New Orleans is close enough to Dallas that you can decide on a Wednesday and be eating oysters by Friday afternoon. Southwest flies nonstop from Love Field in well under two hours, and American and Frontier fly nonstop out of DFW. That makes it one of the easiest long weekends a Texan can take, and one of the best fed.
Here is how we would do it, from where to sleep to where to eat to what to see once you are full. Please note, that in coming weeks we will publish a NOLA restaurant guide that will be less familiar and equally delicious.
Start with the bed. On a budget, the Holiday Inn French Quarter–Chateau LeMoyne at 301 Dauphine St. is not the Holiday Inn you are picturing. The hotel dates to 1847 and is built around a courtyard with a heated saltwater pool, a block off Bourbon Street and a short walk from Canal and the streetcar lines. Ask for a courtyard room on a higher floor. They are the quietest in the building. Realistically, plan on about $130 a night with taxes on a slow weeknight and $200 to $275 on a fall or holiday weekend.
In the middle of the range, and the one we would pick for a first trip, is the Hotel Monteleone at 214 Royal St. A Sicilian cobbler named Antonio Monteleone bought the building in 1886, and his family still runs it five generations later. The hotel has a rooftop pool and a long literary history, but the real reason to stay is downstairs. The Carousel Bar has been turning since 1949, one full lap every 15 minutes, and it is where the Vieux Carré cocktail was invented in 1938. Order one on the carousel, even if you are not staying here. Expect to pay roughly $220 to $400 a night with taxes, depending on the night and the season.
For the splurge, book The Roosevelt New Orleans, a Waldorf Astoria hotel, at 130 Roosevelt Way, a block outside the Quarter. The building dates to 1893, and the block-long gilded lobby is worth a walk-through on its own. Huey Long kept a suite here, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra played the Blue Room, and the walnut-paneled Sazerac Bar is still the place for a Sazerac or a Ramos Gin Fizz. There is a rooftop pool and a full spa if you need a reason not to leave. Slow winter weeknights can dip to around $200 with taxes, but for a fall or holiday weekend, $350 to $500 a night is the realistic number.
One more note on hotels. Every one of those prices climbs sharply during Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, New Year’s and big football weekends, and parking is extra everywhere in the Quarter. The good news is you may not need a car at all. The Quarter is easy to cover on foot, and the streetcars and a quick rideshare will get you anywhere else. Sunday through Thursday is almost always the better deal.
Now the important part. You will eat well anywhere in this city, but these seven cover every budget and most of the cravings.
Start your first morning at Café Du Monde, 800 Decatur St., on the edge of Jackson Square. It has been selling coffee at the French Market since 1862, and the menu is about as short as menus get. Order beignets and a café au lait made with chicory coffee and hot milk, and wear something you do not mind covering in powdered sugar. It is cash only, open from 7:15 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until midnight on Friday and Saturday. Go early to beat the line.
For lunch on a budget, take the Canal streetcar toward City Park and walk over to Parkway Bakery & Tavern at 538 Hagan Ave. near Bayou St. John. The roast beef po-boy soaked in gravy is the one everybody orders, and for good reason. Get it dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickle and mayo. If you want the full history lesson, try the Streetcar Po-Boy, fried potatoes covered in roast beef gravy and debris, a nod to the sandwich the Martin brothers handed out to striking streetcar workers in 1929. Parkway is closed on Tuesdays.
Napoleon House at 500 Chartres St. is the place for a slow afternoon. The building went up in the 1790s, and the name comes from a plan to give the exiled emperor a place to live. He never came. The Impastato family opened the bar in 1914, and Ralph Brennan has owned it since 2015. Order the warm muffuletta, cured meats and cheese with olive salad on a sesame loaf, heated so everything melts together, and a Pimm’s Cup. Napoleon House says it was the first bar in America to serve one.
You asked about grilled oysters, and in New Orleans that means Drago’s. The Cvitanovich family opened the original in Metairie in 1969, and their downtown location is inside the Hilton New Orleans Riverside at 2 Poydras St., open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. with no reservations needed. Drago’s calls itself the home of the original Charbroiled Oysters, and they are the reason to go. The oysters hit the grill on the half shell, get flooded with garlic butter, herbs and parmesan, and come out bubbling and charred at the edges. Order a dozen and plenty of bread for the butter. While you are there, get a cup of Mama Ruth’s Gumbo.
For the best gumbo in town, our vote goes to Dooky Chase’s Restaurant at 2301 Orleans Ave. in Tremé. Edgar “Dooky” Chase Sr. and his wife Emily opened it in 1941, and their daughter-in-law, the late chef Leah Chase, turned it into one of the most important restaurants in the country. During the civil rights movement, Freedom Riders and organizers planned strategy upstairs over her Creole gumbo and fried chicken, and those two dishes are still what you order. The dining room is filled with her collection of African American art. Dooky Chase’s serves lunch Tuesday through Friday, so plan around it, and call ahead about Friday dinner.
If you want a gumbo in the Quarter, Mr. B’s Bistro at 201 Royal St. has been Cindy Brennan’s place since 1979. The Gumbo Ya-Ya is built on a nearly black roux with chicken and andouille, and it is as dark and smoky as gumbo gets. The house signature, though, is the Barbecued Shrimp, which has nothing to do with a grill. Big head-on Gulf shrimp swim in a peppery butter sauce spiked with Worcestershire and garlic, and they hand you a bib for a reason. Finish with the Creole Bread Pudding and Irish whiskey sauce. Dinner is nightly, and lunch runs Wednesday through Saturday.
