The 100 Best Places to Eat and Do in New Orleans

A personally signed welcome note from the chef arrives before the first course at this pescatarian tasting menu restaurant in Uptown, which pulls from the coastal cuisines of Senegal and South Louisiana in equal measure. West African masks line the walls, co-owner Afua Richardson works the room in spectacular fashion, and the kitchen holds a James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant. Seven courses, two seatings, and a cottage on Magazine Street.

1. The 50 #4 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Winner · Best New Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Winner · Best Chef: South · Serigne Mbaye

EJ Lagasse took over his father's legendary Warehouse District fine-dining room at 22, after stints at Frantzén and Core by Clare Smyth, and now holds two Michelin stars. The tasting menu threads Creole classics through a contemporary lens, BBQ shrimp tarts and deep-flavored gumbo alongside smoked salmon cheesecake. Floor-to-ceiling glass frames the kitchen like a stage, and the service team plays the room with genuine warmth. Emeril's, basically reinvented.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 2 Stars
3. The 50 #20 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants

Ana Castro grew up eating mariscos in Mexico City and now makes them with Gulf Coast shrimp, crab, and fish in a Bywater dining room tiled in pastel pink with terracotta lattice walls. The seafood-driven Mexican menu comes with a glossary on the back, which tells you this is not a Tex-Mex situation. It landed on North America's 50 Best Restaurants list and holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and Castro is a James Beard nominee.

1. Condé Nast Traveler The best new restaurants in the world
2. The 50 #30 · North America's 50 Best Restaurants
3. Food & Wine Arroz Negro · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year

A hand-lettered sign out front promises natural wines and a garden patio, which undersells things considerably. Inside this Bywater spot, a Michelin-starred contemporary tasting menu unfolds across a series of small, precise courses, each one built around sauces that do real work. The chef earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef: South, and the room is intimate enough that you notice every detail they put on the plate.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Blake Aguillard and Trey Smith

A wood-burning grill and a marble raw bar anchor this rustic-industrial seafood restaurant on Magazine Street, where everything worth eating came out of the Gulf not long ago. The smoked tuna dip is reason enough to sit down, but the real move for a group is a whole fish with a few sides. Food & Wine named the team among its Best New Chefs in 2024, and the New York Times put it on their New Orleans list. Loud, convivial, no bad seats.

1. Food & Wine Best New Chefs · Nicole Cabrera Mills
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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. Esquire La-Ti-Da · The Best Martinis in America
3. Wine Enthusiast The Wine Restaurant Hall of Fame

1. Food & Wine Boudin Boy · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. Food & Wine Kelly Jacques · Best New Chefs
3. The Infatuation Our Favorite Bakeries In The Country Right Now

The dining room walls, red and hung with African-American art, tell you this is a place with a history before you've touched the menu. A Creole fine dining institution in New Orleans, it holds a James Beard America's Classics Award and a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the cooking, gumbo, fried chicken, peach cobbler, earns every regulars' loyalty. The matriarchs still walk each table personally, which at a certain point stops being service and starts being something else.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · America's Classics: South
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

Formica tabletops and vinyl chairs set the scene at this Garden District breakfast spot, which serves nothing but breakfast and takes that mandate seriously. The menu runs from yogurt and granola to loaded grits, biscuits and gravy, and a riff on the fast-food McMuffin with sage sausage and gooey American cheese. A James Beard semifinalist that manages to feel nothing like one, in the best way.

1. Food & Wine Hashbrown and Roe · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
3. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

The copper accents and rich-hued interior visible through the Magazine Street window signal a sophisticated Indian restaurant that takes New Orleans ingredients as seriously as its spice rack. A family-run kitchen, it finds the overlap between Indian classics and Southern tradition, landing somewhere around curried seafood gumbo, which shouldn't work as well as it does. A James Beard nominee and a New York Times pick for the city's best.

