New Orleans, According to My Google Maps
- annaluisaballauf
- Jul 31
- 5 min read
I came to work with Gumball 3000, the Gumball 3000 Foundation and the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. I fell in love with three-trombone jazz, chargrilled oysters and a coffee courtyard that reminded me of Saigon.
New Orleans is the sort of city that turns a short Google Maps list into 41 saved places.
I had come for a project bringing together Gumball 3000, its foundation and the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus. Before the work started, I stayed for a few days by myself and explored without much of a plan. The city made that easy. There was music on almost every corner, beautiful houses on streets I had no reason to be walking down and an unusually high success rate when following recommendations from strangers.
These are the places I would keep on the list.
1. Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro
The best night of the trip.
I watched Blue Tang People, a New Orleans group built around three trombones, playing a loose mixture of brass, funk, soul, jazz and pop. The room at Snug Harbor is small enough that a concert still feels like an exchange between musicians and audience rather than a performance happening somewhere in front of you.
Snug Harbor also has a real connection to Ellis Marsalis. He began playing there in the early 1980s and later held a long-running Friday-night residency, continuing until 2019. I spent the following days wandering through the New Orleans that shaped him, still thinking about that show.
2. Fourth Wall
My favourite coffee-shop atmosphere in the city.
Fourth Wall has a hidden garden that somehow gave me Saigon rather than Louisiana: leafy, slightly improvised and removed from the street outside. It is the kind of place where one coffee quietly becomes an entire morning.
3. Sneaky Pickle & Bar Brine
One of my favourite meals.
Sneaky Pickle is creative, fresh and surprisingly healthy by New Orleans standards. During the day it is particularly good for plant-based food; at night, the same address becomes Bar Brine, adding cocktails, meat and seafood without abandoning the vegetables. The drinks use house-made cordials and shrubs, which sounds overly serious but tastes very good.
4. Paladar 511
An open kitchen, a good-looking local crowd and the feeling that everyone in the room knows something you do not.
The menu moves between pizza, pasta and Louisiana produce. I had the lamb pizza, which was excellent, although other people seem equally committed to the Farm Egg pizza and squid-ink spaghetti. Go hungry and slightly overdressed.
5. Patula
A small courtyard on a street with actual personality.
The menu is nice, the music is relaxed and the entire place feels sheltered from the city without being cut off from it. A good lunch stop when you have spent too long walking in the heat.
6. Preservation Hall
Come for the room as much as the music.
Preservation Hall began as a small French Quarter art gallery in the 1950s. Musicians were initially invited to play for tips, but eventually the music attracted more people than the art. It became Preservation Hall in 1961.
You may hear more adventurous jazz elsewhere in the city. Still, very few rooms carry history with this much authority. It does not feel recreated for visitors. It feels used, which is much better.
7. The Spotted Cat Music Club
The less formal alternative.
The room is busy, the music is close and the night tends to begin before you have properly decided to stay. It is a good Frenchmen Street counterpoint to Snug Harbor: looser, louder and more dependent on who happens to be playing.
8. Mother’s Restaurant
Authentic soul food without much ceremony.
Mother’s opened on Poydras Street in 1938 and became a gathering place for Marines during World War II. It is still known for dishes such as jambalaya, shrimp Creole and roast-beef po’boys loaded with “debris” — the pieces and gravy that fall from the roast.
It is not delicate. That is part of the point.
9. Felix’s Restaurant & Oyster Bar
Order the chargrilled oysters.
They arrive bubbling with butter, garlic and smoke and make raw oysters suddenly seem overly disciplined. This is not a meal for maintaining clean sleeves or moderate opinions.
10. Parkway Bakery & Tavern
For the po’boy.
Parkway began as a bakery and neighbourhood store in 1911. By 1929, it was serving poor boys to workers at the nearby American Can Company and feeding striking streetcar workers for free. More than a century later, the fried-shrimp version remains the classic order.
Get it “dressed”: lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayonnaise.
11. Hot Tin
For a drink above the city.
Hot Tin sits on top of the Pontchartrain Hotel and is styled like a 1940s artist’s loft, with vintage letters, photographs and typewriters. The balcony has a wide view across downtown and the Mississippi. Apparently, it is where the attractive locals gather on weekends; my map notes were very specific about this.
12. The Friendly Bar
Everyone was, indeed, friendly.
That should not be remarkable, but in enough cities it is.
13. Saturn Bar
A proper local dive rather than an expensive interpretation of one.
Saturn Bar opened in 1960 and was named partly in reference to the nearby Michoud aerospace facility. Its strange, cluttered interior has appeared in films including Ray and The Pelican Brief. Go for music, cheap drinks and a room that has resisted becoming tasteful.
14. Old Absinthe House
The building dates to around 1806 and began as an importing business before its ground floor became a bar. The Absinthe House Frappe was created there in the 19th century, helping turn the address into one of the French Quarter’s enduring drinking landmarks.
It is touristy, historic and still worth one drink. Several things can be true at once.
15. Magazine Street and Prytania Street
The most enjoyable part of the trip may simply have been walking.
Magazine Street has cafés, antique shops and small local stores such as Fleurty Girl, while the surrounding residential streets are lined with porches, trees and houses that appear designed to make you reconsider where you live.
My stops included The Vintage, Magazine Antique Mall, Le Petit Bleu and The Rink, a small Garden District shopping centre that is much more pleasant than the words “shopping centre” suggest.
Saved for my next visit
I would stay at The Blackbird Hotel, a small, design-led property in the Lower Garden District, and start the morning at its café.
I also saved Baldwin & Co., the Black-owned coffee shop and independent bookstore named after James Baldwin. It functions as a meeting place for writers, artists and activists rather than simply somewhere selling books.
For dinner: Dakar NOLA, MaMou, N7, Saint John, Saba and, for the full grand New Orleans production, Commander’s Palace.
For lunch or something less formal: Turkey and the Wolf, Verti Marte, The Joint, Jacques-Imo’s and Loretta’s Authentic Pralines.
For a stranger detour: Crescent City Conjure, which has been making and selling spiritual and ceremonial tools in New Orleans since 2015.
And one pin can now be deleted: Coquette closed permanently in June 2026 after almost 18 years. A Google Maps list, like a city, is never entirely finished.
New Orleans gave me exactly what I had hoped to find after the project ended: several days with no real obligation except to walk, listen and choose where to eat next.
The city is loud, but rarely impersonal. Its history is not confined to museums, and its music is not kept behind a ticket desk. It follows you out into the street.
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