The 76 Best Places to Drink and Do in New Orleans

A brandy crusta in a 19th-century Creole cottage on the edge of the French Quarter sets the tone for this cocktail bar, which took home the James Beard Award for Outstanding Bar in 2024. The room is unhurried and genuinely romantic, the kind of place that makes ordering a second drink feel like the responsible choice. The drinks lean into New Orleans' deep cocktail history without feeling like a museum.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Winner · Outstanding Bar
2. The 50 #44 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #6 · North America's 50 Best Bars

A converted firehouse on Freret Street, bare concrete underfoot and a long bar anchoring the room, Cure is a cocktail bar that made Uptown worth the cab ride from the Quarter. The bottle-green banquettes fill with locals who already know what they're ordering. Food & Wine ranked it the top bar in the country, and North America's 50 Best Bars puts it at number 21. The drinks are the argument; the room just makes it easier to stay.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #21 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Food & Wine #1 · The 10 Top Bars in the US

Chandelier Bar is the glamorous hotel lobby bar at the foot of Canal Street, all marble, crystal, and gold fittings, with a chandelier big enough to have lent its name and its crystal to the martini glass. Cognac shows up in the cocktails, including a fortified sazerac, and the bartenders are nicer than the surroundings strictly require. The potato chips arrive free, so dinner can technically be skipped.

1. Esquire Martini of the Year: Chandelier Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bar

Absinthe fountains line the curved bar at this jewel-box cocktail bar steps from St. Louis Cathedral in the Lower Pontalba Building. Oysters and caviar share menu space with a martini that landed on Esquire's national list, and a vintage chandelier keeps the whole room at a glow. It opens at eleven in the morning and closes at ten, the upstairs neighbors having apparently drawn a firm line.

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Esquire Mirage Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

Vaughan's is a Bywater dive where the Mardi Gras tinsel never comes down and Thursday nights mean a brass band that doesn't start until 10:30. The red beans and rice are free, which makes it easier to stay on the dance floor with whichever neighborhood regular grabs your hand first. The owners live nearby and have run the place for decades, so the community events and Pride tea dances feel more like hosting than programming.

1. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
2. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The Sazerac Bar holds the rights to both the Sazerac cocktail and the Ramos Gin Fizz, which says something about the confidence of the Roosevelt Hotel's lobby bar. Dark wood paneling, murals, and a long bar that has been drawing New Orleans in formal and informal attire for generations. It's sophisticated without being stiff, which is a harder trick than it sounds in a city that takes its drinks this seriously.

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

A corner wine bar in a rambling old house in the Bywater, with a backyard that somehow becomes the whole point. The wine list roams globally and you buy bottles at the shop counter, then take them outside where live music is usually happening and the vibe is somewhere between dinner party and block party. Cheese plates, light bites, no dress code implied. Named among the 50 most essential bars in America by Wildsam.

1. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

The Columns is a hotel bar on Saint Charles with chandeliers the size of small cars and antique furniture that makes a glass of house wine feel like an occasion. Esquire has put its martini on a list of the country's best. The porch is the move on a slow afternoon, with a drink in hand and the streetcar rolling past every few minutes like a very slow parade. Dress nicely, but nobody will check.

1. Esquire Columns Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans

Anna's is a Marigny dive bar in a former 19th-century bank, which means the cocktails are better than the Gatorade cooler by the pool table would suggest. The jukebox works, the beer-and-shot specials are cheap, and the Tequila Daisy goes down easy on a hot day. Guest chefs rotate through for pop-ups, and upstairs there are DJs, film nights, and a balcony over Royal Street. The James Beard folks named the owner a semifinalist.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Robert LeBlanc - LeBlanc + Smith

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The Elysian Bar is a cocktail bar in the Marigny, tucked inside a converted church-turned-hotel, where the atrium bar is so relentlessly yellow it feels like a secret study belonging to a pipe-smoking baron. Cajun and Creole small plates, like focaccia with honey butter, keep company with a Hibiscus 75. It's elegant without being stiff, and it made Food & Wine's list of top hotel bars in the country.

1. Food & Wine The Top 10 Hotel Bars in the US
2. Bon Appétit #5 · America's Best New Restaurants
3. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans

The tiger-print carpet and floor-to-ceiling scarlet bookshelves are a clue: this was once a city hall library, and the Parisian team behind Candelaria and Le Mary Celeste had the good sense not to gut it. Now it's a French cocktail bar leaning heavily on vermouths and amaros, the kind of place where the aperitif hour has a way of quietly becoming midnight.

1. Esquire Dirty Boi · The Best Martinis in America
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

NightBloom is a late-night cocktail bar on St. Claude, run by the Bacchanal team, and the lighting is a coral glow flattering enough that you may forget you came to drink. The menu runs from an olive salad martini to a smoky pineapple margarita, and the bartenders will talk playlists with you. Some nights there are dance parties or custom nail art, and a dog may adopt your table. Eater named it Best New Bar.

