NOLA Food

New Orleans, it has been said, has the best food in the country. That superlative will inspire debate through the ages, but the food is great, to be sure. I tried to eat it all and pick out the gems. Here we go.

The city is well-known for the French and Spanish influences to its food, but Italians throw their hats in the game as well, and some tasty food spilled out of those hats.

Liuzza’s in mid-city served us up some tasty poor boys and gumbo, along with some beer in very large frosty glasses. (We stayed in mid-city New Orleans, so featured locations will have a mid-city bent.)
Clesi’s, again in mid-city, was a nice outdoor place with great daily specials, including $2 taco Tuesday’s and $0.25 oyster Wednesday’s. They put their bread pudding through a waffle iron.
Katie’s was a real favorite. Everything we had there was delicious, including a great crawfish beignet and a superb $40 sandwich featuring oysters, catfish and shrimp, shown above.
Poor boys were actually disappointing as often as not, but this terribly sloppy entry from Parkway Bakery was a winner. In NOLA, the most typical poor boy is made with roast beef – WHAAAAAT?!

And, hey guess what – NOLA even makes good burgers.

Actually everything at Fharmacy was delicious, including the chicken wings and boudin balls.
For some fancy eats we went to Gabrielle’s. Pictured are the pork chop and the orange duck. Either was at least two meals’ worth of food – great bargain!

Another real standout was Marjie’s Grill. This is a fusion Asian, Creole place, and boy does it work.

Hmmm … I guess it happens pretty often that I forget to take a picture until after I’ve eaten a bit.

Barrow’s Catfish is well worth a go to find someone who seems like a hot girl who’s interested in you, but then ghosts you.

So many great places to eat I’m getting restaurant fatigue! (Writing about it – never fatigued eating it.) And believe me, I’m not even mentioning them all. Not even close. OK, here we go.

Herbsaint:

Napolean House:

As the final restaurant I’ll mention- Coop’s, restaurant/bar, is in the quarter but not really touristy, and everything there is extremely delicious.

They are so much better at making food than I am at taking pictures.

So that was the final restaurant – but not the final place! Well worth a check-out for those on the SM spectrum is Pepper Palace. It purports to have the hottest hot sauce in the world, and I don’t have any evidence to disprove them. I have eaten the hottest sauces Hot Ones has to offer, and the hottest Pepper Palace sauce wins out. They wouldn’t let me serve myself – they gave me a tiny dew drop of sauce in a plastic spoon. It kept me fired up for a good 30 minutes or so I’d say. Still, I took it like a man or something resembling one, I think.