Dine like a local, even if you’re not: Find the latest restaurant openings, plus notable local favorites, expertly curated.
New Opening
New Orleans
Charles & Julia
It’s an eclectic lounge and rooftop bar serving up craft cocktails and small plates that rotate with the seasons. The views of Charles Avenue are almost as lovely as the ones right at your table.
Pay close attention to the reservation you’re making at The Crustacean Club. The Club Room serves a thoughtfully curated chef’s tasting menu while the Oyster Bar offers a smaller, more casual list of raw bar specials. Either way, you’re in for a true treat.
It’s French fare done NOLA-style, which comes to fruition in many delicious ways. Kandy’s serves a menu of comforting, elevated dishes. Know that the wagyu double cheeseburger should be on your table.
It’s hard not to catch your breath when you walk into Vessel, housed in a historic 1914 church that still looks like it. Stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings are the perfect backdrop for your meal here, once you start breathing again.
Seasonal, locally sourced ingredients take center stage at this chic Magazine Street spot. It’s ideal for a family dinner or a catch-up with friends in the lounge.
The oh-so-cool couple behind fried chicken favorite Chi’s Chi’s shows their more sophisticated side with their brand new restaurant just a block away on Freret Street. While still a neighborhood spot, Dolfy’s is like Chi Chi’s grown-up cousin: elegant, moody, and worldly. A menu inspired by the flavors of the Iberian Peninsula generally and Basque Country specifically showcases the power of wood-fire cooking with dishes like charred leeks with romesco, grilled Iberico pork, and wood-fired chicken with white bean chorizo stew and piri piri sauce.
“There may be a few other Basque cheesecakes in town, but the one at Dolfy’s is the best, hands down. It’s a mini vacation on a plate.”
– Clair Lorell, Resy New Orleans Writer
“Charmant is just the family-friendly-cafe-meets-wine-bar that City Park deserves, and I can’t wait to try everything on the menu.”
New Opening
Mid City
Charmant
Just steps from City Park, this restaurant born from the marriage of two hospitality professionals is also a clever marriage of genres: casual brunch and lunch restaurant mixed with sophisticated evening bistro. Chef Chris Borges serves a wide-ranging menu of Mediterranean flavors where comfort food (like Mom’s crab dip) is served alongside osso bucco arancini and porcini-dusted trout. An expertly curated wine list, playful cocktails, and refined desserts broaden the charm.
Endearing, romantic, and welcoming — this second location of a downtown mezcal and taco bar is a whole quirky vibe. With a vintage feel and cozy ambiance, Espiritu is such a nice place to meet up with friends for festive weekday tacos and drinks, particularly on Taco Tuesday when deals abound. But it’s also a rare chance to sample excellent Mexico City cuisine, like aguachileverde, huitlacoche quesadillas, lengua tacos, and posole. Mid-City diners are lucky to add it to the rotation.
To find Vegas-style dining in humble New Orleans, head to St. Charles Avenue for a steakhouse unlike any other in town. A simple storefront belies a surprising interior: the floor-to-ceiling wall of wine, dry-aging steak cooler built into the bar, and velvet roping signal the VIP experience that awaits. The menu is a cornucopia, offering seafood galore as well as tenderloin griddled in bone marrow or a bone-in tomahawk ribeye served with mint and caper chimichurri.
Fans of a stylish steak night dinner at Doris Metropolitan will revel in the arrival of Studio, a neighborhood-friendly counterpart to the original French Quarter hotspot. The Uptown space is well-known for its dreamy patio, where diners can enjoy specialty steaks, produce-driven small plates, and fresh steakhouse sides on a tree-lined corner of Magazine Street. Perhaps most exciting for the neighborhood, the restaurant — which also boasts a lovely wine bar — doubles as a butcher shop.
Modern elegance meets classic New Orleans at this corner restaurant on the edge of the French Quarter. It’s an Art Deco throwback with the kind of food that can satisfy curious visitors and Creole connoisseurs alike — think shrimp and grits, dirty rice with duck, succotash with fried okra, and oysters on the half shell. Beautiful vintage chandeliers and a quaint mural of City Park perfect the nostalgic vibe, a fitting aim for the historic space.
A familiar local name is behind this ambitious downtown restaurant: chef Aom Srisuk, a Bangkok native who opened Uptown’s popular Pomelo in 2021. You can’t help but go big dining here, with seafood-centric specialties like fried whole sea bass, jumbo lump crab curry, and the eye-popping Ocean’s Treasures, a medley of scallops, crab, shrimp, mussels, and calamari in a chile-basil-garlic sauce. Plus, raw bar offerings and the cocktail menu are unexpected highlights.
This second home for Lufu’s much-loved regional Indian specialties thrives in the French Quarter, where a bigger space matches the expanded offerings of tandoori, biryani, and Indochinese dishes, all bursting with flavor. The stylish feel of the original restaurant in the Central Business District carries over, too, with intricate murals, Bollywood memorabilia, and colorful and inventive cocktails. You can taste the love that goes into the food here, thanks to chefs Aman Kota, Sarthak “Shan” Samantray, and Sachin Darade.
Everything about Patula feels seamlessly effortless: its refined European cafe vibe, the trendy old-world-meets-new-school wine selection, and a succinct, globally-inspired menu of small plates. One taste of the food, however, and it’s clear just how much effort chef Rob Tabone puts into dishes like Moroccan-spiced meatballs with tomato and tzatziki sauces and mushroom toast with just the right balance of richness and brightness. Courtyard dining underneath the stars is yet another reason to visit.
The Oak Room and Bernadette’s Bring a New Old-School Appeal to Georgetown
“We wanted to design something that made people feel like they were in a different time and place … It’s meant to feel worn and lived in, that it’s been around for 100 years.”
