Bourbon Street: The Good Parts Are Not on Bourbon Street

That’s the thing nobody tells you before the first visit. The best bars in New Orleans, the best live music, the best food in the French Quarter, essentially none of it is on Bourbon Street itself. The street is a pedestrian spectacle of neon signs, open-container culture, and the world’s strongest frozen daiquiris served from walk-up windows. As spectacles go it’s genuine and it’s unique. But if you want to eat and drink well in this city, you walk a few blocks in any direction.

Bourbon Street is 13 blocks long, running from Canal Street to Esplanade Avenue through the heart of the French Quarter. It has been an entertainment district since the 1700s and the current version, focused on bar tourism and live music, solidified after World War II. The French Quarter around it has 18th and 19th century Creole architecture, ornate iron balconies draped with potted plants, and a density of history that makes the street-level mayhem slightly surreal.

Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral

The city’s social and spiritual centre, where the beautiful Gothic Revival St. Louis Cathedral (consecrated 1794, rebuilt 1850) faces the Mississippi River across a plaza surrounded by street artists, tarot readers, and brass band buskers who could be performing professionally somewhere else but choose to do this instead. The cathedral offers free admission and the interior is peaceful in a way the surrounding square is not. It is one of the oldest continuously operating cathedrals in the United States, which you feel the moment you step through the doors.

The square itself is animated from morning to late evening. Spend an hour watching the street performers if you have the patience; some of them are extraordinary.

The Better Bars

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop at the far end of Bourbon Street, near Esplanade, is the most atmospheric bar in the French Quarter: a dimly lit late 18th-century cottage (one of the oldest buildings in the city) with candles, cold beer, and no television screens. The crowd is a mix of locals and visitors who have done their research. Cash only.

Frenchmen Street, 10 minutes’ walk from Bourbon, is where the real music is. Two blocks of live jazz, brass band, funk, and blues at venues including the Spotted Cat, the Maple Leaf, and d.b.a. Most have no cover or a modest one ($5-10). The Spotted Cat has been hosting some of the best traditional jazz in the city for years without ever becoming a theme park.

Galatoire’s

Galatoire’s on Bourbon Street itself has been operating since 1905 and is the exception to the rule about avoiding the main strip. Friday lunch is the institution: tables fill with New Orleans regulars who arrive at 11:30am and occasionally stay until 4pm, wearing their finest and ordering the same things their grandparents ordered. The soufflé potatoes, the shrimp remoulade, the crabmeat maison. It is old New Orleans money eating the same food it has always eaten, and it is wonderful. Expect to spend $60-80 per person.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in the Treme, opened 1941, is where civil rights leaders met during the 1960s. Leah Chase, who ran it until she died at 96 in 2019, was one of the most important figures in the history of Creole cooking. Her family continues it. The lunch buffet is the accessible option.

Oceana Grill near Conti Street has been making some of the best gumbo in the French Quarter for years, and the crab cakes hold up to comparison with anywhere in the city.

Hotel Monteleone

The Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street (one block from Bourbon) has been standing since 1886 and is the most New Orleans of the French Quarter hotels: the Carousel Bar on the ground floor actually rotates slowly as you drink, a feature that feels appropriate to the city’s general disposition toward theatrical excess. Rooms from around $250, more during Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras.

When to Go and What to Expect

Mardi Gras (February or March) is the obvious answer and also the hardest version of New Orleans to manage: accommodation prices triple, the crowds are enormous, and you either love the scale of it or you hate it. The Jazz and Heritage Festival (late April and early May) is better for most visitors: serious music, better food, more manageable crowds, and the city in good spirits.

September and early December offer New Orleans at its most relaxed with nearly identical weather and significantly lower hotel rates.

The heat from June through August is genuine and the humidity is worse than most visitors expect. Pace yourself. The to-go cup culture (open containers are legal on the street in New Orleans) means you don’t have to rush anything.