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.

Beignets & More is the kind of place you want everyone to know about – and you don’t want anyone to know about. Tucked between a defunct Cineplex and an Off-Track Betting location in a strip mall in Chalmette, a downriver suburb of New Orleans, it is a family-run gem of Vietnamese cuisine. But the name is a cloaking device of sorts: The beignets, which are made fresh daily, seem like an afterthought. Until recently, we’d never even had them. In all the years we’ve taken the short drive to this nondescript restaurant, we have always stayed on the “More” side of the menu.

Bunny Young, clad in a bright red chef’s coat and matching hat, stands in the galley kitchen of her New Orleans East home slowly stirring a pot of butter beans. She has done this thousands of times, but each time is a prayer offered to her ancestors, the generations of New Orleans 7th Ward Creole women who guided Young in the kitchen. Young is not for the faint of heart. Her bold flavors, bold personality and bold sartorial choices are reminiscent of Leah Chase, another legendary Creole chef. Young has a lot on her mind at all times, and she isn’t afraid to tell you, either. But these days, she lets her food do most of the talking, and it, too, has a lot to say.

New Orleans’s Social Aid and Pleasure Club tradition brings funky brass music and hard-grooving street dance out of the nightclubs and straight into the streets. On roughly forty Sundays a year, these neighborhood-based social clubs throw roving street parties that course through the city backstreets and boulevards – a hard-dancing flash mob powered by funky sousaphones and flanked by parade-savvy New Orleans police escorts. These “clubs” began in the late 19th century with a double-barrel mission. In their “social aid” role, they raised money year-round for helping community members through difficult and often unforeseen tragedies (sickness, untimely passings) in the years before modern insurance plans. In the “pleasure” category, the clubs developed and refined a parading and street dance tradition that rules the city streets on most Sunday afternoons.

New Orleans’s Social Aid and Pleasure Club tradition brings funky brass music and hard-grooving street dance out of the nightclubs and straight into the streets. On roughly forty Sundays a year, these neighborhood-based social clubs throw roving street parties that course through the city backstreets and boulevards – a hard-dancing flash mob powered by funky sousaphones and flanked by parade-savvy New Orleans police escorts. These “clubs” began in the late 19th century with a double-barrel mission. In their “social aid” role, they raised money year-round for helping community members through difficult and often unforeseen tragedies (sickness, untimely passings) in the years before modern insurance plans. In the “pleasure” category, the clubs developed and refined a parading and street dance tradition that rules the city streets on most Sunday afternoons.

“Blue Monday,” the tune made famous by New Orleans legend Fats Domino and written by the equally legendary Dave Bartholomew, sums up how most of us feel at the beginning of the week after the giddiness of the weekend has worn off and reality beckons.  “Blue Monday, how I hate Blue Monday,” Domino sings, while the piano trills underneath his rich baritone voice. And who could blame him? Monday is a a day of toil, even in carefree New Orleans, where Monday traditionally meant laundry day. But from this toil, one of our most recognizable and renowned dishes was born: red beans and rice. Every Monday in restaurants and homes throughout the city, the slow-simmered-until-they-fall-apart, creamy beans, loaded with smoked sausage and pickled meat, are served over a bed of fragrant Louisiana long grain rice, often with a piece of fried chicken or a pork chop.

We savor things a little differently in New Orleans. The city itself has been in a constant existential crisis from its inception. Tattered by hurricanes, floods, and land loss due to climate change, we realize how precarious and precious life is. Our famous joie de vivre is rooted in this – we know it can all be gone tomorrow. So we might linger over a meal a little longer, or have one more drink, or stay for the second set even when we have an early day at work. In crawfish terms, we suck the heads and pinch the tails and make sure we get all the meat out of life.

Marcelle Bienvenue, the renowned Cajun food writer, wrote a cookbook called Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux? These questions embody so much of life in Southern Louisiana, where kin, Catholicism, and cooking dominate the discourse. And while kin and religion are largely birthrights, making a roux is a learned skill, and one that often causes great trepidation. We cook our roux a little differently down here, and the worst thing you can do is burn it.

We were surprised to learn that Jack Dempsey’s restaurant was named after Richard “Jack” Dempsey, a straw hat wearing, cigar chomping former police reporter for the defunct States-Item newspaper, and not after the professional boxer Jack Dempsey, famously known as the Manassa Mauler. Dempsey’s, which occupies a white, converted double shotgun house across from the now deserted F. Edward Hebert Defense Complex, is a throwback to a different era of New Orleans, when neighborhood restaurants dominated the landscape, and you never had to walk too far to get a good meal.

Mercedes Gibson arrived in New Orleans in 1969 with, as she puts it, “ten dollars, ten children and a tank of gas.” The Franklin, Louisiana native’s eyes light up as she recounts the story while we sit at Mercedes Place, the working-class barroom she has owned and operated in the Lower 9th Ward’s Holy Cross neighborhood for thirty-two years. The neighborhood, named for the all-boys Catholic high school a few blocks away that has been left to molder since Hurricane Katrina, is starting to see signs of bloom. A flower shop has opened a few blocks away, a glimmer of hope in a section of the city too often underserved.

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.

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.

In New Orleans, they have good Indian food, but not great Indian food,” said Chef Aman Kota. “And that’s why we started this.” The “this” in question is LUFU, or Let Us Feed U, a plucky Indian pop-up whose aim is to introduce New Orleanians to the complex regional cuisines of India, while also playing with British and American culinary concepts. LUFU is the brainchild of Sarthak Samantray and Aman Kota, two chefs who began their careers in India but didn’t meet each other until they started working in the kitchens of New Orleans a few years back, though they have the bearings of lifelong friends.

The squat, bright yellow building with red trim that houses Two Sistas ‘N Da East has the hours of operation – 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. – painted in big red letters on its side beneath a sign that announces “Soul Food.” But these days, hours are fluid and subject to change, especially in the restaurant business, so we double-checked the hours to make sure. Google told us that the hours of operation had been updated by the business in the last two weeks. We felt good about it. So, it was even more surprising when a hand reached out the door with two fingers extended upward in the peace sign and we heard a voice say “11 a.m., baby.”

Ahead of our recent launch in New Orleans, we spoke to our walk leader Dianne Honore and contributors James Cullen and Pableaux Johnson about the Crescent City's rich and storied food scene and its deep connections to traditions and community. We originally shared what they had to say in our New Orleans launch newsletter (you can sign up for our newsletters on our main page to receive exclusive, behind-the-scenes content like this every week), but what they had to say was so informative and interesting that we decided to share it more widely. Dianne is a history buff, cultural preservationist, founder of the Black Storyville Baby Dolls, Queen of the Yellow Pocahontus Hunters Black Masking Indian Tribe and cooking instructor.