Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris
Originally published October 19, 2007
Twenty-Five Best Neighborhood Restaurants
Time to kick up some sand again with a list of what I think are the twenty-five best neighborhood cafes in New Orleans. I offer this every few years (it's been over four years since the last ne, though), and every time it creates more e-mail for me to read than almost anything else I write.
The problem is not only what's on the list and where, and who's not and why, but also what constitutes a "neighborhood restaurant." So here's my criterion: If it seems like the kind of place where you'd routinely order wine with the meal, then it's a bit too formal for this listing. How's that sound?
That doesn't quite limit the definition enough. I also left out places that are primarily sandwich shops, as well as ethnic places (almost all Asian restaurants are neighborhood cafes, but most people put them in a different category).
If you feel I left your favorite out or included a place you wouldn't have on your own list, or if you disagree with the rankings, let me know: tom@nomenu.com.
1. Jacques-Imo's. Riverbend: 8324 Oak. 861-0886. Jack Leonardi, former K-Paul's cook, teamed up fifteen years ago with former Chez Helene owner Austin Leslie to create a convincing neighborhood Creole cafe uptown. Austin is gone now, but his fried chicken is still there, and Jacques-Imo's has become a phenomenon, packed at all hours. Its raffish surroundings and low prices give off the aura that many people believe are essential parts of real New Orleans dining. The extensive menu is at the outer limits of ambitiousness for a neighborhood place; the best dish in the house, for example, is the Cajun bouillabaisse. But it feels and acts like a corner cafe.
2. Mandina's. Mid-City: 3800 Canal. 482-9179. Also Mandeville: 4300 La. 22, 985-674-9883. Mandina's comes closer than any other restaurant to the Orleanian's cherished ideal of the old-time neighborhood cafe. The renovations after the storm changed the look, but not the spirit. The best food on any given day will be the homestyle specials, with a further edge to non-seafoods. All portions are titanic, but somehow avoid grossness.
3. Mother’s. CBD: 401 Poydras. 523-9656. The world's most famous vendor of poor boy sandwiches, Mother's also prepares a lengthy menu of pot food specials and breakfasts, all of it made with ingredients far above average and in insanely large portions. It's so famous that it attracts an ungodly number of visitors. But it's too good to write off as a tourist joint. (Just don't go when the town is full, so you won't get irritated.) The main room has a cafeteria-style line, concrete floors, tables jammed together, and some counters. The new back room makes dining more comfortable than in the old days. The food is just as good as it was then, though, no matter what you may have heard.
4. Mr. Ed's. Metairie: 1001 Live Oak. 838-0022. Mr. Ed operates a few deli-style restaurants in Metairie, but this is his main location, with an unadorned but comfortable dining room and a big menu of all the low-end local specialties. There's a tilt toward seafood platters and po-boys, with the rest of the day's specials being in the red-beans category. It's not brilliant cooking, but not bad. If you want to watch television, you can here.
5. Fury's. Metairie: 724 Martin Behrman Ave. 834-5646. A neighborhood seafood cafe in the old style, with all that implies both in the way of honest, cooked-to-order food as well as outmoded (but also honest) atrocities. The shortcomings are easily ignorable, however, in view of the low prices and goodness of the basic specialties. Seafood dominates, with every imaginable combination platter, fried or broiled. But the specials are pure backstreet New Orleans cuisine, served to a clientele as regular as ever patronized a corner cafe.
6. Joey K's. Uptown: 3001 Magazine. 891-0997. The Irish Channel is where you expect to find restaurants like Joey K's, and they take full advantage of that cliche here. All the backstreet dishes are here: red beans, fried catfish, brisket, liver and onions, etc., etc. Of course, we really do love all that stuff, and so the place does a good business with people who used to eat in joints like this when they didn't dress as well as they do today. Some specials are better than others, but the chances of having your palate satisfied are decent. It is inconceivable that your stomach will leave wanting for more. Just grubby enough to be convincing without becoming sleazy.
7. Bozo's. Metairie: 3117 21st. 831-8666. Bozo's has been around since the 1920s, moving from Mid-City to Metairie in the 1970s. Bozo's selects its seafoods well and cooks it all to order, adding a few minutes to the process but resulting in hot, greaseless and crisp eats. The menu is limited. The only fish is catfish--but perfect, small, wild fillets, cornmeal-encrusted and crunchy golden brown. Bozo's oyster bar is one of the best, perfect raw and great fried. I start every meal here with the chicken andouille gumbo. Service is professional, and owner Chris Vodonovich is always in the kitchen.
