I know it sounds like a cliché – New Orleans and gumbo – but no other dish so genuinely represents the food culture and the food love of this city. It’s a dish you’ll find on countless menus, from the most upscale to backstreet joints. You will also find it in most New Orleans homes. It’s the dish we make at Thanksgiving and at Christmas. It’s the dish we make when it gets cold and we need comfort food and the dish we make when we have company over and we want to give them a taste of New Orleans. So eating gumbo, a really good gumbo, at a restaurant is a very true New Orleans experience. As a visitor, you are doing exactly what locals do.

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

Casamento’s does not accept reservations, credit cards, or checks. Simply walk under the restaurant’s green neon sign and through the white door and you instantly know you’ve entered a special place, somewhere between Italy and Louisiana; the interior a cross between a shotgun house and the bottom of a public pool. The narrow series of rooms, lined from floor to ceiling in imported tiles, leads in a straight line from the front door to the bathroom in the back of the kitchen. The seafood joint makes for a physical, communal experience, an offer of what was and what remains in New Orleans. Don’t worry, you are in good hands.

Looking at the menu at Small Mart Cafe, it can be hard to make sense of the variety. First there are the bagels, led by the “New Yorker,” filled with smoked salmon, tomato, onion, capers, and cream cheese. Soon, you’ll come to the curry and chaat bowls, leaning into the flavors of India and Pakistan and including sides like samosas and crispy pakoras. Near the bottom of the menu, you’ll find po’boys – this is New Orleans, after all. The local sandwiches traditionally are filled with proteins like fried shrimp, oysters, or roast beef. At Small Mart, however, tradition isn’t much of a constraint.

The tall French doors and brightly colored murals that greet you upon entering LUFU NOLA are a dramatic departure from its early days as a pop-up restaurant, when Chefs Sarthak Samantray and Aman Kota were dishing out their regional Indian fare at bars and breweries across the city. The sleek, modern bar and simple, elegant dining room echo the themes of arrival, as what was once an itinerant restaurant has found a home in New Orleans’s Central Business District. And the surroundings aren’t the only thing that’s new for LUFU – a full-scale restaurant has allowed their team to showcase an even broader array of dishes that represent the culinary heritage of India.

When you walk into Sammy’s Food Service & Deli at lunchtime, it might look like you’ve entered the scene of an emergency. The atmosphere is buzzing as a collection of police officers, firemen, and military personnel fill the modestly-sized dining area. “There are post office workers, too!” added Sammy Schloegel, who has co-owned this Gentilly eatery with his wife, Gina, since the early 1990s. “We give all government employees twenty percent off,” he laughed, “so that probably helps bring them in.”

It’s Friday at Little People’s Place in the Tremé, and that means fried fish. Rodney Thomas carries a tray laden with freshly battered shrimp and catfish fillets out the bar door to his provisional fry station, a well-worn propane burner with a heavily seasoned cast-iron dutch oven on top. The oil inside the dutch oven begins to shimmer and circulate, and Thomas drops a pinch of the seasoned fish fry into the cauldron-like pot to see if the oil is hot enough. A quick sizzle confirms it is, and Thomas begins to nimbly slip the shrimp and catfish into the hot oil, which bubbles vigorously. A few feet away under the plywood awning that covers the entrance to the bar, a group of men are watching daytime television on a small flatscreen TV sitting on an outdoor table – today it’s Divorce Court – while slowly sipping beers.

We all have that friend. A friend we should probably call more often. One who is always there for us, but we don’t see often enough. A friend who we can pick up where we left off with, no matter how much time has elapsed between conversations. A friend whose company always leaves you satisfied and wondering: Why didn’t we do this sooner? Buffa’s Bar and Restaurant is that friend. An outpost in the Marigny neighborhood on Esplanade Avenue, divided from the French Quarter by a neutral ground (which is New Orleanian for “street median”). A few blocks away, the classic dive bar Port of Call draws tourists and locals in a line that stretches around the block for their potent drinks and hearty burgers.

