings. Each time, they wobbled back to the table in mid-swoon sporting ridiculous smiles on their faces.

Leah Chase

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It being the New Year zone, all the regular staff came by to wish Dr. Harris happy holidays—both the ones recently past and Carnival soon to come. Ms. Chase’s daughter, right hand, and sometimes-gatekeeper Stella came to the table for a chat, informing us that her mother wasn’t in the kitchen that day. Instead, she was spending time with the last bits of family who had traveled in for the festive season.

“Well, we hate to miss her, but tell her we came by,” Jessica said. “And wish her a happy birthday.”

Hugs all around, a few more sips of wine, and then we were out into the wet, swampy cold of a New Orleans winter.

We’d be back soon enough, and made plans to return before the reserved ruckus of Holy Thursday. It being Ms. Leah’s birthday month, it seems like the sensible thing to do.

And next time, I’ll be there for the avalanche—and a long nap afterwards.

The post Lunch At This Iconic New Orleans Restaurant Includes a Fried Chicken Avalanche appeared first on Saveur.

In honor of this month’s devotion to lunch and all the amazing lunch foods of the world, we swapped out our usual evening #SAVEURSupper for a boozy martini-fueled lunch. Commander’s Palace head chef Tory McPhail flew all the way from New Orleans and took over the SAVEUR test kitchen—assisted by Lucy Dakwar from Fausto in Brooklyn—to recreate the restaurant’s famous 25¢ martini lunches. “Head cocktailian” Laura Bellucci from SoBou bar in NOLA mixed some seriously good drinks. McPhail kicked off the lunch by telling guests, “Relax, let your hair down, and do what y’all do. That’s what we do at Commander’s Palace.” And that’s exactly what happened. Guests started drinking at noon, sipping on lemon curd cocktails—the liquid incarnation of lemon bars, if they were made with vodka. The drink, called “House of the Rind,” also had a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and Earl Grey-infused honeysuckle, and came with a sweet star-shaped butter biscuit on the side. It was a great introduction to the colorful food and cocktail pairings that were to come.

The four-course meal began with a finger sandwich with Commander’s Palace’s house-made salmon cream cheese, pickled fish collars, cracked crab, and topped with caviar, a quail egg, and strands of seaweed to finish. The paired cocktail, in the same oceanic spirit as the appetizer, was a watermelon martini with a sea salt, sesame seed, and nori rim.

The second dish was a sugarcane-smoked and pan-seared duck breast salad complete with roasted tomatoes, grilled fennel, blue cheese, and cognac-cured foie gras. The salad was drizzled with a sticky, almost gelatinous duck foot and strawberry jam dressing, which added a sweet and slightly acidic kick that tied the whole dish together.

And our fourth cocktail of the day was a drink called the “Catahoula fizz,” a martini-ish rendition of a classic whiskey sour, made with Tito’s vodka.

The next course was a spinalis-cut, pan-seared steak crusted with Louisiana’s Crystal Hot Sauce pulp. The beef was sliced and served over garlic-grilled black olive and rosemary bread, with char-grilled chilis, braised onions, crispy capers, pink peppercorns, and juniper and bone marrow jus. Bellucci decided to pair this with a stronger martini infused with artichokes, which she called the “Staten Man Martini.”

The finale was truly grand; a number of guests pulled out their cell phones cell phones to capture Chef McPhail feeding a blazing fire with cinnamon to flambée his citrus vodka crepes. They were filled with citrusy pastry cream and topped with sugared lemons, brown butter, and limoncello caramel. Our dessert drink, and final quirky 25¢ cocktail, was called the “Midnight Robertson”—made with pecans, espresso, and a hint of brown sugar. It was a delicious end to a midday martini-paired meal.

The post Commander’s Palace Creates a Boozy Lunch in the Saveur Office appeared first on Saveur.