New Orleans

[ChadJK]

I'm going to be in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a week in April. Anyone have any experience there? Anything I should make it a point to check out or anything I should avoid? Thanks!

[Coyote]

New Orleans French Quarter, Jackson Square, Bourbon Street, Commander's Palace, go into Central Grocery and find Mufulettas, and Galatoire's for sure, and just for the heck of this get some Turbodog at Abita Springs.

[Louie]

Also just the French Market is really cool. You can get oysters right off the boats and have them shucked and served on the spot.

[ricko]

If you are a Jazz fan, or interested in American music history, check out Preservation Hall in the French Quarter. These days I guess you have to get your tickets ahead of time, since it’s become a bucket list thing for tourists.

If you should come across a ‘second line’, keep in mind that everyone is invited to join in.

[nativeomahan]

OMG I’m jealous! Such a city for food and entertainment connoisseurs.
It’s been 8 years since my last trip there but over the years these places are iconic and offer superlative food and/or dining experiences (all are in The Quarter):
Verti Marte (fabulous po’boys)
Central Grocery (for the Muffallettas)
Muriel’s Jackson Square (ask to see the haunted dining room)
Croissants d’Or (perfect for breakfast. French/Vietnamese patisserie)
Clover Grill (you really should be hung over to visit)

[ChadJK]

Back from our trip...

We went on a swamp tour hosted by Cajun Encounters Tour Co.. It was really neat and I enjoyed floating through the bayou with the alligators and Spanish moss.

We also did a carriage ride through the French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny. It was nice and we picked a perfect evening for it. The carriage ride was done by Royal Carriages. There's also a LOT of walking tours you can do. It's almost comical to see how many groups of pedestrians are all on walking tours and stopped at the same historic/haunted building at the same time. Our carriage operator did tell us that Faubourg Marigny is more popular with the locals for watching Jazz bands than the French Quarter.

I asked around about the best place for Gumbo and Jambalaya. The gist I got was it's not in the French Quarter. I heard a lot of grumbling about how after Hurricane Katrina, COVID-19, and Hurricane Ida that a lot of the ma-and-pa-owned places have failed or had to sell and what's now available in the French Quarter are all owned by the same few corporations and serving cr‍ap. Some of that I shrug off as I expect a bit of down-with-capitalism when I ask 20-somethings about the best places to go. However, we heard it multiple times from multiple people. One place I had bookmarked before we went and that was suggested was Jacques-Imo's Cafe. The food there was excellent. Their jambalaya was a little more red and on the sweeter side than I'm used to in my limited experience, but it was still very good.

I did make it a point to eat fried chicken at Willie Mae's Scotch House. It was superb!

We tried the beignets at Café du Monde. They put a literal cup of powdered sugar on them. You should see all of the white powdered sugar on the ground in and around Café du Monde. The white markings under every chair and bench are amusing. My wife loves beignets. She did get scolded for asking about dipping sauces. One waitress said, "Where you from? Ain't no dippin' sauce. In New Orleans beignets just powdered sugar." I almost died laughing at that. For me, they were tasty but essentially just a square funnel cake. I did try their coffee with chicory root, but I'm not much of a coffee aficionado. It tasted like coffee-flavored coffee to me. lol

We had breakfast a couple of times at Ruby Slipper. I'm not much of a breakfast eater, but we had a picky eater with us and one thing she does eat fairly consistently is breakfast food. So, we tend to seek it out when we're out of town. They serve up a good breakfast. They have several locations around town too. Other than Café du Monde, the only other time we ate in the French Quarter we had a late breakfast at Café Fleur de Lis. It was very good too. We did try Wakin' Bakin' just because it was so close to our hotel. It was okay.

Central Grocery & Deli is temporarily closed (and mostly gutted) as they renovate from Hurricane Ida damage. They are, however, selling their Muffulettas next door at Sidney's Wine Cellar. I'm not a big sandwich guy, but you can't go to New Orleans and not get a Muffuletta. I do agree with others that liking a Muffuletta is all about whether or not you like olives. It's definitely one of the most pronounced flavors in the sandwich. I love olives and I enjoyed my first Muffuletta.

