5 Awesome New Orleans Restaurants to Try Today

To dine in New Orleans is to savor living history and innovation, all with a side of music and soul. Creole and Cajun food are the foundation, but the city’s best restaurants innovate around tradition, dazzling generations of locals and visitors.

Here are five that epitomize the Crescent City’s magic.

1. Commander’s Palace

Commander’s Palace, a turquoise Victorian in the Garden District, is the soul of refined Creole dining.

Here, white-jacketed waiters serve turtle soup, pecan-crusted Gulf fish, and the city’s best gumbo in opulent, chandelier-lit rooms.

Weekend jazz brunch is legendary, with chicory coffee, bananas Foster flamed tableside, and live brass floating through the air.

Chef Meg Bickford’s kitchen blends history and edge, and the service will make you feel like Southern royalty.

2. Dooky Chase’s Restaurant

The late Leah Chase’s legendary eatery is history and heart in one. For generations, New Orleans’ Black community and global notables have flocked to this Treme landmark for fried chicken, red beans and rice, sizzling hot okra gumbo, and sweet bread pudding.

The art-lined dining room, soulful hospitality, and unwavering sense of welcome make every meal a celebration of the city’s soul, resilience, and ongoing story.

3. Coquette

Contemporary Southern sophistication shines at Coquette, where chef Michael Stoltzfus delivers seasonal, French-influenced dishes—think rabbit gnocchi or BBQ Gulf shrimp with cornbread—served in a sun-drenched, two-story Garden District corner restaurant.

The staff are charming, the cocktails inventive, and the wood-paneled bar full of locals active in the city’s booming dining industry. Every meal feels new and special.

4. Peche Seafood Grill

Peche is about freshly netted Gulf seafood, open-flame cooking, and rustic charm in the Warehouse District.

With a wood hearth at its heart, dishes like whole grilled redfish, smoked tuna dip, oyster gratin, and house charcuterie show off Louisiana’s ocean bounty.

The mood is lively and casual, ideal for both feasts and after-work oysters at the raw bar.

5. Turkey and the Wolf

This offbeat gem in the Irish Channel is as New Orleans as a brass band parade.

The menu is playful and irreverent—“bologna sandwich” reimagined with potato chips, collard green melts with chili vinegar, and quirky soft serve for dessert.

The dining room is a riot of retro Americana and humor. The chef’s mission is serious, though: to honor Southern ingredients and comfort food traditions in the most fun way imaginable.

It’s one of America’s most joyful places to eat.