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Arvinder Vilkhu
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

A quiet cottage in Mid-City that reads more neighborhood hideaway than Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant, which is a large part of the point. Sue Zemanick keeps the menu tight, maybe a dozen dishes leaning into Gulf seafood and French technique, and the room runs to dark green walls and warm gold tones. The kind of table where nobody rushes you and the food earns the silence. Zasu holds a Michelin star.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Star
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

This is the old-line Creole dining room on Royal Street where bananas foster was invented, and the servers still set it on fire at your table without losing track of your questions. It's fine dining in the jacket-and-good-posture sense, so you'll find yourself saying "powder room" without being asked. The bar program has James Beard attention of its own, and the Sazerac arrives the way it should.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurant
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant

A converted warehouse in the Central Business District, Cochon does Southern cooking with a Louisiana accent: wood-fired oysters, fried alligator, gumbo loaded with house-made andouille, and rabbit and dumplings pulled from the chef's family recipes. The cracklins with Steen's cane syrup make a strong case for arriving hungry. The whiskey and bourbon list is long enough to make the decision feel important. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group
2. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
3. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

Braised celery hearts with smoked beef tongue are a menu mainstay here, and they tell you everything: this is a French brasserie that means it. The chef owes more to Paris than to the French Quarter, though Gulf fish and red beans find their way in. His business partner runs one of the sharpest wine programs in town. The New York Times put it on their restaurant list in 2023, the same year Bon Appétit named it one of America's Best New Restaurants.

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants
2. The New York Times The Restaurant List
3. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants

The name is short for "saint," not "street," which tells you something about how seriously they take the bit. A tile-lined slice shop up front gives way, through an actual curtain, to a dim room with dark wood and funk on the speakers. East Coast-style pies, a tight cocktail list, and chicken Parm that earns its place on the menu. Ranked seventh on 50 Top Pizza's Slice USA list, this Magazine Street spot has done real work putting New Orleans on the pizza map.

1. 50 Top Pizza #7 · 50 Top Pizza Slice USA
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
3. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The Vaucroissant, a lattice croissant stuffed with sausage from Vaucresson's, a venerable Black-owned Seventh Ward institution, is a good place to start understanding what this neighborhood bakery is doing. The chef, a former dancer, bakes with a historian's eye: benne seeds on toffee cookies, cornbread muffins wrapped in their own husks. A 2025 James Beard Emerging Chef nominee, she's built something that tastes like New Orleans and remembers where it came from.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Emerging Chef · Kaitlin Guerin
2. Eater Best New Bakery
3. The New York Times 22 of the Best Bakeries Across the U.S. Right Now

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds

Dry-aged swordfish is not something most seafood restaurants attempt, but it's the kind of move that tells you exactly what kind of place GW Fins is. This upscale French Quarter dining room goes deep on seasonal fish, running cuts like sheepshead and fish collars alongside the more expected. The chef's been a James Beard semifinalist, and the room draws people who came prepared to order carefully and stay a while.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

The table by the window on St. Charles is the one to request, and once you're in it you'll understand why this place has been around forever. It's a full-service restaurant where French and Italian instincts run through Cajun and Creole cooking without apology or explanation. The house-made spaghetti fills tables every night, and the duck confit with dirty rice keeps people coming back.

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Pulled pork pressed between two fried plantains, dressed with mango sauce and pikliz, is a reasonable introduction to what this Treme restaurant is doing with Haitian cooking. Fritai is a bright, welcoming room where the Caribbean flavors run vivid and the bar leans on clairin, the Haitian cane spirit that most New Orleans cocktail menus haven't caught up to yet. A James Beard semifinalist two years running.

1. Esquire #37 · The Best New Restaurants in America
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

The dining room at this Uptown restaurant is painted floor to ceiling in bubblegum pink and emerald green, which turns out to be an accurate preview of the food. The kitchen calls itself "inauthentic," leaning into Asian and Indian flavors with detours wherever it wants, and the results hold a Michelin Bib Gourmand. Weekend brunch draws crowds happy to order everything and share. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist in 2024.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

This is a casual sandwich shop on Jackson Avenue where the menu reads like a dare: a collard green melt stacked double-decker on rye, wrapped in swiss and a pickled cherry pepper dressing. The place made the national circuit as one of Eater's best new restaurants in America and has since spawned a small empire of siblings. Order at the counter, eat fast, and expect the sandwich to follow you home.

