New Orleans Cajun Restaurants: 10Best Restaurant Reviews

If you like your Cajun eats with drinks and partying on the side, Mambo’s is your spot. With the only rooftop bar on Bourbon Street, this 10,000 sq. ft., three-story bar and restaurants draws crowds for good eats, big drinks and plenty of elbow room for watching the game and chilling. Besides the kitchen team’s signature crab cake topped with a spicy crawfish and mushroom cream sauce, the menu offers the likes of blackened gator bites, crawfish poutine, fresh and char grilled oysters, bbq shrimp and grits and a range of po-boys and salads. For a substantial option, try the blackened redfish Lafourche, named for a Cajun bayou parish about two hours down the bayou. Local redfish is seared and served on a bed of mashed potatoes,topped with crawfish and mushroom cream sauce and fried crawfish tails mustard greens on the side. Get the bread pudding for dessert.

The Gumbo Shop is the perfect place for a fun, casual lunch served in a small, cozy, characteristically New Orleans setting. Visit this local favorite often and sample a variety of savory gumbos, including chicken andouille gumbo, seafood okra gumbo and the meatless gumbo z’herbes. Other popular dishes include favorites like crawfish etouffee, blackened fish specialties and alligator sauce piquante. The location is ideal, right next to the St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of the French Quarter. The venue consistently tops the local weekly Gambit’s best gumbo lists, which is saying a lot in a city with hoards of gumbo aficionados.

Nestled in the Warehouse District, chef/owners Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski pay homage to all things swine at this inspired and authentic Cajun restaurant. Link mines his German-Acadian roots with dishes such as fried boudin with pickled peppers, pork-and-black-eyed-pea gumbo and delectable fried chicken livers with pepper-jelly toast. Reservations are recommended as this place gets packed. Or choose to dine at the same location at the more casual and newly expanded Cochon Butcher, same great charcuterie dished out of a sandwich counter and wine bar that will remind you of an old world meat market. Here’s a tip: get the muffuletta, truly one of the best in town.

Chef Jeff Heard mines his New Orleans and comfort food roots at this excellent Central City eatery, with its catering division named for his mama Audrey Mae. With a background that includes more than 25 years in hotel service and a decade as banquet manager at Restaurant August, this chef is steeped in Southern hospitality and the guest experience. His menu, while not strictly Cajun, uses Gulf ingredients like crawfish to create popular dishes like crawdat fries, topped with a creamy cheese sauce studded with crawfish and
a hearty file gumbo, served Cajun style with potato salad.
There’s always red beans and rice on the menu – not just on Mondays, with fried chicken or fish on the side. Shrimp and grits and stuffed bell peppers are good options, same for the Superdome, a signature dish that pairs blackened fish with a lobster cream sauce, potatoes, sweet corn and onion rings. If you go hungry here it’s your own darn fault.

Compact and crowded, Coop’s probably isn’t on most travelers’ agendas which is a crying shame. Located right on Decatur not far from the French Market, Coop’s remains a locals’ haunt, with its well-worn surfaces and gritty elan. Unpolished, seductive, and even a touch dingy, Coop’s is the real deal. Staples like shrimp Creole, Cajun-fried chicken, fried oysters and rabbit and sausage jambalaya are always good bets for lunch or order the tasting plate, which features the items above along with scrumptious portions of seafood gumbo and red beans and rice with sausage. This place serves food late if you need to circle back at the end of a night on Frenchmen Street.

Restaurant R’evolution, situated in the Royal Sonesta Hotel on Bourbon Street, channels the creative powers of two chefs, James Beard-winner Rick Tramonto from Chicago, and John Folse, a local chef-personality from Donaldsonville. With competent chef de cuisine Samuel Peery responsible for fomenting this dual vision, the menu here is imaginative and showy, with a price tag to match. Modern takes on Cajun/Creole dishes include dry aged steak tartare, wild boar Bolegnese, and plate of fire-roasted short ribs and lobster. There’s also a swanky array of caviars with fixin’s and of course dry aged steaks. The bar is known for handcrafting a great Sazerac.

This is Cajun meets Creole cooking at its best. Brigtsen’s chef/owner Frank Brigtsen is legendary in the region and his culinary prowess superb. Trained with chef Paul Prudhomme. for seven years, chef Brigtsen sources many of his ingredients locally, with daily menu specials that are always a good idea. You won’t be disappointed by the roast duck or blackened tuna, but don’t miss the rabbit and Andouille gumbo, shrimp and grits and pulled pork with pepper jelly glaze. Brigtsen’s is a quick streetcar ride uptown from the French Quarter. Chef Brigtsen has garnered many awards including Best Chef Southeast from the James Beard Foundation.

Jacques-Imo’s is a Cajun/Creole mecca notable for its truck-turned table for two beckoning the Oak Street pedestrian crowd. The shrimp etouffee and smothered chicken highlight a menu of favorites that deliver huge portions at reasonable prices – all entrees include salad and two sides. Locals love the fried chicken – although that argument will never be settled in New Orleans, this version is right up there. The paneed rabbit with tasso pasta is another winner, and for dessert, what else but the alligator cheesecake? Jacques Leonardi, the chef and mastermind of this venue, is often on hand to chat up guests and talk food.

Chef Ricky Cheramie brings his twist on traditional homestyle Cajun dishes to the table at this breezy, newish spot steps from the Convention Center. His menu features swamp favorites such as alligator, crawfish, and raw oysters; from the flatlands, there are tastes of wild boar sausage, duck, Cajun marinated prime rib and boudin-stuffed free-range Statler chicken breast with a side of field pea fricassee. IF you’re feeling a salad, compromise and get your Caesar with fried oysters on top. Beers are all local and are served in bottles and on tap. The wine list is a bold array of new and old world options.

Toups’s isn’t geared to vegetarians – although there is a daily veg plate and a salad option. But if housemade charcuterie and Cajun dishes like gets your pulse racing, then run don’t walk to this Mid-City eatery, where reservations are strongly suggested. Owned by chef Isaac Toups and his wife Amanda, Toups’ serves contemporary Cajun cuisine, dishes like Gulf shrimp stew, double cut pork chops with dirty rice, boudin balls and cracklins.The chef, who worked for Emeril for a decade before opening Toups’ in 2012, describes his menu as what happens when a Cajun boy spends 10 years in fine dining. Toups comes by his Cajun flare honestly – he hails from Rayne, Louisiana, “the frog capital of the world.”