Vacation For Life

An important part of travel to New Orleans is the food.  New Orleans has some of the best food in the entire United States.  New Orleans has stayed true to its roots with some of the oldest restaurants in the country and restaurants serving traditional New Orleans food.  However, New Orleans has also remained relevant with new restaurants serving modern cuisine which complement the classic restaurants of New Orleans.  During our one week visit to New Orleans, we dined at these top restaurants in New Orleans.

Antoine’s Restaurant is one of New Orleans’ restaurants in the French Quarter.  Antoine’s is the oldest family-run restaurant in the United States and has been serving French-Creole dishes to residents and travelers since 1840.  Antoine’s has served New Orleans cuisine through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Great Depression.  

Antoine Alciatore emigrated from Marseilles, France.  He had apprenticed since the age of eight under the French chef Collinet at the Hotel de Noailles in Marseilles.  At the age of 18, Antoine adopted New Orleans as his home and opened a restaurant in 1840.  Antoine brought haute cuisine to New Orleans.  He was the first to serve Chicken Creole, Crayfish Etouffee, and Shrimp Remoulade and invented dishes like Crayfish Cardinal and Shrimp Mariniere.  Antoine’s son Jules, who took over the restaurant, invented a number of oyster dishes including the most famous Oysters Rockefeller.

There are certain dishes you must have while in New Orleans, and gumbo is one of them.  The Gumbo Shop is a tiny restaurant in the middle of the French Quarter that serves some of the best gumbo in the city.  (There will obviously be some who argue the best gumbo is served elsewhere in the city, but we chose the Gumbo Shop on the high recommendation of a local.)  Don’t be intimidated by the long line coming out the door.  As a couple, we were actually seated pretty quickly.  We sat out in the cute little interior courtyard and ate the locals’ favorite, chicken Andouille gumbo, as well as crawfish etouffee, all washed down with a local beer.

Possibly my most favorite meal in New Orleans was also a simple one.  Parkway Bakery & Tavern’s fried oyster po’boy, only served on Monday’s and Wednesday’s, is a thing of beauty.  It’s a commitment to travel to Parkway Bakery & Tavern, as it is 15 stops away from the French Quarter via the green or red line streetcar, but it is worth both the trip and the long wait in line.  The fried oysters are succulent, the freshly baked bread is perfection, and the meal goes over the top with cheese smothered fries and a bottled root beer.

Another contemporary restaurant in New Orleans is Coquette, located in the Garden District and open since 2008.  Coquette serves southern cuisine made with locally sourced products.  We dined at Coquette on New Year’s Eve, so only a prix fix menu was offered at the time.  However, Coquette’s menu includes modern dishes with southern flair such as tempura gulf shrimp, red snapper ceviche, and smoked duck confit with okra.  Coquette also features an international wine list and inventive New Orleans cocktails.

The Bombay Club was a French Quarter favorite, but in 2013 the owner died, the restaurant closed, and management was transferred to Creole Cuisine Restaurant Concepts.  The restaurant went through a renovation and reopened in December 2014, just over a week before we dined there.  The Bombay Club & Martini Bar oozes old school charm.  The vibe is rustic casual with dark wood, curtains, and leather seats.  If you can, ask for a booth.  


The restaurant features a British menu with a Cajun twist with menu items like Scotch eggs with boudin and braised collard greens (the yolk of the Scotch egg is replaced by the boudin sauce which is made with the yolk).  Of course, the bar makes a wide selection of martinis, served in old-style champagne glasses, which are accompanied by live music nightly.

I don’t really know that Café du Monde qualifies as a restaurant per se, but I feel like a list of places to eat in New Orleans would be incomplete without mentioning Café du Monde.  Café du Monde is New Orleans’ original French Market coffee stand which has been serving powdered sugared cloud-like beignets and chicory coffee since 1862.  You can get your beignet fix any time of day as Café du Monde is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except for Christmas Day.

While New York City’s New Year’s Eve celebration may be the most famous in the United States, New Year’s Eve in New Orleans is also a big production.  New Year’s Eve in New Orleans centers around a historic building in the French Quarter, the Jackson Brewery building, also known as Jax Brewery.  Every New Year’s Eve a statue of Baby New Year appears on the rooftop of Jax Brewery.  As the countdown to the New Year begins, a lit fleur de lis on the rooftop begins its drop.  It lands at the stroke of midnight and the New Year ignites as fireworks burst out above the Mississippi River as well as along the entire horizon surrounding New Orleans.  Even when the fireworks are over and everyone is heading back home or to the bars, New Orleans on New Year’s Eve continues to be festive with the sounds of When the Saints Come Marching In filling the streets.

