New Orleans

Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) falls 47 days before Easter — typically late January through mid-March. The 2026 date is February 17; 2027 is March 9. The parade season begins January 6 (King's Day) with small neighborhood parades and escalates through the final two weekends. The major krewe parades (Rex, Zulu, Endymion, Bacchus) fill the final two weekends before Fat Tuesday. Book accommodation 4–6 months in advance for the week of Mardi Gras.

The tourist corridor (French Quarter, Garden District, Frenchmen Street, Warehouse District) is reasonably safe with standard urban awareness — don't walk and look at your phone, be alert after midnight, take Lyft rather than walking through the CBD late. The city's crime statistics are elevated by comparison to other US cities, but tourist-on-tourist crime is not the dominant pattern. Ask your hotel about current specific guidance when you arrive.

The list is long and serious. Beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde (mandatory). Charbroiled oysters at Drago's or Acme. A muffuletta from Central Grocery. Crawfish étouffée anywhere that makes their own roux. Gumbo with the correct dark roux color (not the pale, flour-thickened version). Red beans and rice on a Monday. A po'boy (roast beef or fried shrimp on a French loaf dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayo). Bananas Foster flambéed tableside at Brennan's, where it was invented in 1951.

Two distinct venues represent the New Orleans music continuum. Preservation Hall (St. Peter Street, French Quarter) is the traditional jazz institution — standing-room-only, no drinks, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band playing nightly since 1961. Frenchmen Street in the Marigny is where living contemporary New Orleans music happens — a strip of 10 bars with bands playing from 9 PM to 2 AM every night, ranging from trad jazz to funk to brass band to avant-garde. Both are essential; neither is a substitute for the other.

Creole is the urban New Orleans tradition — more cosmopolitan, influenced by French technique, African ingredients, and Spanish, Native American, and Caribbean layers. It uses butter and tomato; it is restaurant food. Cajun is the rural south Louisiana tradition — the cooking of French Acadian settlers who adapted to bayou ingredients. It uses lard, it is spicier, and it uses a darker roux. Gumbo exists in both traditions but looks and tastes different. New Orleans proper is predominantly Creole; the surrounding parishes are Cajun country.

The upriver residential neighborhood developed by American (Anglo) settlers in the early 19th century — outside the original French Quarter. Its antebellum Greek Revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne mansions represent the architectural statement of wealthy 19th-century New Orleans planters. The most photographed streets are Prytania and Coliseum (with their classical revival porticos and garden approaches) and Magazine Street (the neighborhood's commercial spine with vintage shops and restaurants). Commander's Palace at Washington Avenue is the culinary anchor.

Once, briefly, with low expectations. Bourbon Street is a six-block stretch of bars, strip clubs, daiquiri shops, and souvenir stores — the id of American tourism. It is loud, sticky, and rarely serves anything you would call good food or good music. Go at 11 PM on a Friday to understand the scale and then leave for Frenchmen Street, which is 10 minutes' walk away and where actual music is played by actual musicians to an audience that has come to listen.

A second-line is a New Orleans brass band street parade — the term comes from the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, where the 'second line' was the crowd of bystanders who followed the first-line marchers. Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs organize second-line parades every Sunday from October through June in different neighborhoods, featuring a brass band, a club banner, and increasingly elaborate choreography. They are free to join as a follower; they are one of New Orleans's most authentic ongoing cultural expressions.

The turquoise Victorian mansion at Washington Avenue and Coliseum Street has been the most important restaurant in New Orleans history — the kitchen produced Paul Prudhomme (who invented blackened redfish and popularized Cajun cooking nationally) and Emeril Lagasse (who built a restaurant empire from his New Orleans base). The current chef has maintained its reputation without coasting on history. Saturday jazz brunch is the experience: 25-cent martinis (with purchase), turtle soup, pecan-crusted fish, and bread pudding soufflé in a dining room that still feels formal without being stiff.

Jazz Fest (the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival) runs the last weekend of April and first weekend of May. It is one of the great American music festivals — two weekends of multiple stages at the Fair Grounds Race Course featuring jazz, blues, funk, gospel, zydeco, and rock, alongside a food fair that rivals the music in quality. Tickets sell out; accommodation runs 2–3x normal rates. If you plan ahead (3–4 months), it is one of the best reasons to visit New Orleans.

The definitive New Orleans dish — a thick stew built on a dark roux (flour and fat cooked slowly until chocolate-brown), the holy trinity of onion, celery, and bell pepper, and either seafood (shrimp, crab, oyster) or chicken and andouille sausage. The African influence (okra, which acts as a natural thickener, gives the dish its name from the Bantu word for okra) and the French roux technique together produce something that belongs to no single heritage. The roux color is the tell: a proper dark gumbo is mahogany; a pale gumbo is a compromise.

A square of fried dough choux pastry, served three to a plate at Café Du Monde and buried under powdered sugar delivered from a sifter. They are light, airy, and hot; the powdered sugar is unavoidable (wear a dark shirt and accept it). The tradition comes from French colonists and the fritters were first documented in the city in the 18th century. Café Du Monde has been serving the same recipe since 1862. Open 24 hours. The correct accompaniment is a café au lait (half strong chicory coffee, half hot milk).

The Tremé (often spelled Treme) is America's oldest surviving African American neighborhood, and it is the birthplace of jazz music — Louis Armstrong was born here in 1901. The neighborhood has the Backstreet Cultural Museum (Mardi Gras Indian suits and second-line parade history), St. Augustine Church (one of the oldest African American Catholic parishes in the US), and the Louis Armstrong Park at the edge of the Quarter. The neighborhood's cultural significance is extraordinary; it has been significantly impacted by gentrification and post-Katrina displacement.

Yes. The National WWII Museum (Warehouse District) is one of the three or four best history museums in the United States. The story of why it is in New Orleans: the Higgins boat (the flat-bottomed landing craft used on D-Day and throughout the Pacific) was designed and built here by Andrew Higgins, and Eisenhower said Higgins won the war for the Allies. The museum covers the full American theater perspective in WWII with exceptional primary-source letters, photographs, and equipment. The 4D Tom Hanks film in the Solomon Victory Theater is less cheesy than it sounds.

Hurricane season runs June 1 – November 30, with peak risk in August–October. The city sits below sea level and has been seriously damaged twice in recent memory (Katrina 2005, Ida 2021). The risk in any given week is low, but not zero. If you visit during this period, buy travel insurance that covers weather-related trip cancellation, know the evacuation route from your hotel (most will provide this), and monitor the National Hurricane Center at nhc.noaa.gov. The city's levee and pump systems have been dramatically upgraded since Katrina but remain imperfect.

A Louisiana French word (from Quechua via Spanish) meaning 'a little something extra' — the 13th beignet, the extra scoop of shrimp in your étouffée, the free dessert sent by the kitchen. It is a cultural concept in New Orleans that expresses the city's relationship with generosity and the small unexpected gift. You will hear it from locals; receiving it from a restaurant is a good sign.

New Orleans invented several American cocktails: the Sazerac (rye whiskey, absinthe rinse, Peychaud's bitters, sugar — the oldest American cocktail, from 1838), the Vieux Carré (rye, cognac, sweet vermouth, Bénédictine, bitters, created at the Hotel Monteleone's Carousel Bar), and the Ramos Gin Fizz (gin, lime, lemon, cream, orange flower water, egg white — shaken for 12 minutes, traditionally). All three are available at most serious New Orleans bars; the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is the canonical location for the first two.