My mom and I went to New Orleans for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April. It was an awesome experience. Overall, New Orleans is filled with great architecture, music, and food plus interesting history and culture.
Drop a foodie in a city of beignets, oysters, muffalettas, crawfish and what’s not to love?!
Fri Apr 26
We woke up as early as we could (we had landed late the night before) to get to Cafe Du Monde before the crowds. We got lucky and had a table within 5 minutes. Without a doubt we ordered two plates of beignets. I got an iced coffee au lait with chicory. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, but I knew I had to try it. The beignets were so good, very similar to a zeppole, but rectangle in shape. And the coffee was good! I’m not sure what the chicory flavor was, but it was delicious, nonetheless. The sugar on top was the jazz band playing outside the cafe, about 4 or 5 guys. They were so good that they had gathered a crowd of their own. This was the perfect start to a great trip.
We walked through the French Market, but it was a little too early for it to be hustling and bustling. It was very similar to the Public Market in Seattle, minus the fish tossing. We walked back through Jackson Square to Royal Street to M. S. Rau Antiques. M. S. Rau is a huge antique store with gold, silver, flatware, glassware, china, and more. I have never seen so much Tiffany silver flatware in my life. We continued down Royal Street, passing a bunch of other antiques shop. Once we made it to Canal, we walked down towards the river to the Spanish Plaza.
Mom wanted to get charbroiled oysters from Drago’s, so we walked to the Hilton Riverside. I love raw oysters, but wow were the charbroiled ones good. Drago’s tops them with a garlic butter and parmesan cheese. We got to sit at the bar and watch them grill our dozen which was fun. We had only been awake in New Orleans for a handful of hours and this was our second meal. Thank goodness the trip was heavy on walking.
We strolled the river walk up through Woldenberg Park. The weather was perfect: warm and sunny, but barely humid at all. We made it back to Cafe Du Monde and crossed the street to go to Central Grocery. While Mom has charbroiled oysters on her mind, I knew I wanted a muffuletta from Central Grocery. The deli’s founder actually invented the muffuletta: a giant sesame seeded round roll with salami, ham, swiss, provolone, mortadella, and olive spread. A whole sandwich is a circle about one foot in diameter, so we split a half, each eating a quarter. It was maybe one of the best sandwiches I had ever had, like an Italian sub stepped up another notch with olives.
Now that we were well over fed, we needed to walk a bit. We walked up Bourbon Street. First stop was Lafitte’s, the oldest bar in New Orleans and arguably in the United States. We kept walking up Bourbon Street, passing Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. We stopped into Pat O’Brien’s for a hurricane and walked down Bourbon Street with it. It felt so weird walking down the street with an open container.
Once we made it back to Canal, we hopped on the green streetcar line that rides down St. Charles. The streetcar doesn’t allow open containers, so I had to chug the rest of the hurricane and toss it. Once we made it out of downtown, we saw some beautiful homes on St. Charles. We hopped off at the Tulane/Loyola stop to stroll through Audubon Park. The park is huge, so we barely made a dent in it before we hopped on the streetcar back to the hotel to change for the festival. We got to the fairgrounds in no time, with an hour or so before the headliners started. Mom and I walked around, then met her friend Larry and crew for Santana. Dave Matthews was playing keyboard for Santana’s set. He was in town because he and his band were performing the following weekend at the festival. I also learned that Carlos’ wife is the drummer. She was amazing!
I left Santana to go see Aloe Blacc. He was so good and because I had walked over there early, I was in the front row. He’s such a fun performer to watch, singing, dancing, and bopping around. Perfect timing: I made it back to Santana for Smooth, one of my favorite songs of his.
A little after 7, once all the music was done, we walked to the house that our friend Larry had rented for the week. It was right around the corner from the fairgrounds. We changed and went to dinner at Lola’s, a small Spanish restaurant. We ordered a couple different paellas (veggie and seafood), and they were pretty good! I had to admit, though, I prefer my uncle’s paella (hi Uncle D if you’re reading this!).
Sat Apr 27
We woke up, showered, and walked down Common Street to the Ruby Slipper Cafe on Magazine Street. It was super crowded, with a pretty decent sized crowd waiting outside. We put our names on the list and ended up waiting about a half hour. In the meantime, we walked through Fulton Alley. Once seated at Ruby Slipper, I got a bloody mary with all the fixings and an eggs benedict combo with shrimp and pulled pork. From brunch, we walked to the WWII Museum to see Popi and Mom’s uncles on the Honor Roll.