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Mason Hereford

A casual lunch counter on Oretha Castle Haley that serves New Orleans Creole the way the neighborhood expects it: red beans, gumbo, Gulf seafood po' boys, priced so that going twice in a week doesn't require a conversation. The staff includes students learning the trade as part of a job-training mission, so the meal comes with a side of genuine purpose. The chef behind the kitchen spent years in upscale rooms before landing here, and the cooking shows it.

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
3. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

VHS tapes line the walls and neon washes over the tile at this Magazine Street restaurant from the chef behind Turkey and the Wolf. Mason Hereford runs his kitchen the same way he always has, cooking loud, maximalist food that borrows freely across cuisines and somehow lands in harmony every time. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and named to Bon Appétit's best new restaurants list. Subtlety fans may want to eat somewhere else.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
3. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America

Tuna crudo in charred green tomato aguachile is not the Italian that built this city's red-gravy reputation, and that's the whole point. This trattoria in the Faubourg Marigny does vegetable-driven antipasti, fresh pasta, Neapolitan pizza, and roasted meat with a lightness that locals treat as a minor civic relief. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans, which feels about right for the neighborhood canteen that quietly rewrote the local Italian conversation.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

Glittery chandeliers and wax candles do a lot of heavy lifting in this handsome fine dining room on Tchoupitoulas, where exposed brick and white tablecloths split the difference between grand and comfortable. The chef is a Louisiana native steering contemporary Creole cooking, and the kind of place where birthdays and anniversaries have been showing up for years. Friendly servers keep it from tipping into stiff-necked territory, which takes some skill when the room looks like this.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The handwashing station near the door is not decorative; injera this fresh demands clean hands and full attention. This Ethiopian restaurant on Esplanade Ridge fills its corner spot with wicker light fixtures, natural textiles, and wood tables with mustard cushions. The injera is made in house daily, the sambusas arrive golden and stuffed, and the vegetable combination platter is how you learn the menu before you know what to order.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

Platters of Ibérico pork and dry-aged txuleta arrive pre-sliced, Basque sidrería-style, which tells you everything about how Dolfy's wants you to eat. This Spanish pintxos and wood-fired grill spot on Freret Street was built for sharing, from passed gildas to charred leeks on romesco. The New York Times put it on their 2026 Restaurant List, and the room runs with the kind of easy energy that makes you order one more round.

1. The New York Times 2026 · The Restaurant List
2. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

The puffy pita comes out of a wood-burning oven with a char on it that makes the bread-and-hummus combination feel like a genuine argument. Saba is a roomy Middle Eastern restaurant on Magazine Street where Alon Shaya's menu reads casual, pickles, dips, salads, then lands on the table tasting brighter than the list suggests. The Michelin Guide has given it a Bib Gourmand, and the falafel, crackly outside and vivid green within, makes the case.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

A fifteen-minute ferry ride from the French Quarter lands you in Algiers, where Melissa Martin's second restaurant occupies a century-old property that reads more Provençal farmhouse than Louisiana. The Cajun-French cooking leans into whatever the season offers, stone fruit and wild grapes drifting across duck confit and dark roux gumbo. A 2026 James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, it made both the Times's New Orleans and national restaurant lists in 2025.

