New Orleans has a stronger claim to its own culture than any other American city — it was French, then Spanish, then French again before it was American, and the result is a place that does not resemble the rest of the country in its architecture, its music or its food.
Where the music is
Not Bourbon Street, which is a drinking strip for tourists. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny, six blocks away, has a dozen venues within three blocks — the Spotted Cat, d.b.a., Snug Harbor for serious jazz. Preservation Hall in the French Quarter is a bare room with no bar and no air conditioning where traditional jazz is played nightly; tickets sell out ahead. For brass bands, look for a second line parade, which happens most Sunday afternoons and is announced locally rather than advertised.
The food
- Gumbo — thickened with a dark roux and either okra or filé powder; every family disputes the correct version.
- Jambalaya — rice cooked with the meat rather than beside it, Creole with tomato, Cajun without.
- Po'boy — the sandwich, on New Orleans French bread, filled with fried shrimp, oysters or roast beef with gravy.
- Beignets — square doughnuts under snowdrifts of icing sugar, at Café du Monde, open almost around the clock.
- Crawfish boil — seasonal, roughly January to June, and eaten with your hands from newspaper.
Creole is not Cajun
Creole cooking is the food of the city: French technique, African and Caribbean ingredients, tomatoes, butter. Cajun is rural, from the bayou country to the west, built on the descendants of Acadians expelled from Canada — spicier, simpler, pork and rice. Restaurants in the city blur them, but the distinction is real.
Beyond the Quarter
The Garden District has the antebellum mansions and Lafayette Cemetery. Tremé, just north of the Quarter, is one of the oldest Black neighbourhoods in the United States and the birthplace of much of the music. The Whitney Plantation an hour upriver is the only plantation museum in the country told from the perspective of the enslaved, and it is the most important thing to see in the region.
When to go
Mardi Gras falls in February or early March and books out a year ahead. Jazz Fest is late April into May. Summer is hot, wet and cheap; hurricane season runs June to November.