1. Eater Best New Bar
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

Rum drinks without a single plastic volcano or flaming garnish in sight. Cane & Table is a cocktail bar that calls itself "Proto Tiki," rooting its menu in the centuries of trade between rum-producing islands before the tiki craze gave everything a grass skirt. The room on Decatur Street feels genuinely New Orleans, which helps. Pisco Punch and signature coladas share the menu, and the whole thing moves like a history lesson you'd actually stay for.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Jeff "Beachbum" Berry wrote the books that revived tiki culture, and then he went and opened a bar. Latitude 29 sits inside a French Quarter hotel, all mid-century lines and lauhala matting, with a chunky oak bar backed by a tiki map of the world. It leans sophisticated rather than plastic-hula-girl, and the rum and fruit cocktails are the serious kind, made by people who know exactly what they're doing.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

The turquoise Garden District mansion has been turning out Modern New Orleans Creole since Ella Brennan and a young Emeril Lagasse were essentially inventing the genre together. Fine dining in the grand sense, white tablecloths and all, though the room skews festive rather than stiff. Meg Bickford runs the kitchen now, keeping the cooking by turns classicist and a little bodacious. Wine Enthusiast put the cellar in its Hall of Fame, and the weekday lunch martinis go for a quarter.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Wine Enthusiast The Wine Restaurant Hall of Fame
3. Esquire La-Ti-Da · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

The bar actually rotates, one full revolution every fifteen minutes, carried on 2,000 steel rollers by a quarter-horsepower motor. It's a cocktail bar inside the old Monteleone Hotel on Royal Street, and the canopy above the 25-seat circular bar was carved by a carousel craftsman, which explains a lot. New Orleans being New Orleans, nobody finds this strange. It's a strong argument for arriving early enough to feel the room slowly turn.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

The blenders run constantly at this French Quarter-edge daiquiri bar, which lifts its whole aesthetic from Havana's legendary Floridita. The decor, the food, and the drinks list all commit to the bit: Cuban classics like El Presidentes and daiquiris in several frozen variations, served in a room small enough that you're on nodding terms with the bartender by round two. A Spirited Awards Regional Honoree for Best U.S. Cocktail Bar.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Esquire Mediterranean Freezer Gibson · The Best Martinis in America

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. Central

Low-lit and unhurried on Magazine Street at the edge of the Lower Garden District, Barrel Proof is a neighborhood whiskey and cocktail bar that lets its bottles do the talking. The bourbon list runs deep, the cocktail menu stays short and confident, and food comes from rotating pop-ups rather than a kitchen. A James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, which is an unusual nod for a place this deliberately unshowy.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Robert LeBlanc - LeBlanc + Smith

1. Punch Best New Bartenders · Mel Tate
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central
3. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

The handwritten sign taped to the door reads "Ring Buzzer, Pull Door," which sets expectations accordingly. What's inside this Mid City cocktail dive runs against every signal the prefab exterior sends: serious drinks, a warm room, and a neighborhood crowd that has clearly been coming here since the block was still drying out. It's relaxed in the way only a bar that doesn't need to prove itself can manage.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans
3. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Abigail Gullo
2. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. Central

1. Esquire The Seaworthy Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Robert LeBlanc - LeBlanc + Smith
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar
3. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

The crab cake Benedict comes dressed with a poached egg, hollandaise, and shrimp sauce Américaine, which is either a brunch plate or a personal statement. This cozy Creole restaurant in the Irish Channel has been a neighborhood fixture forever, drawing regulars and out-of-towners equally for a contemporary spin on Louisiana cooking. The room buzzes, the menu leans Southern without being a museum about it, and the kitchen knows exactly what it's doing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Frozen Irish Coffees come out of a slushie machine here, and locals have been treating that as a perfectly reasonable life choice for a long time. Erin Rose is a small, dark Irish bar just off Bourbon Street, walls thick with photos, neon, and memorabilia that nobody has bothered to organize and nobody wants removed. Guinness and Harp on tap, conversation guaranteed from both sides of the bar, and a crowd that skews more neighborhood than tourist strip.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Curried goat over sweet potato gnocchi is the dish that quietly explains Nina Compton's whole project here. This Caribbean-inflected restaurant sits inside a converted coffee warehouse in the Warehouse Arts District, all exposed brick and mosaic tile, and the menu pulls together her St. Lucia roots, New Orleans flavors, and stints in Florida kitchens. The bar holds its own, and the service runs warm enough that a James Beard Outstanding Hospitality semifinalist nod makes a certain sense.

