Latest news with #ErinPerkins
Eater
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
Best Dishes Eater Editors Ate in New Orleans This Week, July 2025
Before landing in New Orleans, my pilot described the weather in the city as 'juicy.' He wasn't wrong. With summer in full swing, my team and I ate through NOLA. Here are the juiciest details on the best dishes we tried. Pani puri with strawberry at Mister Mao I headed to Mister Mao for brunch because I don't like brunch — eggs, pancakes, bacon, the regular brunchy stuff. The Mister Mao brunch menu is far from regular. With family-style Asian dishes (served as part of a brunch package for two for $50, a great deal) like Chinese chicken and rice dumplings, crispy beef wontons, poha breakfast potatoes, and garlic noodles, I knew this was my kind of brunching. The pani puri caught my attention. I'm from New Delhi, so pani puri, a fried, hollow spherical shell of dough stuffed with spiced potatoes and chutneys, is a staple street food. I'd also never seen it served on a brunch menu. The plate arrived with the pani puri garnished with strawberry — a blasphemy! There's no fruit in pani puri, I thought. But when you try it, the heat from the spiced mint water and the sourness from the tamarind chutney was brilliantly cut with the sweetness of the strawberries. I couldn't believe it. Mister Mao took a major staple, and tweaked it ever so slightly, to present a refreshing treat for brunch. I'd order another round. — Henna Bakshi, Eater regional editor, South. Crab claws at Toups' Meatery Pair the crab claws from Toups' Meatery with a Poblano Escobar cocktail. Erin Perkins Toups' Meatery came onto my radar because it was part of the wave of high-profile Southern restaurants joining spots like Husk in the national spotlight in the 2010s. I'd had food from chef Issac Toups at festivals and events, but this was my first time visiting the restaurant. It's a neighborhood spot in the Mid-City with bright NOLA-centric murals on the outside. As the name suggests, Toups is known for its meat — big charcuterie boards, stacked burgers, and a daily sausage. But consider the crab claw starter. The kitchen serves Louisiana crab claws, accompanied by grilled and pickled pineapple, all topped with a chili vinaigrette. The meaty bits of the claws are exposed, so it's easy to get to the good stuff. Each bite is a bit smoky, tangy, spicy, and sweet. It's a refreshing summertime appetizer to erase the memory of the New Orleans humidity looming outside. It's even more cooling when paired with a Poblano Escobar cocktail, which is a mix of poblano pepper-infused tequila, pineapple shrub, and lime. — Erin Perkins, Eater editor, South. Yak-a-mein from Eat-Well Food Mart I always make it a point to seek out iconic dishes native to New Orleans when I travel there, and yak-a-mein, the salty play on ramen, is a dish I can't find easily back in Northern Virginia (even if noodle soups abound there). I was excited to get to try Miss Linda's version a few years ago; this trip, I decided to make my way to the unassuming Eat-Well Food Mart to give theirs a try (partially on account of their early morning hours, which meant yakamein for breakfast was on the table for me). Their steaming hot rendition is less overwhelmingly salty than some others I've tried, and it upstaged the pho from the same takeout location. Takeout made the most sense for me, but there is a small area of seating for those who need it, despite the counter's existence hidden in the back of a convenience store. — Missy Frederick, Eater cities director. Shrimp thali at Plume Algiers It's not difficult to find a great meal in New Orleans. The city's identity is rooted in culinary excellence, so delicious food isn't exactly shocking. So imagine my surprise when I took a bite of my shrimp thali at Plume Algiers, and immediately closed my eyes in pleasure. A regularly (and frequently) rotating menu at this Indian restaurant means that a bite of food here is typically a real surprise, but garlic shrimp slathered in a chile-butter bath, fresh naan, and a sambar spiced to perfection made for an eating experience that affirmed my decision to move to New Orleans. An amalgam of regional and international spices transported me to India, a country I've never visited, through the swamps of Southern Louisiana, and right to my plate in the Crescent City. I left the restaurant with a takeout box, a full stomach, and a smile that stayed plastered on my face during the entire drive home. — Kayla Stewart, Eater senior editor. Eater New Orleans All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Eater
