Today, there are new ways to engage with the city’s history, arts scene and natural beauty, including the Lafitte Greenway, a biking and pedestrian path linking the French Quarter to the lovely area around City Park, where there are fewer tourists.
How to spend a perfect weekend in New Orleans
By Richard Fausset
NZ Herald·
11 mins to read
One way to see parts of New Orleans, on Jan. 27, 2023. Photo / Sara Essex Bradley / The New York Times
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Artefacts like an advertisement for the 1859 opening of the French Opera House, with text in French and English, evoke ghost worlds (the Opera House burned down in 1919). An 18-minute film on French Quarter history, projected across four walls, covers 300-plus years of immigration, epidemics, nation-to-nation handoffs and the neighbourhood’s libertine streak.
The gift shop is one of the best in town: Find handmade wooden spoons for stirring a roux (US$21) and prints of New Orleans musicians by local photographer Michael P. Smith (from US$35 unframed).
5.30pm | Drink to your health
Bourbon St beckons, just one block away, with its river of whiskey-fuelled partying pedestrians. If you find yourself, say, rapping Tone Loc lyrics at a random karaoke joint, no one will judge.
For a less cacophonous experience, seek out Jewel of the South, a bar-restaurant set in an old Creole cottage on St. Louis St, where the city’s storied cocktail tradition is both reverently upheld and inventively remixed. Start with a tart, lively Brandy Crusta (US$16), a 19th-century New Orleans invention, served in a sugar-encrusted glass, then move on to a Night Tripper (US$14), named for New Orleans piano giant Mac Rebennack, also known as Dr. John.
It is a round, mellow, confident concoction of bourbon, amaro, Liquore Strega and Peychaud’s bitters — the drink equivalent of one of Rebennack’s more restrained Duke Ellington covers.
7pm | Head to the Gallic side
In the Bywater, a formerly working-class neighbourhood hugging the Mississippi River that has been altered of late by an influx of the hip and the bourgeois, the bar scene is charmingly scruffy and low-key.
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Have dinner at N7, named for the old auto route from Paris to the French Riviera. The restaurant opened in 2015 but exudes the offhand wabi-sabi of a local institution decades older.
Savour a natural wine in a bar adorned with vintage Parisian flotsam (an old Cahiers du Cinema cover; a photo of Jane Birkin as Melody Nelson) and order the reliably comforting coq au riesling (US$25). For the budget-minded, there are hard-boiled eggs (US$1) at the bar, set in a wire carousel.
For live music nearby, try Saturn Bar, a Kennedy-era dive with an eclectic gamut spanning cumbia to spiky dance-punk.
9pm | Dance and shake
Friday is usually brass band night (US$10 cover) at Bullet’s Sports Bar, a friendly corner tavern in the Seventh Ward neighbourhood. Pass the vigorous security pat-down at the door, sidle up to the bar and order a vodka “setup” (US$18) — a half-pint of Absolut, with plastic cups for your friends and mixers for an added charge.
Sporty’s Brass Band has been holding down the Friday gig at Bullet’s recently. The band’s job is to levitate this workaday bar the way yippies once sought to levitate the Pentagon. Unlike the yippies, Sporty’s success rate hovers around 100 per cent. (Note: Bullet’s, oddly, does not allow patrons under the age of 30 on live music nights; if you are younger, it’s not as if you don’t have options.)
Saturday
8am | Grab a biscuit Uptown
The 10km commercial corridor of Magazine St is a glorious mishmash of shops, art galleries and good places to eat, with surprises on nearly every block. For breakfast Uptown, stop in for a flaky cheddar-and-chive biscuit (US$4.75) at La Boulangerie, a New Orleans take on a classic French bakery with a happy thrum on Saturday mornings.
Take it to go and stroll along Magazine St, taking notes on places you might want to hit up when they open later in the day: Magpie is a standout vintage clothing and jewellery store, and Sisters in Christ, which sells records and books, is well attuned to the city’s DIY arts underground.
Shawarma on the Go, inside a Jetgo gas station, is notable for its Lebanese iced tea with pine nuts. Crunchy, cold, aromatic and savoury-sweet, the drink is a local spin on a traditional Lebanese drink called jallab.
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11am | Paddle the urban bayou
In the city’s earlier days, Bayou St. John was a crucial boat-traffic route from Lake Pontchartrain to the heart of the French settlement. Since Hurricane Katrina, the placid waterway has undergone significant ecological restoration and now presents paddlers with a mashup of city vibes and Louisiana wild.
Kayak-Iti-Yat offers a two-hour kayak tour for US$49 per person and launches from a spot about 5km from the French Quarter (beginners welcome, reserve ahead). You may see turtles in the mud, egrets and pelicans fishing on the surface, and the occasional alligator on the lurk.
You will most likely float by the Pitot House, the 1799 West Indies-style home once occupied by New Orleans’ first US mayor. You may also exchange pleasantries with neighbours walking their dogs along the banks.
1.30pm | Taste Mid-City’s Best
Explore New Orleans food at its casual best in the Mid-City area, an eclectic mix of residential neighbourhoods. The eggplant parmesan (US$17) with a side of gumbo (US$8) at Liuzza’s shows how Sicilian immigrants have contributed to the Creole culinary conversation, while Parkway Bakery and Tavern turns out some of the city’s best po’boys, which it began serving nearly a century ago to feed striking streetcar operators.
The tiny and affordable 1000 Figs, a falafel and hummus place with a short, smart wine list, gives a taste of New Orleans’ recent love affair with Middle Eastern cooking, and Katie’s is a classic haunt notable for its side-street charm and a menu full of gut-busting local specialties, including a signature crawfish beignet (US$16).