One thing I didn't think to look for until the last couple of days of our trip was blackened food like blackened chicken, steak, fish, and seafood. There really wasn't much of it. At least not at the places we went to. I love a good blackened chicken sandwich. Perhaps we were just at the wrong places or perhaps Cajun blackening just isn't as popular in New Orleans as an outsider might assume.

I didn't realize New Orleans was home to the National World War II Museum. We drove by it one morning on our way to something else and were like, "Oh, okay, so that's here." Then, one morning there was rain forecast, so we visited the museum. Cool place inside. Everyone enjoyed it, but it's huge and "museum fatigue" set in with our group before we saw everything.

They have the worst roads I have ever encountered in a city. Truly terrible. Wavy, full of potholes, and unevenly patched. That combined with the severe lack of parking and you may want to avoid renting a car. We rented one, but if I go back I won't bother to rent a car again. Ubers and Lyfts were plentiful. and, of course, there's the buses and trolleys.

New Orleans can be an assault on the nose. Especially in the French Quarter and Central Business District. You're inhaling skunky secondhand pot smoke, smelling rotting trash, or smelling urine. A hot humid climate + disproportionate number of drunks + crowded urban conditions. As with most places that are humid year round there's this sort of soil to everything (is it mildew?) that makes walls and buildings and roads just look grungy. I did have a few people warn me before going there that New Orleans was "dirty."

The homeless are plentiful too. There are decent-sized homeless encampments under overpasses and, especially in the French Quarter, there are just homeless men laying on the sidewalk. One guy we had to step around as he was just laying there twitching and mumbling to himself with an empty needle in his hand. Panhandling and trying to scam the tourists is rampant. A little common sense on the tourists' part goes a long way.

Overall, I really dug it. I didn't realize the French Quarter would be so big and the architecture is so unlike what you find in most American cities. There's a lot of history there. The French Quarter is, of course, more than just Bourbon Street and more than just bars. Like most places, there's so much to see and do (and eat!) that you just can't cram it all into a single trip.

[damonhynes]

Errybody should visit New Orleans at least once. Chad, your impressions mirror mine (I went in 2007). The Quarter smells like a downtown, but really no worse than the Old Market.

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

[ChadJK]

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

Have you seen that the Mississippi River is trying to reroute itself into the Atchafalaya River?

[damonhynes]

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

Have you seen that the Mississippi River is trying to reroute itself into the Atchafalaya River?

Yep, and the ACofE has said they'll 'spare no expense' to keep the Mississippi flowing where it is, which is the definition of hubris and playing God.

[Garrett]

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

Have you seen that the Mississippi River is trying to reroute itself into the Atchafalaya River?

Yep, and the ACofE has said they'll 'spare no expense' to keep the Mississippi flowing where it is, which is the definition of hubris and playing God.

It's part of the reason Louisiana has been losing so much of its land too. In geographic terms a more accurate map of the state now basically looks like this

[nebport5]

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

Have you seen that the Mississippi River is trying to reroute itself into the Atchafalaya River?

Yep, and the ACofE has said they'll 'spare no expense' to keep the Mississippi flowing where it is, which is the definition of hubris and playing God.

The great non-fiction writer John McPhee covers this topic in a portion of his book The Controls of Nature. I highly recommend it(and McPhee in general). It's probably my favorite of his works.

[damonhynes]

I'm an infrastructure junkie and the Pontchartrain Causeway has to be seen to be believed. I still can't get over the fact that I blew off a drive over the Huey Long Bridge, though.

Have you seen that the Mississippi River is trying to reroute itself into the Atchafalaya River?

Yep, and the ACofE has said they'll 'spare no expense' to keep the Mississippi flowing where it is, which is the definition of hubris and playing God.

The great non-fiction writer John McPhee covers this topic in a portion of his book The Controls of Nature. I highly recommend it(and McPhee in general). It's probably my favorite of his works.

I have read that. I saw it in The New Yorker and it is a fantastic piece of writing.

[nativeomahan]

Glad you enjoyed your time in one of this nation’s truly great tourist cities.