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Eater
Best Dishes Eater Editors Ate in New Orleans This Week
Skip to main content Current eater city: New Orleans Eater editors recently visited New Orleans and ate through a long list of restaurants. We hit the classics, taking full advantage of the 25-cent martinis and turtle soup at Commander's Palace, coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde, and French 75s at Arnaud's. And then we hit the new cool kids in town, like Acamaya, Lagniappe Bakehouse, and the Kingsway, among plenty of others. Some dishes left us feeling wowed, while others sent us gasping for air (finishing a muffaletta from Central Grocery is not for beginners). In our first roundup of several more, here are the best dishes we ate around New Orleans in June, 2025. Seafood spot Peche has served the New Orleans community since 2013, and it's thankfully been able to avoid the usual patina of an early aughts restaurant — it still feels fresh today with intriguing specials featuring local seafood and produce. On a visit in June, I couldn't resist a Royal Reds special since these crustaceans rarely make it up to the Carolinas. The dish was a departure from the fried shrimp I'd been eating the rest of the week (not that there's anything wrong with several po'boys on a trip to NOLA). Chef de cuisine Nicole Mills, a native of the Philippines, often incorporates Southeast Asian flavors into her dishes. The special featured Royal Reds poached to an enviable tenderness that I could never recreate at home, ripe mango, thinly-sliced radish, a hit of jalapeño, red onions, mint, peanuts, a fish sauce dressing similar to nuoc cham, fried shallots, and crispy dried shrimp from Kho Market. Imagine crushing through the first layer of tiny crunchy shrimp to reach the succulent Royal Reds, and then plunging into fresh produce, a citrus tang, and more crunch from the nuts. It's a most satisfying bite. I could have stopped there, but I went on to the crab rice and catfish in a chili broth. Basically, you can't go wrong with seafood here. — Erin Perkins, Eater editor, South. I learned a lot about the local fare in New Orleans and the proteins that are so ingrained in the city: turtle soup, delicious boudin, and best of all, rabbit. La Petite Grocery serves an excellent paneed rabbit for lunch with spaetzle, wilted greens, and turnip puree for $38. It is a hearty meal enough to split among two people. The rabbit is crispy, and sings doused with a good zip of acid from capers and lemon (grenobloise sauce). It sits on a creamy turnip puree, which makes the dish luxurious without feeling too heavy. La Petite has an excellent wine list — you can't go wrong with lunch bubbles in Collet Champagne or 2020 Lucien Albrecht cremant d'Alsace rosé with this dish. But here's what sets this lunch apart. You can order a jar of pickles for $10 to accompany the whole meal. Pickled okra, carrots, and cauliflower cut right through that fatty rabbit. It's a jar of joy. — Henna Bakshi, Eater regional editor, South. Crab is my favorite food, so you know a dish is something special when the stuffed crab served on the side isn't the part of the dish I'm most excited about. The dishes at New Orleans' tasting menu-centric Mosquito Supper Club change frequently, so odds are that you may not get the opportunity to experience its stuffed crabs with summer panzanella. But if you can sneak there soon before tomato's fleeting season ends, you'll get the chance to try the most vivid version of the summer bread salad that I've ever had. Brightly acidic tomatoes, crisp cucumber, and crunchy croutons are paired with less-expected additions like butter beans, a hefty scattering of dill, and sesame seeds. A charred scallion vinaigrette, puckery with white balsamic, brings it all together. And yes, there's also stuffed crab on the side, its filling tucked under bright-red blue crab bodies arranged artfully on a platter nearby. Participants at Mosquito Supper Club's communal table share everything family-style — remember to be generous, or you'll be tempted to snag a larger-than-fair portion of that salad for yourself. — Missy Frederick, Eater cities director. All the restaurants with the best dishes Eater editors ate are listed in the Eater app. See More:
