Wailing Wall

Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, New Orleans

Bourbon Street is America’s most famous party street, and it is also somewhat less than its reputation. The neon, the plastic cups of Hurricanes (rum, passion fruit syrup, grenadine; strong; sold from every doorway), the balconies draped with beads, and the brass band music spilling out of open doors onto the pavement – it is genuine in the way that a long-established cultural performance is genuine. New Orleans invented these rituals and has been refining them for two centuries. Visiting Bourbon Street and finding it kitsch misses the point.

What you should also know: the best of what New Orleans offers musically and gastronomically is not on Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street is the spectacle. The substance is one block over.

Preservation Hall

Preservation Hall on St Peter Street has been presenting traditional New Orleans jazz since 1961 in a small, deliberately austere room with wooden benches and standing room. Shows run multiple times nightly. The queue starts early; get there before doors. No cocktails, no air conditioning, unamplified instruments in a tight space. It is the closest surviving experience of early jazz performance outside a recording studio.

Frenchmen Street

Ten minutes’ walk from Bourbon Street, Frenchmen Street in the Marigny neighbourhood is where local musicians play for local audiences alongside tourists who know to come. The Spotted Cat, Snug Harbour, and d.b.a. are the main rooms. The music varies by night – jazz, funk, brass band, New Orleans R&B. Cover charges are low or absent and the atmosphere is less self-consciously touristic than anything on Bourbon.

Food

New Orleans has a genuinely distinctive cuisine, not a regional variation on American food. Gumbo (a roux-based soup with okra and file powder as thickeners), jambalaya, red beans and rice (traditionally served on Monday, when the beans were left simmering while laundry was done), and po’boys (baguette sandwiches with fried seafood or beef debris) are the foundations.

Café Du Monde on the edge of Jackson Square has served beignets and chicory café au lait since 1862. The beignets are fried dough dusted aggressively with powdered sugar; the chicory coffee is dark and earthy. Go at an off-peak hour for the line to be manageable.

Dooky Chase’s on Orleans Avenue in Tremé is the most historically significant restaurant in New Orleans – the Creole restaurant run by Leah Chase that was a meeting place for civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 60s. Chase continued cooking until her death in 2019 at age 96. The restaurant remains and the food remains serious.

Commander’s Palace in the Garden District is the institution for a formal New Orleans meal. Turtle soup, bread pudding soufflé, and a wine list that takes the region’s culinary confidence seriously. Reserve well ahead.

Jackson Square and Beyond

Jackson Square, fronting the Mississippi levee, has the St Louis Cathedral, street performers, tarot readers, and the best view of the river in the French Quarter. The French Market runs alongside it. The Mississippi is visible from the levee walk and the river’s sheer volume – even more than you expect – is impressive from close range.

The Tremé, immediately north of the French Quarter, is the oldest African American neighbourhood in America and the cradle of New Orleans jazz. The above-ground cemetery of St Louis Cemetery No. 1 is here: a city of white-washed tombs above ground because the city sits below sea level and burial underground historically brought the dead back to the surface. Tours are required by the Archdiocese.

When to Go

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent) brings the largest crowds and the most spectacular parade season. The Jazz & Heritage Festival (April/May) is the better festival for people who primarily care about the music. Summer (June through September) is brutally hot and humid; the city operates but it is physically demanding. October through March is the comfortable window.