Creole
Commander's Palace
The turquoise Creole palace. 25-cent martini lunch is a city institution. Jackets at dinner, and the courtyard still feels like a celebration.
Garden District$$$$
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Museums & history
One search across restaurants, nightlife, parks, the season, and the accounts worth following. The menus above are the short version. Nothing here is a paid placement.
31 places
Creole
Dooky Chase's
Leah Chase's dining room. Creole cooking and civil-rights history in the same gumbo. A pilgrimage, not a theme.
Treme$$$
Hotel bar
Carousel Bar
The bar that actually rotates, inside Hotel Monteleone. One drink is the bit. A second drink is how you miss your reservation.
French Quarter$$$
Hotel bar
Sazerac Bar
The Roosevelt's bar, murals and all. Order the namesake once, then look at the lobby — at Christmas it becomes the city's living room.
CBD$$$
Hotel bar
The Columns porch
A drink on the porch while the streetcar rings. This is the staycation picture, and you do not have to sleep upstairs to sit down.
Garden District$$
Bar
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop
The candlelit end of Bourbon, in a building that actually feels old. One drink, then you have done Bourbon with some dignity.
French Quarter$$
Cocktail bar
French 75
Arnaud's bar. A French 75, a jacket-optional sense of occasion, and a room that has hosted this exact evening for a very long time.
French Quarter$$$
Brass
Little Gem Saloon
Brass where Rampart meets the history of Black music in the city. A better Rampart stop than anything with a neon hurricane.
Rampart$$
Jazz
Preservation Hall
Traditional jazz in a room with no drinks and no frills. You sit on a bench and you listen. It is still the best 45 minutes in the Quarter.
French Quarter$$
Shows
Saenger Theatre
The restored movie palace on Canal. Broadway, comedy, and the touring shows that sell the orchestra. Desi Banks and Mojo Brookzz play New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. The flyer says the first three shows sold out, and the January 1 late show was the one still listed.
Canal Street$$$
Landmark
Jackson Square
The cathedral, the Cabildo, the Presbytère, artists on the fence, and the river just behind the levee. Start here once, then leave the postcard.
French Quarter$
Shopping & art
Royal Street
Antiques, galleries, and musicians who set up in the closed-to-cars blocks. The civilized face of the Quarter.
French Quarter$$
Shopping
Magazine Street
Six miles of shops, bookstores, and rooms to eat. The streetcar is parallel on St. Charles; the walking is the point for a few blocks at a time.
Uptown & Garden District$$
Museum
The National WWII Museum
A half-day, not a lobby walk. Immense, careful, and the one museum almost everyone is glad they did not rush.
Warehouse District$$$
Art
NOMA & the Sculpture Garden
The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Besthoff Sculpture Garden under the oaks. Free garden, strong collection, and yoga on the lawn some Wednesday and Saturday mornings.
City Park$$
Art
Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Southern art in a Warehouse District gallery building. A tight, satisfying hour when you want art without crossing to City Park.
Warehouse District$$
History
Historic New Orleans Collection
The city's story told carefully, on Royal Street. Architecture, maps, Carnival, the river. Often the surprise favorite.
French Quarter$$
Music history
New Orleans Jazz Museum
In the Old U.S. Mint, at the quiet end of the Quarter where it becomes the Marigny. Instruments, posters, and context before you hear the living version on Frenchmen.
French Quarter$$
History
Pharmacy Museum
A 19th-century apothecary, weird and specific and done in under an hour. A Quarter museum that is not a lecture.
French Quarter$
Culture
Backstreet Cultural Museum
Second lines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals — the living Black culture of the city, kept by the people who do it. Small, essential.
Treme$
Park
City Park
Oaks, lagoons, the botanical garden, Storyland, the carousel, NOMA, and Café du Monde. In winter, Celebration in the Oaks turns the whole thing into a night drive of lights.
Mid-City$
Culture
Louis Armstrong Park & Congo Square
Congo Square is where enslaved Africans were allowed to gather, drum, and dance on Sundays. The park holds that history, not a backdrop.
Treme$
Architecture
Garden District walk
Iron galleries, live oaks, Commander's turquoise fence, and the Rink for a book. The walk is the tour. You do not need a guide unless you want the gossip.
Garden District$
Tour
Guided cemetery tour
St. Louis No. 1 is above-ground tombs and a lot of myth. You go with a licensed guide. That is the rule, and it is the better hour anyway.
French Quarter$$
Getting around
St. Charles streetcar
The moving porch. Mansions, oaks, Audubon Park, and the reason you do not need a tour bus. Canal and Riverfront are the other two lines.
Canal to Carrollton$
Books
Faulkner House Books
A tiny shop in the alley behind the cathedral, in a building Faulkner lived in. One room, serious shelves.
French Quarter$$
Hotel
The Columns
The porch is the famous part, and the rooms are in the mansion above it. A staycation that is really about St. Charles.
Garden District$$$
Hotel
Hotel Monteleone
The literary grandfather. Carousel Bar downstairs, Royal Street outside, a lobby you can use as a meeting point for the whole trip.
French Quarter$$$
Hotel
The Roosevelt
The block-long lobby, the Sazerac Bar, and December when the holiday decorations take over the city. A grand hotel that earns the word.
CBD$$$$
Hotel
Omni Royal Orleans
In the Quarter, not on Bourbon. A roof with a view, a lobby that works as a base, and the ability to walk home from almost anything you did downtown.
French Quarter$$$
Cocktail bar
NOLA Art Bar
A book-lined cocktail room on St. Claude. Their page says Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 5 to 10. Closed the other nights. About 27k followers, and it does not behave like a Bourbon bar.
St. Claude$$