Everything we learned about food in New Orleans! What it is, where it came from, and how to best enjoy it - from a tourists' point of view.
Purpose of this Post
Now obviously, I am no local here and I am not trying to impersonate one. The food aspect of the culture and history in this city was so rich and interesting, I wanted to write about what we learned in the span of a month.
I'll be describing the food itself, filling in what I learned of its origins/history, and naming the establishments we were told to sample these foods at. While many of these foods can be found on many menus and many signs throughout the city and surrounding areas, locals advised us that some restaurants/shops don't put quite as much love into their production of these staples as others will. It all depends on what the shop/restaurant specialized in.
Introduction
Immediately, anyone with eyes can see that the community here really cares about their food. You can smell the food as you walk down the street, you see books about the food in store windows, and not only are there a variety of places to eat (and some have long lines), but the gift shops are selling mixes or spices so you can take home a piece of that New Orleans food with you.
Before coming here, Nate and I could not recall trying things like jambalaya, gumbo, king cake, pralines, beignets, chicory coffee, cat fish, muffulettas, or po boys. In fact we had only ever heard of three of those things (jambalaya, gumbo, and beignets). As we explored organically, it was impossible to miss most of these items - they were on signs and menus many places we went and we were able to order them as we were out and about.
While visiting the Oak Alley plantation, we learned how staple dishes like gumbo, jambalaya, and dirty rice were made by slaves due to their versatility, simpleness, and nutrition. As we learned more by seeing and talking to locals and other travelers, we knew a food tour was needed if we really wanted to begin to understand the important role food plays in New Orleans culture and history - so that's what we did.
Food Tours
Maybe you think that sounds boring, or maybe you think it sounds delicious - but we thought it was fascinating...and also did find it to be delicious. Free Walking Tours had a "pay what you can" tour about food in the French Quarter, they stop by food places that you can sample along the way so we were sure to bring some money with us. So we scheduled ours for Saturday, January 21st, 2023 at 2pm and were told to meet our tour guide Matt at the arch in the French Market.
French Market
We were surprised and delighted that we had somehow missed the French Market all this time we had been there and were getting to discover it for the first time on this tour! It was a genius start to a food tour - reminding us of the farmers market we have in Rochester, NY, with vendors at tables they had set up selling goods.
It was basically one super long pathway and the first half was almost all food while the second half was almost all other goods like clothes, art, plants, music, jewelry, etc. As we walked through the part with food, delicious smells were all around us. We saw an oyster bar (literally a bar with bar stools that served oysters), and signs for alligator bites, apple beignets, cheesy crawfish bread, po boys, frog legs, Cajun jambalaya, and a wide variety of beverages - pretty much any beverage we could imagine was available. At 2pm, many tourists were already drinking the kind with alcohol in them and the atmosphere just had a very happy and exciting feel to it.
Oyster bar located in the French Market
Muffulettas
We found our tour guide, and he encouraged us to go sample something, telling us that his #1 recommendation was something called a muffuletta (moof - a - let - a) from Alberto's. This was the first time Nate or I had heard such a word and we have had a fun time pronouncing it ever since. We learned it was a sandwich so large, Alberto's will only sell it in halves ($11) or quarters ($7) and it consists of Italian deli meats, cheeses, and a marinated olive salad. I love olives, but not as much deli meats and cheese, whereas Nate is the opposite - but we decided to share a quarter.
Well that muffuletta blew our minds. Reflecting on the whole month here, that sandwich was the most delicious thing Nate and I had - and probably the most delicious we have ever had in our whole lives.
A half sized muffuletta we ordered from Alberto's on our last day out to enjoy at City Park
The muffuletta was the PERFECT ratio of a charcuterie board in a sandwich - then Tour Guide Matt told us that when sailors would come in from the port for lunch, they would want charcuterie boards. There would be so many men trying to eat their bread, meats, cheese, olives, and olive oil that there wasn't enough seating during the lunch rushes and men would be balancing these different parts on their arms trying to enjoy it standing up. So they invented a sandwich with all the ingredients they loved in there so it would be easier to hold and enjoy.