New Orleans is arguably one of the most Afro-Caribbean cities in the United States. In the minds of some, we don’t even qualify as a US city, but rather the northernmost outpost of the Caribbean. From our architecture to our food and our rhythms, we sit apart from the rest of the South. We love spice and deep flavors, cooking that is evocative of people and place. Jamaican food would seem like a natural fit here, and it is, though it is not nearly as commonplace as it should be, all things considered. But Richard Rose and his wife Jackie Diaz are looking to change that with their new Upper 9th Ward restaurant on St. Claude Avenue, Jamaican Jerk House.

“Our collard greens are from scratch and are delicious. Our red beans are really good. Our gumbo is great. The fried chicken is a standout. And our catfish – you can get it fried, grilled, or blackened – it’s so good, we could basically just be a catfish place and satisfy a lot of our regulars.” That’s Martha Wiggins, two-time James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist and Executive Chef at Cafe Reconcile, when asked to describe what her loyal following of regulars most frequently order at her lunchtime-only restaurant.

The blistering April – yes April – sun in New Orleans is an indicator of two things: climate change and the start of festival season. In other parts of the country, warm days and cool nights and the gradual bloom of trees and flowers define spring. But in Southeast Louisiana, spring seems to supernova into summer overnight despite what the calendar claims; nothing is subtle here. And under this hot sun, one of the stalwarts of festival season, Vaucresson’s Sausage Company, led by owner Vance Vaucresson, sells its hot sausage po’ boy to legions of adoring fans. Vaucresson’s has been at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for fifty years and is the only original vendor still there.

Don’t be fooled by the name of Lil’ Dizzy’s Cafe. There’s no coffee, and in fact, the iconic establishment feels more like an auntie’s overstuffed living room than a café. Situated in the heart of Tremé, the oldest African-American neighborhood in America, Dizzy’s is crammed with family paintings and inauguration memorabilia for President Barack Obama, with signed jerseys of retired Saints football players dotting above the doorway. The celebration of community is the norm in New Orleans. And Dizzy’s is an exemplar of this – purer than the sugarcane used in its sweet tea. Customers stream in – men in suits, others in shorts, cops, families, out-of-towners, mailmen and more as soon as the clock hits 11 a.m. The door unlocks, and Dizzy’s staff begin to shout out “Welcome to Dizzy’s” to first-timers and “Hey, baby! How ya doing?” to regulars.

“It sometimes feels like a dream to me,” explained Linh Garza, president of Dong Phuong Bakery, “that a small family of Vietnamese refugees could create all of this.” What began as a small family bakery is now a New Orleans institution, honored with an America’s Classics award by the James Beard Foundation. And, despite the fact that it can take as long as 30 minutes to drive to Dong Phuong from the heart of the city, hundreds of locals and tourists line up along Chef Menteur Highway every day during the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras for a chance at one (or four) of the bakery’s famous king cakes.

Our friends were puzzled: back after two years away from our hometown of New Orleans, we were heading to a far-eastern suburb of the city to eat. With so many blessed dishes in the city center, why were we out in Chalmette? The answer was simple: Our destination was Secret Thai, a restaurant well worth the trip. Its location may seem odd at first, but it only adds to the allure of making a pilgrimage past the city’s industrial canal and the Lower Ninth Ward. About five miles east by way of the Mississippi River’s bend from the French Quarter, when the condensed city spills into strip malls, Secret Thai sits along another bend on Judge Perez Drive, St. Bernard Parish’s main commercial artery.

In the spring of 2017, the Bywater Bakery opened its doors and became something of an “instant institution.” Part casual restaurant and part impromptu community center, the cafe space hummed with perpetual activity. Deadline-racked freelancers posted up with their laptops, soon to be covered in butter-rich pastry flakes. Neighborhood regulars would crowd tables for a lingering lunch visit over salads or sandwiches. On many busy mornings, New Orleans jazz luminaries (the late-Henry Butler, Tom McDermott, John Boutte, Jon Cleary) might wander in to make use of the dining room’s upright piano, filing the space with impromptu performance and the occasional singalong.