Experience New Orleans: A Guide to Culture, Cuisine, and Comfort

Though best known for Mardi Gras and its rollicking French Quarter, New Orleans now has a new polish, with boutique hotels and globally minded bars and restaurants.

New Orleans is always a good idea, I told myself, even as I landed in the Southern port city on a particularly sultry mid-June day. Inside the gleaming new Louis Armstrong International Airport, I was greeted by a few unmistakable geographical reminders: a Café Du Monde counter frying its signature powdered-sugar-dusted beignets, an outpost of Bar Sazerac slinging its namesake drink, and a spirited four-piece brass band playing by baggage claim. Settling into my Uber, I asked the driver to crank up WWOZ, a station owned by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation. “Take It to the Streets,” a horn-heavy track by a group of Treme musicians named the Rebirth Brass Band, ushered me into town.

I first visited New Orleans roughly 20 years ago, when I was in college and could slurp down Pat O’Brien’s sugar-laced Hurricanes with gusto. In my mid-20s, I returned as an enthusiastic Jazz Fest attendee. In my early 30s, I finally made it inside Galatoire’s — the famed jacket-required institution where tuxedoed waiters serve shrimp rémoulade to society ladies — and Preservation Hall, a family-run venue for jazz performances. In recent years, I’d heard that the Big Easy had evolved beyond the familiar trappings of the French Quarter and embarked on a sophisticated new chapter that my 40-something self would find deeply appealing.

Faubourg Marigny and the Bywater

Lined with Creole cottages and pastel shotgun houses, Faubourg Marigny (often referred to as the Marigny) is one of the earliest neighborhoods in New Orleans, established in the early 1800s by French colonizers. These days, it’s a hot spot for up-and-coming music venues, indie restaurants, and dive bars. Many credit writer-hotelier Nathalie Jordi for starting the area’s revival in 2018 with Hotel Peter & Paul, for which she painstakingly restored buildings from the 1860s that had been used by the Catholic Church. The hotel’s 71 rooms (designed by ASH NYC and NOLA-based StudioWTA) feature wrought-iron beds, armoires painted with trompe l’oeil, and custom gingham fabrics. The old rectory is now the amber-toned Elysian Bar, run by the folks behind the beloved Bywater bottle shop and wine bar Bacchanal. Light dishes (snapper crudo, smoked-beet tartare) are served in two parlors, a tiny glass atrium, and a lush courtyard.

After dinner one night, I walked to Frenchmen Street, a scruffy two-block stretch where the French Quarter meets the Marigny. I hopped from the standing-room-only Spotted Cat Music Club to D.B.A., a two-decade-old venue where artists like Corey Henry & the Treme Funktet often appear. Outside, the rhythms spilled onto the streets, melting and merging into a sweet cacophony, and on the corner around midnight, I found people dancing to an impromptu brass ensemble.

Delights of the Garden District

For $1.25, the olive-green St. Charles Streetcar took me from Canal Street, near the French Quarter, to the Garden District, a 19th-century residential area with elegant mansions landscaped with fragrant azaleas. Should spirits still linger in the city, they’re certainly inside the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1: a gothic-tinged, magnolia-tree-lined landmark with rows of elaborate raised tombs. Across the street, I watched a Friday-afternoon crowd descend on the storied Commander’s Palace, where chefs Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme once worked and lunchtime martinis are 25 cents.

On Constance Street, chef Ana Castro’s memorable five-course tasting menu at Lengua Madre nods to her paternal grandmother’s Mexican cooking. The décor is simple and sparse: a curved wooden bar, checkered tile floor, and a neon-pink-lit hallway that pays homage to architect Luis Barragán’s signature color blocks. In between bites of an earthy huitlacoche sope — a disk of fried masa dusted with chèvre, borage, and epazote — I watched the hushed theatrics of the open kitchen, where a chef was diligently plating a serving of arroz verde. “My food is nostalgia-based,” Castro reflected. “I take what I loved most in a meal and share it.” A block away, Barrel Proof, a venerable timber-clad, whiskey-leaning bar, rotates three concepts every week: the modern Asian Matchbook Kitchen; Cuban-Honduran QuePasta; and tarte flambée specialist Flamme Nola.

Vibrant Uptown Scene

Just west of the Garden District, Uptown is a sprawling neighborhood with mansions and centuries-old oak trees whose boughs often dangle with blingy Mardi Gras beads. The 350-acre Audubon Park and the leafy campuses of Loyola and Tulane universities are nearby. The 1970s venue Tipitina’s (now owned by the band Galactic) remains beloved for New Orleans funk, as is the pressed-tin-walled, open-till-the-wee-hours Maple Leaf Bar, which hosts the legendary Rebirth Brass Band on Tuesdays.

Last summer, Cambodian-American chef Sophina Uong opened Mister Mao, which serves a self-described “unapologetically inauthentic” mash-up of Mexican, Indian, and Southeast Asian cuisines. Small plates, such as pork chili verde with Khmer grapefruit and mango salad, are served from roving dim-sum-style carts in a pastel dining room flanked by a large tropical mural. Farther uptown, the casual new Seafood Sally’s fuses Gulf Coast and Southeast Asian cooking in dishes like raw oysters with a Vietnamese mignonette and seafood boils with Viet-Cajun chili butter. And in mid-July, Bar Sukeban opened its 16-seat izakaya with a trim menu of elevated hand rolls, sakes, and whiskies. Its chef, Jacqueline Blanchard, also operates the neighboring Coutelier, a shop that sells hand-forged Japanese cutlery.

The Chloe also has a grand tiled porch for languid afternoons, a clubby mahogany bar for cocktails, and a restaurant with cooking by veteran chef Todd Pulsinelli, whose double-stacked burgers are a must. Out back, a tropical bar and lemon-tree-lined pool draw an inclusive mix of guests and locals (the hotel offers a handful of pool passes each day). On a lazy Sunday, I lounged between two Mid-City women sipping hair-of-the-dog daiquiris and a hotel employee on her day off who kindly shared her shrimp-étouffée dumpling order with me.

On my last morning, a rowdy thunderstorm caused the lights to flicker inside the hotel parlor — a reminder that even amid all its modern updates, the Crescent City retains its old-meets-new-world charm. As I climbed into another Uber to return to the airport, I couldn’t help smiling. New Orleans wasn’t about to forget its roots anytime soon.

A version of this story first appeared in the May 2023 issue of GoTravelDaily under the headline “Easy Does It”.