8. Liuzza's By The Track. Esplanade Ridge: 1518 N. Lopez. 943-8667. The lesser-known of the two Liuzza's, but the slightly better one--if only because the kitchen is more ambitious. They have the standard lineup of poor boy sandwiches and platters, but the chef produces excellent plate specials. All of this is served in the cramped circumstances of a neighborhood hangout, with prices to match.
9. Liuzza's. Mid-City: 3636 Bienville. HU2-9120. Liuzza's is your archetypal neighborhood "Bar & Rest." There is a signature item: the frozen glass schooners of root beer and not-so-root beer. Just like in the old days, the menu is implausibly large, starting with a really good roast beef po-boy and continuing with homestyle daily specials, seafood platters, and Italian dishes. Fresh-potato fries and the hole in the dining room wall through which you see evidence of a bursting kitchen are artifacts of the style, once far more commonplace than it is now.
10. Elizabeth's. Bywater: 601 Gallier. 944-9272. "Real Food Done Real Good" is the slogan of this unlikely cafe in the Bywater section. The food is also disarming: it's Southern food, as opposed to the very different Creole cooking usually found around town. They do breakfast and lunch weekdays only, and every bit of it is honest home cooking that always winds up delighting you more than you think it will.
11. Galley Seafood. Old Metairie: 2535 Metairie Rd. 832-0955. The proprietors are famous (justly) for the soft-shell crab po-boy at the Jazz Festival. This little place serves that year round, as well as a menu of small and large seafood platters, usually fried lightly to order. The blackboard shows off a passel of home cooking every day; the soups here are always especially good. They also boil the usual crustaceans for eating in or removing to home.
12. Casamento's. Uptown: 4330 Magazine. 895-9761. Although it's not as consistent as it once was, Casamento's--a big, long room covered with enough spanking-clean Art Nouveau tiles that it looks like a gigantic bathroom--is still a first-class vendor of oysters. They're terrific in either raw or fried form; no small number of patrons start with the first and finish with the second. The oyster loaf here is not a po-boy but a sandwich made on thickly sliced, toasted, buttered "pan bread." The Italian dishes are completely forgettable.
13. Willie Mae's Scotch House. Mid-City: 2401 St Ann. 822-9503. Perhaps now the most famous fried chicken restaurant in America, as a result of a powerful nationwide effort to restore it after the hurricane, Willie Mae's also cooks all the classics of New Orleans neighborhood food. Don't be surprised when you run into tourists in this totally out-of-the-way café.
14. Cafe Reconcile. Center City: 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 568-1157. The non-profit mission is unique: to lift undereducated, underskilled people into careers in the hospitality industry. A staff of pros orchestrates things, but the students do everything else. What comes out at breakfast and lunch comes as a surprise, particularly at the laughably low prices. This is very good Creole cooking, using good ingredients and served well. If you didn't know about the student aspect, you'd never know it.
15. Coffee Pot. French Quarter: 714 St. Peter. 524-3500. The Coffee Pot is in an old townhouse next door to Pat O’Brien’s, and looks touristy. It is, a bit, but it still functions as a neighborhood place for Quarterite, a role its played since the 1940s. The Coffee Pot’s mainstay has always been breakfast. Of particular note are the longest-running (and for decades, the only) calas served anywhere. Calas are rice cakes made according to an old Creole recipe, once very common. Also here are good omelettes, with standard fillings as well as more fanciful ones like red beans or chicken livers. The lunch and dinner menus still include all the standards: red beans and rice (every day, not just Monday), fried chicken and seafood, and some imaginative pot food.
16. Ye Olde College Inn. Carrollton: 3016 S. Carrollton Ave. 866-3683. The Rock 'n' Bowl guys bought this old (since the 1930s) Carrollton Avenue standby and did very little to it. The plan is to retain every scrap of that old-time New Orleans funkiness, but perhaps to brush up things a little. The College Inn has always been good, but already I'm seeing some improvements.
17. Petunia’s. French Quarter: 817 St. Louis. 522-6440. Petunia’s occupies the double parlor of an old French Quarter mansion, and keeps it jumping all day long. They have two great specialties here: omelettes and crepes. These can be filled with almost anything you can imagine. Some of the house combinations surpass your imagination but are good anyway. They also serve all the other elements of a good breakfast, starting with some of the fancier egg dishes to fine waffles, biscuits, and grits. Later on in the day, the menu broadens to include all the standards of a good Creole neighborhood restaurant. This is a pleasant find in the French Quarter, where the needs of tourists often render that kind of place unrecognizable.