1. The New York Times 2025 · The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Isaac Toups
2. Eater Chef of the Year · Isaac Toups

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Bakery

A man in a tuxedo greets you at the door, which tells you most of what you need to know. Clancy's is an old-school fine dining room in Uptown New Orleans, white tablecloths and uniformed servers included, with a Creole menu that leans hard into seafood, French technique, and Cajun flavor. The fried oysters with brie have been a house signature long enough that regulars would riot if they disappeared.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

The chandelier-and-tile dining room reads like a 19th-century brasserie someone quietly upgraded from the inside. This is a modern American bistro on Magazine Street where the chef folds global techniques into the Creole tradition without making a fuss about it. The New York Times named it among New Orleans' 25 best right now, and a James Beard semifinalist nod followed. The food moves forward; the room pulls you back. Both things are happening at once, and that's kind of the point.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Michael Stoltzfus

The shrimp po'boy here has been the only reason most people need to visit this cash-and-counter sandwich shop in Uptown. Order at the counter, find a seat, wait for your name. The fried shrimp arrive on Leidenheimer bread with hot sauce, lettuce, mayo, and a pickle, and the whole thing costs what a sandwich should cost. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and has been around forever, which in New Orleans means something.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

Evviva is a Mediterranean dinner spot in the Marigny, the kind you walk to when you've had your fill of dodging ghost tours. The menu shifts daily, but grilled Gulf shrimp and anchovy bread tend to show up. Gin martinis at happy hour draw the date-night set, and the servers have clearly logged time at other good kitchens around town. It was a James Beard Best New Restaurant semifinalist.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

1. Food & Wine Charred Broccoli with Cornbread Romesco · Best Dishes Our Editors Ate This Year

1. Eater Best New Seafood Market and Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

LUVI is a Japanese and Shanghainese restaurant on Tchoupitoulas, tucked behind a door that swaps the traffic for a colorful, hushed dining room. It was serving Shanghainese dishes in New Orleans before most of the city knew to ask. The move is ordering far too many plates, dumplings and the dan dan noodles included, then losing count somewhere around the fourth round. The chef was a James Beard semifinalist.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Hao Gong

White tablecloths in an Uptown cottage near a bend in the river, which tells you something about how New Orleans operates. Brigtsen's is a Cajun-Creole restaurant where the chef spent years under Paul Prudhomme absorbing the bayou side of Louisiana cooking, then brought it back to the city and blended the two traditions into something that belongs entirely to this place. The room is unhurried, the menu is not trying to be fashionable, and that combination tends to fill tables with regulars.

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
3. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Restaurateur · Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski - Link Restaurant Group

The draft beer comes in a frosty goblet roughly the size of a young pumpkin, which tells you exactly what kind of place this is. Liuzza's by the Track is a barroom with a menu, the menu heavy on po' boys and Creole and Cajun stews that rotate as daily specials. The gumbo is a brothy shrimp version seasoned carefully enough that you probably won't reach for the hot sauce, though you will reach for that goblet.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Amarys Koenig Herndon and Jordan Herndon
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Amarys Koenig Herndon and Jordan Herndon

Doubles, the Trinidadian street snack of curried chickpeas on soft flatbread, landed in New Orleans largely because of this sunny Mid-City cafe. Chef-owner Lisa Nelson runs a compact menu of Trinbagonian cooking in a room that feels like it's been around forever. The fried fish on coco bread with plantains and hot sauce makes a strong case for the city's sandwich conversation. A neighborhood spot where you order at the counter and eat slowly.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

Salt-and-pepper frogs' legs and claypot catfish steaks are the signal that this is not the Vietnamese restaurant where you order the same three things. Tan Dinh is a family-run sit-down spot on the West Bank, the heart of New Orleans's Vietnamese American community, and the menu goes well past crowd-pleasing pho into dishes that reward a little curiosity. Roasted quail shows up; so does banh mi. The room is unpretentious, the cooking is not.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America

The house-made charcuterie case does most of the persuading at this beloved butcher and deli from Donald Link. Mortadella, head cheese, and a muffuletta stacked with house meats and olive salad run alongside a smoky Cubano and something called Le Pig Mac. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the bread is baked in-house. Order more than you think you need; the muffuletta alone could feed two.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