We had the unique once-in-a-lifetime privilege of joining in the celebration from the top of Jax Brewery, but there are multiple places to celebrate New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.  Crowds gather in Jackson Square and along Decatur Street to watch the drop of the fleur de lis.  A slightly less crowded place to join the festivities is the Moon Walk, a promenade that hugs the banks of the Mississippi River behind Jax Brewery.  This is a great place to both watch the fleur de lis drop and see the fireworks.  We were also told by a local that another place to enjoy New Year’s Eve fireworks in New Orleans is from the Westin parking garage, though we haven’t tested this for ourselves. 

If you’re looking for a memorable holiday travel destination, New Orleans is the place to be.

I love cemeteries and whenever we see cemeteries when we travel, we always stop to explore.  New Orleans’ cemeteries are famous for their history, beauty, and uniqueness.  We joined two New Orleans cemetery tours to learn why New Orleans’ cemeteries are so unique.

Our first New Orleans cemetery tour was a combined tour that visited both the 1833 Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 and the surrounding Garden District.  The 1833 Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 is the prettiest of the cemeteries near the French Quarter.  The combination of above-ground tombs, cracked stone, and green overgrowth make the cemetery both photogenic and spooky.

New Orleans’ cemeteries aren’t filled with above-ground tombs just because they're pretty.  When the residents of New Orleans tried to dig graves in the ground, they would hit water and have to drill holes in the coffins, put them in water, and hope it didn’t rain.  New Orleans gets around five feet of rain a year.  If it rained, the coffins could potentially resurface.

One way to solve this problem would be to bury the dead on higher ground, but they didn’t want to use high ground for cemeteries as they wanted to use those areas, like the French Quarter and Uptown, to live.  The solution was to use above-ground tombs.

The tombs found in New Orleans cemeteries are family tombs.  Historically, New Orleans residents were Catholic.  Until 1963, the Catholic religion said you couldn’t get into heaven if you were cremated, so somehow generations of New Orleanians had to fit into one tomb.

Tombs can fit anywhere from one to three caskets at a time.  Whenever there is a death, the tablet at the front of the tomb is removed, the brick and mortar is broken, the coffin is placed inside, the brick and mortar is replaced, the name is added to the tablet, and the tablet is put back on the tomb.  The interior of the tombs can get up to 102 degrees, which causes accelerated decomposition (not the loveliest of terms).  Remains must be left in the tomb a minimum of one year and one day.  If a tragedy occurs and more family members die than can be fit in the tomb or before the necessary time has passed, a wall vault can be rented.  The next time there is a death in the family, the coffin in the tomb is taken out, the decomposed remains are gathered and put into the back of the tomb with the other occupants, and the process starts all over again.  

It’s fascinating to wander through the cemetery, reading the tombs and imagining what the families inside were like when they were alive, though it gets a little spooky late in the day when the sun starts setting.  You can learn the history of some of the families during a New Orleans cemetery tour. 

Family tombs are owned like houses and it is the responsibility of the family to maintain the tomb.  One tomb in the Lafayette Cemetery has been in the same family since 1858.  On All Saints Day, families visit family tombs and picnic, drink wine, and socialize with their tomb neighbors.

While walking amongst the tombs, pay attention to the symbols on the tombs.  Every symbol has a meaning.  Inverted torches mean a life snuffed out.  A rose means Mary mother of Jesus.  A winged hourglass means that time flies.

New Orleanians put the “fun” in funeral.  Jazz funerals are common in New Orleans.  Jazz funerals include the hearse, the family, a brass band, and the second line consisting of friends, acquaintances, and strangers.  Mournful music is played on the way to the cemetery and joyful music is played leaving the cemetery because the loved one has gone to a better world.  When traveling to New Orleans, read the obituaries, find a jazz funeral, and join a second line.  Strangers are welcome.

The other New Orleans cemetery tour we joined was a Cemetery Voodoo Tour.  This tour visits the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 just outside the French Quarter.  The St. Louis Cemetery is not as photogenic as the Lafayette Cemetery, but it is older, built in 1789, and has some famous and historic residents like the voodoo queen Marie Leboux, Madame LaLaurie, and Homer Plessy.  Interestingly, while slaves were buried in family tombs with their Catholic owners, Protestants were segregated and buried in a separate section.  There is also a wall vault built in 1903 that contains the remains of people who emigrated from places like Haiti, France, Cuba, and Spain.  Note that this cemetery can only be visited on a guided tour.

We took our Garden District and Cemetery Voodoo walking tours with Historic New Orleans Tours, Inc.  Tours are small and cost $20 per person.  Reservations are not required.