General History
After the incredible start with those muffulettas, Tour Guide Matt told us about the 3 main cultures influencing the food here - the French, enslaved West Africans, and indigenous people. All bringing their own dishes but also all influencing each other's.
In the 1800s, there were more freed women of color than men in New Orleans, so not all of them could marry since it was illegal for them to marry a white man and they were not marrying slaves either. So these women would cook up and serve sweets like beignets, coffee, and pralines.
Beignets
We had first learned of this dessert in 2009 when Tiana cooked her famous "man catching beignets" on the big screen in Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." They looked incredible in the animated movie and we thought they certainly lived up the hype in real life. Squared shaped fried dough with generous amounts of confectioners sugar piled on - you can find beignets on menus and signs throughout New Orleans, but the place everyone goes is Café Du Monde.
Café Du Monde ONLY serves beignets and beverages (hot chocolate and chicory coffee), and when a place only serves one food item, it is generally safe to assume that one item is going to be awesome. Café Du Monde does not take reservations and you want to be mindful of when you try to go, since many times we walked by, the line to get a table was wrapped around 2 sides of the perimeter. The service was incredible, we found the food to be very fairly priced, and if you venture towards the bathrooms, you can see the kitchen and sneak a peak at the beignet making process!
Tour Guide Matt did not want us to wait in the long lines at Café Du Monde, so we went to Café Beignet. While Café Du Monde is a sit down service type of restaurant, Café Beignet has a counter you wait in line and then order at, as well as many more food options. At Café Beignet you can get different kinds of beignets (we saw they had chocolate beignets) and you can take what you order to go.
Chicory Coffee
Another New Orleans staple that got started from when coffee was rationed. Well people still needed to have their coffee, so to compensate for these rations, they began to cut it with a chicory root. Chicory can give the coffee a bitter taste but this mixture has since been improved upon by adding creams that make the more bitter chicory taste more delicious. This is a great beverage to sample at Café Du Monde (as pictured above with the beignets).
Pralines
When I heard this word, I did not imagine a sweet treat, I was thinking seafood. Tour Guide Matt said pralines looked like cookies, but do not be fooled, these are not cookies. They are so sweet, that one person usually does not even eat one whole praline in one sitting. They are confections that come in a variety of flavors and often have some kind of pecan or other nut on top or inside. You will see signs for pralines all throughout New Orleans, but Tour Guide Matt took us to Leah's Pralines, a shop in the French Quarter where you can sample little chunks to see if these are something you'd want to purchase.
Image of pralines taken from The Spruce Eats recipe
Antoine's Restaurant
Across the street from Leah's Pralines, stood the oldest family run restaurant in America. Opened in 1840, Antoine's not only is now well known for it's top notch service and food, but for it's witness to history. Many famous people from presidents, a pope, celebrities, and more have eaten at Antoine's and left an autograph, note, or photo to commemorate their visit. I have another post about our experience at Antoine's if you want to learn more about what you can expect while eating there, but I will say here make sure you ask for a tour if you go! Over the years as buildings on the block went up for sale, Antoine's would acquire them and has expanded into many different and themed rooms that are filled with historical displays!
I do have a lot more to say about how much we loved Antoine's and I did that here at: https://thetravelingpetfam.wixsite.com/thetravelingpetfam/post/antoine-s
Italian Dishes in New Orleans
Tour Guide Matt also spoke to us about how Italian food influenced local cuisines, for instance, by introducing tomatoes! Apparently Creoles and Cajuns will get into very heated debates about if tomato belongs in gumbo, due to one of them being influenced by the Italians while the other was not.
And Italians were also influenced by New Orleans as well. You'll find Italian red sauce down here is not as light as other places in America or in Italy. They have taken from gumbo and thickened up their sauce. They even call it red gravy here.
Gumbo
What all New Orleanians of different backgrounds can agree on, is when outsiders mess up their food. We heard a story about Disney posting a recipe for healthy gumbo - it was missing the key ingredient that makes gumbo gumbo and then they poured it over quinoa instead of rice. The New Orleans community took this as the final straw and the video received so many negative comments, Disney took it down and issued an apology. This was all the information we retained about gumbo, we did get to try some a few different times. It was served on most menus and we enjoyed it as a side to our meals.