The name is shorthand for "let us feed you," which is a reasonable promise from an Indian restaurant that earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand. What started as pop-ups graduated into a proper brick-and-mortar in the Central Business District, where the tandoor turns out garlic-buttered naan and the dosa arrives golden, crisp, and served with sambar masala. The nonalcoholic Curry Nola-da, a pina colada riff with garam masala and curry leaves, signals that the kitchen has a sense of humor.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A po'boy shop that has been around forever, Parkway Bakery and Tavern earns a Michelin Bib Gourmand feeding the neighborhood from a sprawling, loud, indoor-outdoor room built for Saints games and serious eating. The menu is long but the point is clear: fried seafood, specialty, and meat po'boys on New Orleans French rolls. Regulars don't agonize over the list, they just order the Creole barbecue shrimp and get on with their afternoon.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants in New Orleans
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Marlon "Chicken” Chukumerije Williams

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards Top 20 Honourees · Elite 12 United States

1. Spirited Awards 2025 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. Central
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar – U.S. Central

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Melissa M. Martin
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: South · Melissa M. Martin

Friday lunch at this old-school Bourbon Street institution is a full-contact sport: pearls, suits, balloons, Champagne, and party hats arrive with the first seating and don't slow down. The mirrored, gold-accented dining room has been running French-Creole classics for generations, with tuxedoed servers and a menu that treats butter and cream as load-bearing ingredients. Come hungry and clear your afternoon.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Killer Po Boys started as a pop-up, which explains why it still feels like a place that has something to prove. Order at the counter, grab a table, and find a bottle of Crystal hot sauce waiting for you. The bread comes from Dong Phuong bakery, and the shrimp are seared rather than fried, dressed with sriracha aioli and pickled slaw. Barbecue chicken confit and a cheddar omelet round out a menu that takes the French Quarter's most obvious sandwich seriously.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The yellow facade and green doors on Magazine Street are a reliable landmark for this neighborhood bistro, where the room feels dressed up without demanding anything of you. The kitchen leans into Louisiana without becoming a greatest-hits reel: blue crab beignets are a signature the regulars order without looking, and the paneed rabbit is the kind of dish that makes you wonder why more places don't try harder.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The wood-fired oven does a lot of work here, from pizza through pasta and on to house-made ice cream. This wood-fired Italian spot off Magazine Street runs a menu broad enough that the table will agree on something, which in New Orleans is no small feat. Everything is made in house daily, and the room has that sleek-but-settled feel that suggests the place has been around forever without trying to look like it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A French-Creole neighborhood bistro set inside a cottage a few blocks from the river, Patois has been a quiet date-night fixture in Uptown for years. The room is cozy in the way that actually happens instead of being staged, and the kitchen keeps one foot in classic Creole while the other wanders interestingly. Deviled eggs finished with wonton noodles and furikake give a fair sense of how the chef thinks. Selected by the Michelin Guide.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dark blue corner building on Magazine Street turns heads before you even walk in, and the sleek dining room inside keeps the promise. This is a Garden District tasting menu spot where the chef pulls from across Asian cuisines, packaging the whole thing at a price that doesn't require a deep breath. Cocktails lean into Thai tea and lychee; the wine list chases small producers and back vintages. The Michelin Guide has it listed.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Fried chicken so deeply embedded in New Orleans lore that the Seaton family has been running this Southern lunch counter since before most food writers were born. The downtown dining room is sunny and spacious, a long way from the original Treme spot, but the bird hasn't changed. Order the gumbo with shrimp and blue crab first, then stay focused. First-timers who wander into the rest of the menu do so at their own risk.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bakery

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Bakery

1. Eater Bouillabaisse and Bread Basket · The 8 Best Meals I Ate This Year, 2024

1. Bon Appétit The Very Best Bagels in the US (Yes, Outside New York)

1. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants

New York-style slices in New Orleans, served at a counter in a room of concrete floors and no-frills tables, with a shaded outdoor bench area that feels like someone's backyard party got very serious about pizza. The crust holds up, the sauce has some tang to it, and whole pies outperform the slices even if most people never find that out. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza USA, which for a Bywater slice shop is not nothing.