We were in no rush to get to the festival, so we took the streetcar up to the Museum of Art stop. The driver of the streetcar was Nicholas Cage’s brother. We learned that taking the streetcar was the cheapest, quickest, and most reliable way of getting to and from the festival grounds. At the festival, we saw Dobet Gnahore of Ivory Coast, Lauren Daigle, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and I saw Leon Bridges while Mom went to Katy Perry. I didn’t think I knew Lauren Daigle, but some of her songs actually sounded familiar like You Say and Look Up Child. Her performance was really great. Leon Bridges was absolutely amazing! I knew just about every song he sang, and he brought out Jon Batiste for a couple of them which was cool.
After a long and sweaty afternoon at the festival, we showered and dragged ourselves to a nice dinner at Peche Seafood Grill. We didn’t arrive until about 8:45 and the place was jam packed. I had tried to call prior and get a reservation, but they were all booked. After one round of drinks and scoping out the bar seating, we managed to snag two stools where we drank more and ate dinner. I had a Little Red Corvette: a hibiscus and jalapeno drink with mezcal which was delicious. Mom and I ordered a half dozen oysters (Mom’s first raw oysters ever), crawfish capellini (my favorite dish of the night), lamb skewers (so tender and juicy) with a pea and cucumber salad, catfish in a chili broth, and beans with bacon.
Sun Apr 28
We woke up leisurely because we had brunch reservations at 11:45 at Cafe Degas, close to the festival grounds. We once again took the Green 48 Streetcar up to the Museum of Art stop and walked down Esplanade.
Our friend’s son was playing the bass in Mdou Moctar of Niger’s set, so we started there. Then we listened to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra’s tribute to Aretha Franklin. On our way to Bonnie Raitt we stopped to grab a crawfish monica. We were told it was ‘the’ food we needed to try at the festival. Essentially, it was mac n cheese with crawfish, like how you may have lobster mac. It was to die for. I drizzled a little hot sauce over it.
After Bonnie Raitt was Van Morrison, J Balvin, and Al Green. One of the best features of the NOLA Jazz Fest is that it attracts so many different artists that you would never see together otherwise.
Mon Apr 29
We started the morning a bit later than usual, as this was our first non-festival day. We took the streetcar up to the Museum of Art again. The actual museum was closed (it’s always closed on Mondays … oops), but the sculpture garden and surrounding park were both open. We walked through the sculpture garden and then grabbed a car to Toast by the fairgrounds for lunch. Mom and I shared prosciutto and ricotta toast, a ham and gruyere crepe, and aebleskivers.
After lunch we headed back to the French Quarter to the Voodoo Museum. The museum was interesting, but tiny, and I’m not sure I understand what voodoo is still.
We felt like sitting down for coffee and taking it easy in The Big Easy (pun very much intended). We walked to Envie, an espresso bar with nice music and good coffee. While we sat, I found Lüke on Foursquare, rated #2 for seafood in New Orleans. I made a 5:30 reservation because we had tickets to a jazz show at Snug at 8. As we walked back to the Moxy Hotel, we stopped into a couple stores on Decatur including a candy store to pick up some pralines. I said “pray-leans”, but the correct pronunciation is “praw-leans”.
Our reservation at Lüke was at the tail end of happy hour so we started with a round of drinks, half dozen raw oysters, and half dozen fried oysters, all of which were half priced. It was an amazing deal. The fried oysters were so good. They come crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, with a slightly spicy dipping sauce.
We headed over to Snug to see Charmaine Neville, daughter of Charles Neville of The Neville Brothers. She was such a good performer. It was a little after 9:30 when the show finished, and Frenchmen Street was in full swing. We walked down the street a bit to hear the other bands playing, but eventually caught an Uber to drive us back to the Moxy.
Tues Apr 30
We took an early morning cemetery tour through St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. We got lucky and were only joined by two other people. Our tour guide, Charlie, was so friendly and outgoing, and his knowledge of New Orleans’s history was impressive. One of the craziest things in the cemetery that we saw was the pyramid tomb that Nicholas Cage has built for himself to be buried in when he dies.
Our tour guide told us about how the French Quarter came to be. First of all, the French settled in New Orleans strategically because whoever controlled the mouth of the Mississippi river, controlled the whole system.
Then, in order to populate the area, they sent ladies of the evening, patients from the French hospitals, and inmates from the French prisons. By about 1720, the streets were laid. Many of the street names today still reflect that French influence today. Bourbon Street was named after the family of the French kings, for example.
Lastly, the French chose the specific area now known as the French Quarter to settle into because that area is the only area in New Orleans that is above the water level, so it never floods.
For our last New Orleans meal, we headed to Commander’s Palace for lunch. This was mom’s favorite meal of the trip. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t beat Lüke or Peche in my book.