Save one meal for Commander’s Palace at 1403 Washington Ave. in the Garden District, the grand dame of New Orleans dining since 1893. Take the St. Charles streetcar and go for lunch, served Thursday and Friday, when the restaurant still pours its famous 25-cent martinis with an entrée, three to a guest. Start with the Turtle Soup, finished with a splash of sherry at the table, and order the Creole Bread Pudding Soufflé as soon as you sit down, because it takes about 20 minutes. Dress up a little. Business attire is the rule here.
Getting around is easy and cheap. The French Quarter is best on foot. For everything else, the RTA streetcars and buses cost $1.25 a ride, and a one-day Jazzy Pass covers unlimited streetcar, bus and ferry rides for $3. Use exact change or download the Le Pass app. The St. Charles line, running since 1835 and the oldest continuously operating street railway in the world, takes you through the Garden District mansions to Commander’s and Audubon Park. The Canal line heads out toward City Park and Parkway. From the airport, the 202 Airport Express bus runs about once an hour for $1.25, or grab a rideshare for the 25-minute trip.
You will see Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral and the French Market without trying. Here is what to add. Walk Frenchmen Street in the Marigny at night, where the music spills out of small clubs and the Frenchmen Art Market sets up after dark. Take the ferry across the river to Algiers Point for the best skyline view in town, included with your Jazzy Pass. And step into the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres St., the site of America’s first licensed pharmacy, where the apothecary jars, leech jars and old voodoo remedies are a little creepy in the best way. Buy tickets ahead of time.
For something truly funky, head to the Bywater. Music Box Village at 4557 N. Rampart St. is a garden of artist-built houses that are also musical instruments, and on open days you can wander in and play every one of them. Check the schedule before you go, since hours change with the season and concerts. Then walk over to Bacchanal Wine at 600 Poland Ave., a wine shop with a sprawling backyard where you pick a bottle, order a cheese plate and settle in under the string lights for live music.
When the sun goes down, start at the quiet end of Bourbon Street. Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar at 941 Bourbon St. is reputed to be the oldest building in the country used as a bar, a low, sagging Creole cottage put up in the 1700s and said to have been a front for the pirate Jean Lafitte and his brother. Expect exposed brick, cypress beams and almost no electric light. The room runs on candles. There is a piano in the back where the player takes requests and the crowd sings along, and the drink to order is the frozen Voodoo Daiquiri, which everybody just calls the purple drink. Have one. It is stronger than it tastes. Lafitte’s gets packed at night, so go early if you want a seat near the piano.
A few more worth the walk. Pat O’Brien’s at 718 St. Peter St. opened in December 1933, just as Prohibition was ending, and it is where the Hurricane was born, invented to use up a surplus of rum. Grab a seat by the flaming fountain in the courtyard, then head inside to the dueling pianos, a format Pat O’s is credited with starting. The Old Absinthe House at 240 Bourbon St. has been pouring since 1815, and in 1874 a bartender named Cayetano Ferrer created the Absinthe Frappé there. The walls are covered in business cards, and the old marble fountains once used to drip water over sugar cubes are still on display. And if you skipped them earlier, the Carousel Bar and the Sazerac Bar are both worth a nightcap.
Voodoo is woven into this city’s history, and the best place to start is the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum at 724 Dumaine St. It has been open since 1972, and the small rooms are crammed with altars, antique dolls, paintings and a kneeling bench said to have belonged to Marie Laveau herself. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m., runs walking tours to Congo Square and Laveau’s old neighborhood, and has a gift shop with gris-gris bags and candles that are a step up from the T-shirt shops on Bourbon. The Voodoo Spiritual Temple at 1428 N. Rampart St., near Congo Square, has been a working temple and shop since 1990. Its co-founder, Priestess Miriam Chamani, died in August, so call ahead before you go.
For cemeteries, timing is on your side. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the city’s oldest, is open only to guided tours. The official tours meet inside Basin St. Station at 501 Basin St., run about 55 minutes and cost around $30. You will see the tomb believed to hold Marie Laveau, the grave of Homer Plessy of Plessy v. Ferguson, and the white pyramid Nicolas Cage built for himself. In the Garden District, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 reopened on October 1 after being closed for seven years. It is now guided tours only, run by the Preservation Resource Center in small groups of 16, and the focus is history. Ghost tours are banned inside the walls. Pair it with lunch at Commander’s Palace, right across the street.
Now, the flights. Southwest runs nonstop from Love Field to New Orleans in about an hour and 20 minutes, and its own fare finder has been showing one-way fares in the $60s on some November and December dates. American, Frontier and others fly nonstop from DFW. The cheapest days are usually midweek, so a Wednesday-to-Sunday trip often costs less than Friday to Monday. Check bag rules before you book, because the lowest fares on most airlines, Southwest now included, do not cover checked luggage. If you would rather drive, it is about eight hours, and a car is more trouble than it is worth once you arrive. Parking in the Quarter is scarce and expensive, and honestly, walking is not a bad option here. Most of what you want is a short stroll away, and the streetcars and rideshares fill in the rest.
As for the weather, early October still feels like summer, with highs in the 80s and the occasional afternoon storm. It cools off as the month goes on, and late October through early December is about as pleasant as New Orleans gets. Hurricane season technically runs through November 30, so a flexible fare and travel insurance are smart.
If you can wait a few weeks, December may be the best time of all. The Roosevelt’s lobby turns into one of the most famous holiday displays in the South, restaurants roll out traditional Réveillon dinners, and City Park lights up its oaks for the season. Whenever you go, the free visitor guide from New Orleans & Company is worth ordering before you leave.
