New Orleans, January 2026

It has been a few months, so it seems like time for another trip to New Orleans. After I got back from my last trip, I was asked by a couple of friends how the trip was. I told them it was fun and went over a few of the things we did on the trip. At some point, one of my friends asked me “when are we going?” That immediately set into action this trip and we recruited another friend and decided on some dates to go back to New Orleans. Again.

Getting into New Orleans

The friends I went with and I flew out to New Orleans after work on a Thursday with the trip running Thursday night to Monday late afternoon. The whole weekend was going to be a bit chilly, mostly hoodie and a beanie weather with some chance of rain.

We met up at the airport and grabbed a few beers before boarding our Southwest flight and departing to New Orleans. We got in without issue and checked into where we were staying with minimal issues before settling in for the evening. Nothing really happened that night as we all had to work the next day.

Friday - First Day

We got up and two of us headed out to grab a quick coffee and something small to eat. We wound up walking around and finding Baldwin Coffee and Books. It is a neat coffee shop that named after James Baldwin and has a pretty good library of books for sale. I had what was probably the best iced tea I have ever had from a coffee shop there. After, we headed back and I had a meeting and some work to do.

We finished up some work and took a lunch break, walking to Ruby Slipper. I’ve been to Ruby Slipper before and wasn’t a fan, but this location was a lot stronger. I had some candied bacon and an order of biscuits and gravy and was happy with the choice. When done with brunch, we left to finish out the afternoon working back at where we were staying.

Latitude 29 and the Quarter

Once work was done for the day, we walked out to Latitude 29 for dinner and some tiki drinks. I’ve been here a few times now and it never disappoints. The pimento rangoons are particularly a favorite of mine. Drinks were good, as always. We wrapped up and started walking around the French Quarter some.

The quarter was full of college kids over dressed for some ‘formal’ weekend. It was kind of odd seeing so many twenty year olds in suits and dresses walking around. They were everywhere and looked like they were borrowing their parents clothes.

Our first stop in the Quarter was Fritzel’s European Jazz Bar. There was a sixtet playing on stage. We got a few seats at the bar and got closer to the band as a table opened up. We stayed for the majority of a set from the band before we took off. The jazz was good but it was Friday night and pretty crowded.

Frenchmen Street

From Fritzel’s we walked to Frenchmen Street. There, we walked up and down the street checking out the places playing music before settling in for a bit at Favela Chic. We got a round of drinks and watched the band play. They were a much younger band than the one at Fritzel’s and had a decent vibe to them. They had everything from a keyboard to a horn section to a couple of guitarists.

We ended the night at Spotted Cat. There, we watched a five piece, James Martin Band, including a dude playing a giant tuba. They were easily the best band of the night. We got some seats at the bar and had a fairly good view of the two sets we saw the band do. It got kind of late and we decided to walk back to where we were staying and call it a night.

Saturday - Second Day

The second day started with a quick trek to get some sundries like water, electrolyte supplements, and snacks. After, we headed back to Ruby Slipper for another round of breakfast. It was a lot more crowded than it had been the previous morning. The food was good but I wasn’t a fan of the crowd and think that while Ruby Slipper is good food, I may just need to avoid it on the weekends.

Coop’s Place

After, we took naps for a bit and headed back out to grab a late lunch. We settled on Coop’s Place, a restaurant I went to last time I was in New Orleans that impressed the shit out of me. This time, we had a short wait before being seated and dove into a sampler plate, some red beans and rice, fried chicken, and gumbo. Everyone I was with liked the meal and we watched a bit of the playoff game going on at the time. The crowd at Coop’s was pretty diverse.

Krewe Mosiaque and Armstorng Park

We were near Jackson Square and walked around it some. We talked about going to Cafe du Monde for beignets but hated how long the line was. We looked at Loretta’s in the French Market as well, but also didn’t want to wait out the line. We decided to check out the Krewe Mosaique Mardi Gras Parade and headed toward Armstrong Park to kill some time before the parade started. Armstrong park was the gathering area for the parade, so we got to check out the costumes and groups for the parade before it started. We walked around the park and then settled into a spot a few blocks down the parade’s route from the park.