3.30pm | Meander in a sculpture garden
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden (free) in New Orleans City Park, was expanded in 2019. Here the primordial south Louisiana landscape meets the shock of the new, with nearly 100 contemporary sculptures from the likes of Frank Gehry, Anish Kapoor and Larry Bell set amid lagoons and the hulking, twisting majesty of live oak trees.
A 20m glass bridge designed by Elyn Zimmerman is adorned with depictions of the Mississippi’s snaking paths. An indoor pavilion features another Mississippi-themed work from Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, which uses glassy green marbles to depict the river and its tributaries.
The work spreads up a wall and on to the ceiling, suggesting the untameable nature of water, despite the best intentions of levee builders.
7pm | Try Japanese, New Orleans style
New Orleans takes its traditions seriously. But the city is also open to fresh ideas and outside influences, particularly those with a common culinary denominator. (Vietnamese refugees began settling here in the 1970s, and their impact on the dining scene continues, with the line between banh mi and po’boy growing fuzzier by the year.)
In the Uptown neighbourhood, chef Jacqueline Blanchard, who grew up in bayou country and has worked at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, gives the Japanese izakaya concept a gentle Louisiana twist at Sukeban. Here, tamaki hand rolls (starting at US$7) can be adorned with mild Cajun Bowfin caviar (US$10). Potato salad (US$7), that old Southern standby, is re-imagined with pickled carrots and the crispy, tiny dried fish known as niboshi.
9pm | Hop the neighbourhood bars
Walk down Oak St to Maple Leaf Bar, a live music institution that opened in 1974 and remains one of the best venues to see local blues, R&B, brass band and jazz acts. James Booker, widely considered one of the finest piano players in a city long on piano genius, was a regular on the Maple Leaf’s small stage before his death in 1983.
Wander in the other direction on Oak St to take in the joys of Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge, a proudly divey shack of a place where cheap drinks are poured in a tenebrous atmosphere perfect for the hatching of plots or the making of late-night friends.
Sunday
9am | Check in on a new literary hub
Mornings might be the best time to enjoy a walk in the French Quarter and the Faubourg Marigny, the Quarter’s more reserved sister neighbourhood just next door. The amateur drinkers have been scooped off the streets, cleaning crews have worked to neutralise the previous night’s party-town bouquet, and the sun is not yet out in full force.
End up at Baldwin & Co., a Black-owned bookstore in the Marigny that opens early (it’s also a coffee shop) and showcases the work of Black authors from comic and activist Dick Gregory to New Orleans fiction master Maurice Carlos Ruffin to vegan comfort-food entrepreneur Pinky Cole. Even on Sunday mornings, the place can feel like an old-school literary salon, with customers passionately debating and discussing current events.
11am | Let brunch rule
Few cities take the art of brunch as seriously as New Orleans. There is an entire local mythology built around the meal and its popularisation more than a century ago, which is credited to a German Francophone chef named Madame Begue.
For the modern-day brunch vibe, go to the Elysian Bar, set inside Hotel Peter and Paul, a renovated former church, schoolhouse, convent and rectory in the Marigny. If the weather is good, grab a spot in the courtyard. Linger over chicken liver toast (US$14) with red onion jam and apple, or Baked Eggs in Purgatory (US$20), with tomato, ricotta and chimichurri. Accompany with a Mother Superior cocktail (US$14) — a light concoction of rosé, aloe, cucumber, mint and lime — to atone for any sinful thoughts of abandoning obligations back home and staying a little longer.
KEY STOPS
The Historic New Orleans Collection offers a free history and culture museum in the French Quarter.
Magazine Street has a thoroughfare well suited for walking, shopping and dining.
Bayou St. John is a waterway perfect for paddling with tour operators like Kayak-Iti-Yat.
The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden presents contemporary art in a stunning outdoor setting.
WHERE TO EAT
La Boulangerie is the city’s take on a French bakery.
The Elysian Bar, inside Hotel Peter and Paul, is where to soak up brunch culture.
Shawarma on the Go, inside a gas station, offers one of the most refreshing Lebanese drinks around.
N7 offers French-inspired dining on a side street in the Bywater neighbourhood.
Liuzza’s is an old-school Italian Creole restaurant.
Parkway Bakery; Taver serves a great po’boy.
1000 Figs is an affordable, hip Mediterranean restaurant.
Katie’s Restaurant and Bar is a classic neighbourhood haunt that serves gut-busting New Orleans food, including a crawfish beignet.
Sukeba is a Japanese izakaya with Louisiana twists.
WHERE TO STAY
The city’s new outpost of the Four Seasons is set in a refurbished 34-storey office tower, with some rooms offering stunning views of the Mississippi River. Doubles start around US$360.
The Hotel Saint Vincent, in the lower Garden District, operates in a 19th-century building that was formerly an orphanage. The hotel, which is near some of the city’s most beautiful residences, has a guests-only bar called the Chapel Club. Doubles start around US$199.
The Alder Hotel is a clean, contemporary and affordable place in the heart of Uptown New Orleans, and close to the thriving restaurant and bar scene on Freret Street. Doubles start around US$110.
Affordable short-term rentals abound in the Bywater, a scruffy-hip neighbourhood near the French Quarter and rife with its own pleasures, including Euclid Records, a must for music fans, and Crescent Park, which has a path alongside the Mississippi. The Bywater can be dodgy at night; prudence and discretion are advised.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Writer: Richard Fausset
Photos: Sara Essex Bradley
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