18. Deanie's in the Warehouse District. 1016 Annunciation. 250-4460. Deanie's opened in the 1960s in what was then a busy area for heavy industry. Its customers were guys in overalls, eating what you'd expect: big platters of red beans on Monday, other colors of beans the rest of the week, fried seafood, plate specials laden with gravy and potatoes, and poor boy sandwiches. Deanie's hung on through the decades, watching the factories close. But by the time they did, a new clientele was forming. The warehouses became apartments, and the dwellers needed restaurants. More recently, the spate of new hotels brought tourists, who were told by the concierges that they could get real New Orleans home cooking at Deanie's. And cheaply, too.
19. Li'l Dizzy's Café. Esplanade Ridge: 1500 Esplanade Ave. 569-8997. Also 610 Poydras, CBD. 212-5656. L'il Dizzy's is the second-generation descendant of Eddie's, one of the legendary soul food restaurants of all time. It's operated by Eddie's son Wayne Baquet, who opened the first L'il Dizzy's (jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie's image is the logo) as a breakfast place on Esplanade. It expanded recently into the absurdly grand circumstances of a former Whitney Bank lobby. Gumbo, fried chicken, the Seventh Ward pork chop, oyster stuffing bread, and grilled fish are the specialties, along with the familiar local plate specials. The breakfast is more than decent, and the downtown edition has a Sunday brunch.
20. Riccobono’s Panola Street Café. Carrollton: 7801 Panola. 314-1810. This is the downscale version of the Peppermill, run by the same Vincent Riccobono. Breakfast is a major specialty, with an uncommonly large array of possibilities. It's popular enough (with a line on weekends) that it continues though lunch. But the lunch specials are worth looking at, too. All of the fare is inexpensive, fresh, and an order of magnitude more contemporary than typical neighborhood eats.
21. R&O’s. Bucktown: 216 Old Hammond Hwy. 831-1248. It's surprising, but encouraging, that R&O's (it stands for Roland and Ora, but that's pure trivia) managed to get back open when, just a few blocks away, no building were left standing in West End Park by the winds of Hurricane Katrina. R&O has a very appealing formula: they serve enormous portions of seafood and well-stuffed poor boy sandwiches for prices a shade below the standard. The pizza's good, too. Result: it's always full, and waiting for a table is almost inevitable. There's a branch of R&O in Covington, but it's not nearly as good as the original.
22. Abita Springs Café. Abita Springs: 22132 Level. 867-9950. The grooved-plank paneling inside, the door that constantly needs to be closed, the tables under ceiling fans on the wrap-around patio. The oldest diner in the middle of the sleepiest little town in the New Orleans area, this is the place where the mayor (of Abita Springs, I mean) and the sheriff and the old guys hang out. On weekends, it's much busier, with people waiting for tables so they can partake of the breakfasts. The signature item is a biscuit so titanic that few can finish one. After the breakfast rush, the board fills with a few lunch specials, abetted by poor boys and a few other things. The cafe is adjacent to the Tammany Trace, the best bicycle path in the region. Lots of bicycles are parked outside, especially on weekends.
23. Praline Connection. Marigny: 542 Frenchmen. 943-3934. The soul-food restaurant of the Nineties: hip, jazzy, and cooking slightly gussied-up but still homestyle Creole meals with good fresh ingredients. You get your beans and greens (whatever kind you like), your chicken, fish, and chops. Not entirely consistent, but usually pretty good.
24. Come Back Inn. 8016 W. Metairie Ave., Metairie. 467-9316. An old-style neighborhood sandwich and short-order joint, the Come Back Inn assembles a pretty good muffuletta and poor boys that range in goodness from good to excellent. The plate specials are better than they were before the storm, especially the seafood.
25. Louie and the Red-Head Lady. 1851 Florida, Mandeville. 985-626-8101. Mandeville has many old-style neighborhood cafes, with poor boys, a blackboard full homestyle specials, minimal service and surroundings, and low prices. This is one of the best of them, run by a guy who used to be in the seafood business and knows how to buy it.
Hey Tom! You forgot Rocky & Carlo's!
No, I didn't.
© 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com