The parade was really, quite cool. I have never seen an evening parade for Mardi Gras before. It was a dancing parade, so groups would slowly dance as they move or stop for a bit and dance as a group. Right as the parade started, rain kicked off as well.

The lights and costumes throughout the parade were hella impressive. We spent about thirty minutes watching the parade and my favorite groups were the gothy ladies dancing to Nine Inch Nails and a group of older dudes dressed in fancy, Victorian uniforms with a few ladies in Victorian dresses playing The Eurythmics. We had seen them in the staging area playing other female-led dance music.

Erin Rose

At the parade’s end, my friends and I went to find a bar to get out of the rain and watch football in. That led us to Erin Rose. This is my favorite bar in New Orleans. It’s not very big, but is huge in attitude. It’s got two bartenders and a hard working barback. Every one of them is friendly with a don’t fuck with me attitude and good at what they do.

We were at the bar for a few minutes before they kicked out two well dressed college ladies who went into the bathroom together. The bartender immediately saw this happening and yelled at them the bathrooms were one at a time. The ladies went in anyway, the bartender left the bar and knocked on the door to tell them to get out. When the did leave the restroom, they got 86’ed from the bar. There was something said zero tolerance for doing coke in the bathroom and some grumpy college kids.

A couple minutes later, someone started to pass out at the bar, to which they rang the loud-ass bar bell and patrons cheered him as he quickly woke up.

As we were about to leave, a lady came in for her birthday. There is a tradition in New Orleans of pinning bills to people’s shirt on their birthday and she had an assortment of denominations on her chest. The bartenders wished her a happy birthday, pinned a dollar, and got her a shot. Another person at the bar immediately got her a shot of Malort for her birthday. That may be the most cruel act of kindness I have ever bore witness to and was fucking hilarious.

We ended the night with a quick trip through Caesars Casino. One of my friends had never been to a casino in the U.S. and we kind of wanted to check what the scores of the football games were. When we left, we were all pretty much even or a bit ahead.

Sunday - Third Day

On our last day in New Orleans, we decided to get outside and walk a bit. Mostly, around the water’s edge and had got tickets to check out a set at Preservation Hall. We had hit up Cajun food the day before at Coop’s and were going to try to get some find some muffaletas, beignets, and po-boys.

Cochon Butcher

We grabbed a ride to Cochon Butcher, which had been a place I was always advised to go to buy only went to for the first time a few months ago. It’s a Michelin Star joint that is next to Cochon and does a lot of sandwiches and butchery-type meats. We got there as it was opening and had about a twenty minute line to get to the counter and place our order.

I got a muffaleta and the “Elvis” king cake. It’s Mardi Gras season and I’ve never had a slice of king cake in NoLa before. Both were good and the muffaleta is freaking huge. Cochon Butcher is somewhere I would highly recommend. More so if you can catch it while it’s not packed like it was on this Sunday morning. It’s a great spot for a bite and really is not overly pricey for the high quality you get.

Convention Center

From Cochon Butcher, we decided to try to walk along the banks of the Mississippi. We were a bit errant in our approach.

We started by walking toward the Convention Center, which was having some sort of cheerleading competition. The center was overran with kids in full makeup and sparkling costumes running around everywhere. Practicing outside in the windy cold, the kids were all looking kind of shellshocked as someone yelled at them routines to do. Their moms all seemed to tread the line between being either incredibly bitchy and over the whole weekend or being the most saccharine, yelly, cheer fan possible, Most of the dads that just looked at things with a thousand yard stare. We tried our best to straight line for other end of the Convention Center.

We succeeded in reaching the end of the Convention Center only to find the parking lot for the cruise ships and no access to the Mississippi. Mistake number one. So, we turned around and ventured back through the cheerkids. We’d been walking for a bit and that area had a cutting wind, so someone chimed in about walking through the convention center a bit to warm up. This was mistake number two.

Inside, was so much worse. There was a loud, high pitched hum of kids squealing and parents bitching at their kids to keep up or stay with them. The kids were everywhere and had little regard for anyone else. We were only in the center for a few hundred feet but were jammed into a slow moving pack of cheer families. We were able to avoid the quick moving kids as they darted underfoot and quickly went back outside.