1. 50 Top Pizza #27 · 50 Top Pizza USA

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

A New York-style slice shop in Metairie where the crust comes out thin and crackling the way it's supposed to. The room is small and colorful, more take-out counter than sit-down spot, and the vibe is easygoing and no-fuss. Fresh pasta shows up alongside the pizza, which keeps things interesting. If you're planning ahead, call a day in advance or you'll be waiting, and the waiting is not the fun part.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza USA Excellent Pizzerias

AJ's Jazzy Grill is a casual Creole counter in Tremé that began as a food truck under the Claiborne bridge, which explains why everything tastes faintly like a backyard cookout. There are a few tables and some TVs, but the real business is takeout and delivery. Come in sweatpants, order the sweet potato pie the chef's mom bakes, and don't bother pretending you're stopping by for the atmosphere.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

Ba Mien is a big, casual Vietnamese dining room out on Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East, where the menu goes well past the phở-and-spring-rolls starter pack. You can build your own rolls from grilled pork paste, fresh herbs, and crunchy vegetables, or order steamed rice rolls with peanut sauce. Come for breakfast and pair either one with French-dripped coffee and condensed milk, which is how most of the room seems to do it.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

Bayona is a Creole restaurant in a French Quarter cottage, and the courtyard out back is the move. It's all plants and cobblestones, enough of them to make a Roman side street feel underpaved. Tables here are for lingering, not turning, so you can take your time with a friend or two without being swept along by a tourist parade. Expect a proper sit-down dinner, so dress like someone who's about to be served duck liver pâté.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

Budsi's is a sit-down Thai restaurant on a brick corner in the Marigny, a long way from the pop-up it started as. It's built for splitting things, so bring friends and let the table fill with wings, satays, and dumplings. Everyone gets their own curry or noodle dish, because sharing has limits. Going solo for a cocktail and larb is allowed, but the table does the real work here. The Infatuation includes it on its list of the city's best restaurants.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

Castnet is a casual seafood counter in New Orleans East, where the fried shrimp po'boy comes dressed on Leidenheimer bread and the sausage version is made with Patton's. There's also boiled seafood, gumbo, and plate lunches for anyone with a different plan. A snowball stand sits on one side and a barbecue joint on the other, so the parking lot doubles as a very low-stakes tasting menu. The Infatuation lists it among the city's best.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

Chapter IV is a modern Creole restaurant from the family behind Dooky Chase, which means the gumbo arrives with a dark roux and a full cast of sausage, shrimp, chicken, and crab. The menu is long enough to stall a first-timer, though the squid ink linguine is a good place to start. Dress like you might run into someone, because by all accounts your ex, your old coworker, and half your high school class are already inside.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

There's no menu at this old-school New Orleans steakhouse, just a cut, a dressing, a starch, and the implicit social contract that you say yes to the onion rings. No leather booths, no cowboy kitsch, no performance of steakhouse-ness whatsoever. The room has been left mostly untouched by its current owners, which is the right call. The New York Times named it among the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

Cherry Coffee Roasters started as a pop-up inside a deli and somehow ended up with a roastery across the river in Gretna. The Uptown cafe sits in a sunny old building on a quiet stretch of Laurel Street, and it's the sort of place where laptops outnumber conversations. Over in Gretna, the cafe is attached to the roasting floor, so your pastry comes with a free lesson in what you're drinking if you catch a cupping.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

Deanie's on Hayne is a casual, family-run seafood house out in the Lakeview-adjacent stretch, far from any Bourbon Street souvenir shop with a daiquiri machine. The platters arrive heaped with fried shrimp, catfish, stuffed crab, and oyster patties, and they're built for sharing, though nobody will fault you for not. The daily specials run around twenty dollars. On Thursdays, the original owner, Maw Maw Deanie, sometimes stops by your table to chat.

1. The Infatuation The 27 Best Restaurants In New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

Gravel crunches under your tires before you've even opened the car door, which sets the tone for this family-run Creole-Italian roadhouse across the river from New Orleans. The menu is short but the portions are not, and the table fills fast with baked oysters, housemade sausage, and crab salad. The house rule, learned the hard way by everyone, is to order more than you think you need and split everything.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in New Orleans Right Now

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops in New Orleans