Po Boys
Po boys were originally called poor boys from the days of the streetcar workers in New Orleans being on strike. When they weren't making money, the community supported them by bringing them food from whatever was available. Usually it was potato's and gravy on bread but it could also be any meat on a bread resembling a hoagie roll. Tour Guide Matt said po boys are not expensive and if you're paying more than 10-11 dollars it's not worth it. Also this is a sandwich he told us to not get at restaurants that don't specialize in them. When he told us this, we had already made that mistake, but when we remedied it by ordering poboys at Killer Poboys, we were able to appreciate how true that advice was.
I know it goes fast in this video because I wasn't trying to catch the poboys as much as the vibe, but these blew our minds from Killer Poboys and then we carried them out to the street with us. We also brought the poboy leftovers to the parade we went to after this.
King Cake
This was an item I was very curious about, as I had seen so many books and signs and bakeries selling these "king cakes." We learned from our tour that the French brought King Cake - a flaky croissant like bread with sweet icings on it. They would bake one bean into it and if you had the slice with the bean, that was good luck. When New Orleans got a hold of this dessert, they added cream cheese, and decided instead of a bean in the cake, they would put a little baby Jesus in there. And now if you get the little baby Jesus - you have to buy the next King Cake. There are many different varieties, Tour Guide Matt said his favorite was a Vietnamise version that hit the town in 2017 but is rising high in popularity every year since. King cakes are ONLY sold during Mardi Gras season which starts January 6th.
Found in many shop windows and bakeries, was this book - which is what first sparked my interest in King Cake!
Crawfish Boil
Crawfish are in season from January - July, peaking in March, April, and May. These are the best times to purchase crawfish - live or boiled - and the best times to find crawfish boils. A crawfish boil is when huge amounts of crawfish are boiled, usually with other foods like corn or potatoes, and with spices! Sometimes the boiled food is just dumped onto a table to be enjoyed. Boils can be found at parties, but if you are a tourist in New Orleans and want to try and catch one, restaurants will host crawfish boils that people can sign up to join in on.
We looked up good places to buy boiled crawfish (we mostly use google reviews and Reddit as our online guides). Our first destination was out of crawfish! As soon as we walked in the worker behind the counter said they were out of crawfish which we hadn't realized could be a thing at 4 o clock on a Wednesday. So we made sure to start calling ahead to places to confirm they still had boiled crawfish available. We ended up at Crawfish King where boiled crawfish was $6.49 a pound and live was $3.50. We picked up one pound each which we thought was plenty and also ordered some corn and potatoes. Everything is given to you im plastic bags.
We also had to look up how to eat crawfish to make sure we were doing it right. The meat is in the lower body/tail. You split the crawfish in half, and many people enjoy slurping the juice from the head (meaning the juice from spiced/flavored water the crawfish was boiling in). Then you attempt different methods of getting the meat out of the tail until you figure out what works for you. Also the corn was SPICY.
Everything Else
Some foods we still experienced but didn't retain as much knowledge about - we did eat jambalaya and dirty rice when we were at restaurants and enjoyed it very much. We had oysters at Antoine's (creator of the Rockefeller oyster), enjoyed the atmosphere at sports bars to watch playoff games, tried catfish (since that's also on menus everywhere) and made sure to explore the local grocery stores so we could compare prices and products.
A fun thing I noticed at the King Cake bakery we went to was a bunch of ice creams for sale and they all had distinct New Orleans food flavors! Those flavors were praline crunch, Mardi Gras pie, Creole cream cheese, coffee and chicory, king cake, and banana foster.
The different ice cream flavors!
Just Have Fun
There are so many food options in New Orleans and so much to try, it might even seem overwhelming. But ultimately I would advise above all else to just follow your nose, look for good prices, and don't spend your precious time standing in long lines if you can help it! With so much to explore and so many options, there's always somewhere else to go if a place is crowded or closed so no worries! Just enjoy!
Hopefully this post sheds some light on what to expect food wise on a trip to New Orleans. The food is not only incredible but has a rich history that I'd encourage anyone who finds that interesting to go learn more about, whether via books, tours, or the internet! As always if you have any questions, remarks, or advice, please don't hesitate to reach out and share!
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