Riverwalk and Cafe du Monde

We did eventually get to the Mississippi. We walked through the outlet mall slash cruise port area a bit and got to a walking path. On it, we stopped a couple times to check out the sculptures along it. We made our way to Cafe du Monde, which didn’t have much of a line. We decided to get some beignets there. To go in and sit at a table is a bit of a mad house but the line moved quick. Everything was covered in a patina of white powder and while we didn’t see the two girls from Erin Rose, there were a shit ton of people there.

The table next to us emptied and a guy came in with a family member to claim it from a side door. The waitress started to explain that there was a line and he hadn’t been in it. He started pleading that his cruise ship took off in 45 minutes and this was his only chance to eat there and he handed her a couple of twenties and his order. He sat down, immediately started live streaming that he was there and how awesome it was and how awesome he was and how good the freshly arrived beignets were.

The whole experience with Cafe du Monde was kinda gross. I do think that I will stick to Loretta’s or to getting beignets from Cafe du Monde at the airport on the way out of town.

Jackson Square area

Since Jackson Square is right there, we wandered through it a bit as well. We caught a troupe of buskers playing classic jazz songs between the square and St. Louis Cathedral. We watched the buskers play for a bit before going through the church and checking it out. There, we checked out the church and I lit a candle for a few friends. For some reason, I find it fun to light candles for friends when I’m traveling; kind of a way to have them there with me for a bit.

We still had an hour to kill, so we went to The Louisiana State Museum. It had two pretty cool exhibits. The first was about Hurricane Katrina and it’s impact on New Orleans. It was pretty heart breaking to see, but I’m glad we got to see it.

The second exhibit was all about Mardi Gras and the history of its celebration in New Orleans throughout the years. That one had a lot of information going back to the 1800s and into the modern day. It covered some of the events that happen outside of New Orleans, such as horse races and boat parades.

Preservation Hall and the Quarter

We got to Preservation Hall with a few minutes before the show started. It was standing room only for us and we were packed into the hall for the show. I suck with crowded spaces, so after a few minutes, I ducked out to listen to the show from a bench in the hallway. It sounded great, it was just a place that was too crowded for me to have any level of comfort in.

After, we stopped in at Peychaud’s for a quick drink and to take in the courtyard. The bar was fairly busy and we were hungry, so we took off to seek out some food. We settled on a return to Erin Rose.

Erin Rose’s big drink is a frozen Irish Coffee with a shot of Jameson’s or a floater of peanut butter whiskey. I hate most of those, so I generally stick with the cheap beer when there. Another thing about Erin Rose, is that they have really good po-boys that are served out of a window in the back room of the bar. The same trio from Saturday was there tending to the patrons and we were greeted by them and able to score the same seats we had had the previous day.

We polished off a couple of Roast Beef Debris po-boys between the three of us. They come messy and delicious with onion and pickled green beans on them. The bar alone is worth your attention, but the fact that you can get good food there too makes it so much more amazing. While there, one of the bartenders was asked where he liked to eat in town and he raved about Coop’s Place and how lowkey but good it was.

We left for a nightcap at a place called Drinkery that none of us really cared much for.

Monday - Last Day

St. Noir Coffee and MSRY

We got up the last morning with a need to exit where we were staying and to find somewhere we could all work out for a while. This wound up being at St. Noir Coffee. The almond croissant pastry I had was pretty good. We got through our set of meetings without issue and departed for the airport. There, we got access to the Priority Pass lounge to get through some more meetings before our flight back home.

Overall Thoughts

This was another good trip to New Orleans. There wasn’t a lot new about places I went other than the coffee shops. The parade was a highlight of the trip and was really cool to see. I’m glad we got to see it where we did as evidently they pivoted mid-parade because of the rain and changed paths which kind of screwed people at the end of the parade path who didn’t get to see it.

New Orleans is probably my favorite place to go to in the States, but I’m not sure that I need to go back without a good reason to celebrate in the near future. Cochon Butcher, Erin Rose, Peychaud’s, and Coop’s Place are all spots I would go back to again and again.