A primer on New Orleans seafood, tracing the Gulf’s oysters, shrimp, fish, crab, crawfish and alligator from old oyster bars and neighborhood fish frys to markets, po’boy shops and white-tablecloth restaurants.

At Banh Mi Boys, Peter Nguyen brings together two New Orleans sandwich icons: the banh mi and the po’ boy. Inspired by his Vietnamese family’s gas station restaurant and the city’s Viet-Cajun food scene, Nguyen serves classic sandwiches alongside playful mashups like Cajun garlic butter shrimp banh mi and Korean fried chicken.

In New Orleans, everything is rich… the soil, the architecture, the music, the revelry, as well as the food. Ignatius J. Reilly, the city’s great fictitious antihero in John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces, reflected, “When I go to lunch, I must have something substantial. This business of having a light lunch is a thoroughly alien concept to me. My being recoils at the thought of a salad or any other such abomination. I am a medievalist, not a Calvinist. Lunch must be rich, satisfying, and caloric to sustain me through the afternoon.” When we went out for a New Orleans meal over this past year, we heeded the words of Ignatius. It's best you do the same. - Lev Thibodeaux