New Orleans Picks for the New Year

Just for fun.

Hi friends.

I feel like a lot of you have been coming through town lately, and especially with festival season coming up I wanted to make some recommendations for some smaller, more neighborhoody places. Many of these are located outside of the French Quarter and Central Business District, where it is easy to get sucked in because there are a lot of hotels. Although there are a lot of great things going on in those parts of town too! These are just my picks, my regular spots, since y’all keep asking.

By the way, sometimes it is controversial to recommend things in New Orleans, a town full of FEELINGS. But these are honestly just the first things that popped up in my head, and I’m thinking about people who are just coming for a weekend and want a quick hit of fun here.

Now if I had an assistant I would make everything a hyperlink but I do not. I trust that you can google. I will leave comments open for you to recommend your faves (and please explain why, don’t just drop a name) but not to say things like, “I can’t believe you didn’t recommend Cafe Du Monde.” Everyone knows what Cafe Du Monde is. Take it easy, internet. And you can figure out what Frenchmen Street is on your own. Also I work from home all day and am middle-aged and kind of don’t leave my neighborhood? So please refer further to social media if you are under the age of 30 (25?)(40?) and want some real action here.

OK, here we go:

If you want to buy a good bottle of wine or have a nice glass in the late afternoon/early evening and just have a sweet, casual moment, I recommend my neighborhood local Faubourg Wines. (They have an oyster pop-up that’s great on Wednesdays.) I also like Patron Saint and Really Really Nice Wines uptown for similar vibes.

For a pre-dinner martini (or dinner, too) I really love the charming Bar Pomona. They make good cocktails at Nightbloom in the Bywater and Bar Tonique on the edge of the Quarter. Sitting at the legendary Chris Hannah’s bar at Jewel of South is always delightful. I have recently been going to the classic dive Friendly Bar again and have been remembering all over again why I love it. In my neighborhood I recommend Vaughan’s and BJ’s, which are also both dives with live music, and the brewery Parleaux, which, if you are bringing children to New Orleans (if you must!) is definitely child-friendly.

I usually take my favorite visiting guests to Acamaya for perfect contemporary Mexican food or to Petite Grocery where everyone has to eat the blue crab beignets. I love Lil’ Dizzy’s or McHardy’s for fried chicken. Frady’s for po’boys. Clancy’s way uptown is a wonderful room serving deeply pleasing Creole classics. My absurdly talented neighbors at Saint-Germain got a Michelin star this year so who knows if you can get in there, but that is a very special treat kind of meal. Ditto for Dakar (also starred!) and Mosquito Supper Club.

Bakeries: Ayu & Lagniappe.

Favorite cultural spaces: StudioBE, the Ogden, New Orleans African American Museum, the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, CANOA.

There are some perfect half-day jaunts available in this city. A bike ride up to City Park and a walk through the sculpture garden followed by a po’boy at Parkway. Or walk from the Quarter down Crescent Park to the Bywater, where you can shop at Euclid Records and visit StudioBE. A few loops around Audubon Park can be restorative both physically and spiritually. Take a ferry over to the West Bank where you can see the full breadth of the city from across the river and pop into a cute little bar or restaurant over there. Or you can get just day drunk in the Quarter, which some say is the most fun you can have in this town!

Bookstores, we got a lot of ‘em, considering the size of this city, and they all have their particular vibe. Blue Cypress, Baldwin, Octavia, Garden District, Community—do not make me choose a favorite! They all have their own gaze, clientele, area of expertise. I have friends who have spent a day driving around town visiting them all and they’ve reported that’s a really nice time, especially as the shops are spread out all over the city so you can experience different neighborhoods. For a cute, lazy afternoon treat I also suggest the used bookstore Parlour Books, which is a tiny jewel box sitting in the garden of Satsuma Cafe in the Bywater.

OK, OK, here’s a few links: You can find all the local music event listings on the WWOZ site. Here is a guide to Black-owned restaurants. Here is another one. Here is a guide to the best Vietnamese restaurants. I have used the Lemon Pop pop-up food listings resource frequently. You won’t regret joining a second line. Here is a gallery guide. Our buddy Brett Anderson did a nice round-up of the whole city here.

Shout out to some neighborhood cafes where I have spent time socially or with a notebook: Petite Clouet, Honey’s, Lowpoint, and Pond, all places where the coffee is great and the owners are cool and the clientele is cute. If you work from home or need to find your own space sometimes to write, read, or just think, you know how important a good cafe is. These are great spots.

And I always suggest people stay at Hotel Peter and Paul (featuring the chic jewelry/vintage shop Iris 1956), but people also like Hotel St. Vincent if you want to stay further uptown.

If I love you and you have visited me I have probably taken you to the Lakefront Airport to look at the stunning Art Deco design.

Finally, just take a nice stroll! Sometimes the best part of this town is just what happens on these streets.

And that’s it for now! I cannot answer any questions for you but the internet definitely can. If you come visit, spend lots of money and tip wildly and be nice and just…let it happen.

Happy New Year to you all!

Jami

You are reading Craft Talk, the home of #1000wordsofsummer and also a weekly newsletter about writing from Jami Attenberg. I’m also on bluesky and instagram.