1. Eater The All-Time Eater 38
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Nina Compton
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Robert LeBlanc - LeBlanc + Smith

1. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 10 Nominee · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

Cooter Brown's is a sprawling Carrollton beer bar where the tap list runs long enough to need a study guide, and the game is always on somewhere. There's a front bar for cocktails, a back bar for local experimental pours, and an oyster counter for people who ordered beer and then had ideas. Boudin balls and shots keep things moving. It's been the place to gather a group for a very long time.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In New Orleans

1. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

1. Eater These Are the Very Best Bars in New Orleans

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The bartender here is a fourth-generation New Orleanian who will mix your Ramos Gin Fizz while narrating its entire biography. Bar Uncommon is a cocktail bar tucked into the Renaissance Pere Marquette, with the spare, hotel-adjacent look you'd expect, but Chris McMillian, one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail, is the reason regulars overlook the lobby entrance. Classics, made the old way, with a history lecture included at no extra charge.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A black and white marble floor runs from the front door all the way back through the bar, past the restaurant, and out into a quiet courtyard, putting a lot of physical distance between you and Bourbon Street without much effort. The cocktail bar leans into New Orleans classics like the Vieux Carré and Ramos gin fizz alongside bottled punches and house recipes built on acid phosphate and champagne vinegar, which is not a sentence you read every day.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The name comes from Aristophanes: "Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine so I may wet my mind and say something clever." An intimate neighborhood wine bar connected by a knocked-through wall to the Cork & Bottle shop next door, Clever leans into its origins without being precious about them. The list is serious, the cocktails are well made, and the beers are worth a look too, which is either scope creep or just good sense.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Frenchmen Street runs on live music, but D.B.A. is there for the beer, the spirits, and the wine, with bands as a bonus rather than the point. Two redwood-lined rooms share a central bar, one leaning lounge, one leaning jazz club, both dim and ceiling-fan slow. The New York sister bar genes show a little, which gives this New Orleans dive a slightly unlikely polish that the regulars seem happy to ignore.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The building is roughly the size and shape of a railway car, wedged next to a gas station on Saint Charles with fairy lights strung through the overhanging trees. Delachaise is a wine and beer bar where the front terrace somehow becomes exactly where you want to be, watching the street roll by. Over 40 wines by the glass keep the options interesting without the prices getting precious about it.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Three blocks from Bourbon Street and operating at a different frequency entirely, The Black Penny is a low-key craft beer bar with more than 70 canned options and the kind of room that actually makes you want to stay. One side runs plush leather banquettes against distressed plaster walls; the other is all dark wood and salvaged barge boards behind the bar. The crowd tends to know exactly why they came, and it isn't the tourists.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A square dark-oak bar juts from the wall of this candlelit room on the edge of the French Quarter, just opposite the Louis Armstrong Park arch, which tells you the tourists haven't found it yet. Tonique is a neighborhood cocktail bar that takes its drinks seriously without taking itself seriously, a combination rarer than it sounds. The wine and beer lists hold their own alongside the cocktails, and the vibe is exactly as low-pretense as the place promises.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The shattered-glass bar-top with a built-in refrigerator for fresh produce is a good sign you're in a proper cocktail bar, not just somewhere with a drinks menu. The room is moody and low-lit, with funky music competing gently with classic films on a flat screen, Gone with the Wind one moment, Indiana Jones the next. The polystyrene ceiling tiles are a Quiznos inheritance, which gives the whole effort a certain scrappy charm.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Neal Bodenheimer

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Neal Bodenheimer
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Robert LeBlanc - LeBlanc + Smith
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Neal Bodenheimer

The log-cabin feel is no accident: red wood ceiling, timber-clad walls, and a long solid bar give this neighborhood pub on Magazine Street the warmth of somewhere that's been broken in properly. It draws locals and Tulane students rather than tourists, with around fifty taps pouring everything from Abita Andygator to Belgian ales and American microbrews. A good place to disappear into a beer and feel like a regular by the second round.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A Mid City corner bar in an otherwise residential stretch, Crescent Sausage and Pie is the kind of neighborhood spot that keeps the lights a little too bright and doesn't apologize for it. Fragments of the original building, lost to Katrina, are worked into the walls, which gives the place a quiet history lesson you weren't expecting. The cocktail list is short; come for the atmosphere, not the mixology.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

Cold Amber beer, live jazz, and a room that looks like nothing has been touched since the Nixon administration. Fritzel's is a no-frills jazz pub on Bourbon Street that skips cocktails, skips mood lighting, and skips any pretense of being a bar that cares about its wine list. What it has instead is the music, which is the whole point, and an atmosphere that feels less performed than almost anything else on the block.

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

The bar where the Absinthe Frappé was invented, back when this corner of Bourbon Street was still a serious place to drink. The original bar counter survived Prohibition by getting auctioned off and exiled down the block; it's back now, in a back room, which feels about right. A French Quarter institution that pulls tourists, locals, and everyone in between through the same swinging door, trading on history that most bars would kill for.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Hurricane, that tall, rum-soaked fruit bomb, is said to have been born here, though New York City has lodged a competing claim. Either way, Pat O'Brien's is where it became a phenomenon, and five bars spread across several rooms and a sprawling courtyard ensure you have ample space to test that theory. The carriageway entrance, lined with crossed muskets, sets the tone before you even order.

1. Difford's Guide 2.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar off the lobby of the Loews Hotel, run by the Brennan family, the Commander's Palace dynasty that makes hospitality feel like a genetic condition. The signature Adelaide Swizzle comes with a "secret ingredient" the bartender will strongly imply is Falernum, plus a couple of theatrical pours he'll perform on request if you ask nicely and look like you mean it.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide