Food Tour of New Orleans
If the thought of juicy crawfish and soul-warming gumbo makes your heart skip a beat, then a trip to New Orleans is a must
The city is an exciting blend of restaurants and snack stops, down-home dishes and celebrity-chef concoctions perfect for travelers with diverse tastes.
Sign on for a cycling tour of area delicacies and burn off a few calories between bites. Wander around the French Quarter with a guide, sampling sweet and savory gourmet grub. Or mix sightseeing with taste testing and create your own Big Easy Eating Tour. From fresh-shucked oysters to syrupy, crushed ice desserts (known as snowballs), take your time to savor it all.
Beggin’ For Beignets
If you’ve been hit with a case of the sweet-tooth blues, stop by Café Du Monde in historic Jackson Square for some beignets. These melt-in-your-mouth squares of dough are fried then dusted with powdered sugar—perfect when washed down with a cup of dark-roasted, chicory-laced café au lait. While beignets are a popular breakfast or brunch of choice, just-made, watch-out-they're-hot table delivery means there can be long lines for seats in the mornings—and occasionally in the afternoons. No worries; beignets can also be enjoyed as a dessert, and you can drop by after dinner because Café Du Monde never closes.
Mud bugs Mash-Up
Mud bugs, or crawfish—never say "crayfish" in New Orleans—were a Native American diet staple along the Mississippi Delta before settlers invaded and fancied them up. Sample yours in crawfish étouffée –thick, spicy, gumbo-like stew served over rice–at the Gumbo Shop on St. Peter Street. It opens at 11 a.m. each day, and is a hit with the locals. If you prefer starting your day—and crawfish fix—bright and early, head over to Magazine Street’s Slim Goodies Diner, which opens its doors daily at 6 a.m. Indulge on their famous Creole Slammers: crawfish étouffée mounded over piping-hot hash browns, served alongside a fluffy homemade biscuit and two eggs cooked to your liking.
Po' Boy Perfection
The Great Depression gave us the po'boy: crisp, New Orleans-style baguettes stuffed with meat or seafood and "dressed" with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickles. Parkway Bakery & Tavern, located on Hagen Avenue just outside the Quarter, debuted its po'boy in 1929: home-baked bread with either roast beef and gravy or golden fried shrimp or oysters. The eatery opens at 11 a.m., just in time for lunch (note: They’re closed on Tuesdays). Be sure to ask for their fried oyster po'boy, which is served on Mondays and Wednesdays. Or head over to Domilise's Po-Boy and Bar, a century-old neighborhood joint in a yellow clapboard house on Annunciation Street. It's closed Sundays, but every other day the inventive po'boy menu features batter-fried seafood and secret-recipe spicy ketchup.
Gumbo Greatness
Gumbo, a thick soup cooked with file powder, flour-and-fat roux or okra to give it body, is probably named for the Choctaw "sassafras" or African "okra." You won't care when you dig into a hearty lunch of boneless chicken andouille or Cajun andouille sausage simmered in spices and ladled over rice; it might just become your new comfort food. Order mild versions if you’re not quite feeling the heat, and pay attention to the calendar. Beginning on Mardi Gras through 40 days of meat-less Lent in Catholic New Orleans, the famous Gumbo Shop in the Quarter makes its stew with Gulf of Mexico fish, shrimp and oysters; Lake Pontchartrain crabs; and crawfish from the swamp.
The Original Oyster
You can't leave NOLA without indulging in an oyster feast. The slurpy bivalves from the Gulf of Mexico come in more dishes than you'll have days for, so order them for afternoon tea, a decadent dinner or any time you need a nosh. Antoine's, the legendary French Quarter eatery, invented Oysters Rockefeller in 1889: oysters on the half-shell, drenched in breadcrumbs, butter and herbs and passed under a broiler. Each order at Antoine's comes with a numbered certificate. Arnaud's, another marquee dining room, makes Oysters Bienville with a shrimp, mushroom, herbs and white wine topping. Indulge your imagination in almost any combination, or take your oysters raw, swimming in their own delicate brine and shucked right at your table.
Jambalaya Variations
Save two dinners for jambalayas–one for the browned-meat Cajun version and one for the add-tomatoes Creole recipe. Drop into Coop's Place, a casual jambalaya joint on Decatur Street, for traditional Creole jambalaya with boneless rabbit and smoked pork sausage. Jambalaya Supreme, a Cajun supper entree, is stuffed with shrimp, crawfish and tasso, a Cajun seasoning ham. Coop's gets high marks from reviewers, has modest prices and is dark, crowded, noisy and dependably delicious. Plan ahead. The Old Coffeepot Restaurant, on St. Peter Street since 1897, opens daily at 8 a.m. but closes after lunch on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It’s worth adjusting your schedule for the charming setting, indoor-outdoor seating and Creole jambalaya with fried catfish or jambalaya pasta in tomato-bechamel sauce.
SNOWBALLS
Feeling the heat? Cool down with a New Orleans snowball. Unlike your childhood snow cones, snowballs are snowflake mountains of fluffy, fine ice. Special ice grinding machines give the snowball its frozen fabulousness. The mounds of ice are soaked in boiled-sugar syrups in every imaginable flavor, from bananas Foster to almond-vanilla. They won’t break the bank, so treat yourself and your kids to one snowball each—perfect as a refreshing, midday snack. Keep in mind that they’re a hot-weather special, so if you’re in town for the summer, try Hansen’s Sno-Bliz on Tchoupitoulas Street (closed Mondays and winters), or Pandora's Snowballs off North Carrollton Avenue, on the City Park streetcar line just off the park (check ahead for hours).
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