Celebrate Mardi Gras at These New Orleans-Style Restaurants Around America

Chef Rafi Hasid, proprietor of the Israeli restaurant Miriam in Brooklyn, and Tal Lavi, owner of Manhattan’s Amsterdam Ale House and Third Avenue Ale House, teamed up to open this New Orleans-themed restaurant — named for the year of the Louisiana Purchase — in 2017. Gumbo, grilled oysters, and both regular and vegan jambalaya (made with tofu) are on the menu, and 1803 celebrates Mardi Gras this year with two weeks of food and drink specials, live music, burlesque shows, circus acts, and more, from Feb. 12-28.

New Orleans native Morgan Jiminez and his wife, Misti, opened their restaurant in this community west of Orlando in 2011. Boudin (Cajun sausage) balls, alligator bites, a variety of po-boy sandwiches, red beans and rice, and shrimp or crawfish étouffée are among the items served. Mardi Gras festivities on Feb. 25 will include $5 Hurricanes, hot boiled crawfish, live music, and a mask contest.

Former New Orleans residents Mike and Cherita Adams opened this family-style establishment in 2007. Cross-cultural dishes like Creole houmous and a banh mi chicken po-boy join more traditional NOLA fare like jambalaya and crawfish étouffée on the menu.

Southern Louisiana native Johnny Schulze promises “a taste of New Orleans right here in Cleveland!” Cajun fried okra, shrimp Creole, blackened catfish meunière are among the dishes that supplement the usual gumbo, jambalaya, etc. The cocktail list includes such NOLA classics as the Hurricane, the Sazerac, and the Vieux Carré.

Troy Businelle, from Morgan City, Louisiana, opened this restaurant with his wife, Audrey, in Biloxi and moved it to nearby Ocean Springs before ending up just north of Biloxi in D’Iberville. The fare ranges from fried alligator with Cajun ranch dressing to crawfish fettuccine crabmeat-stuffed snapper.

Café Zydeco proprietor Kevin Carloss hails from Abbeville, Louisiana, deep in Cajun country, and learned how to cook regional specialties from his mother. At one point, he had three other locations of Café Zydeco, in Missoula, Helena, and Billings, but sold them all off and now concentrates on this, the original. Here, he serves assorted po-boys (including an unconventional one with pulled pork and pepper jack cheese) and what he terms “legendary one pot cookin'” — jambalaya, gumbo, and étouffée.

Cajun Queen was opened in a century-old house in Charlotte’s Elizabeth neighborhood in 1985, at the height of the Cajun craze inspired by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme and his much-copied blackened redfish. Chef and co-owner William Wessling, who started in the kitchen on day one, offers such dishes as Cajun popcorn (fried crawfish tails), blackened or fried salt-and-pepper catfish, and Washday Blues — his name for red beans and rice with and ouille sausage.

Though he’s of French-Canadian and Portuguese parentage and was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, Emeril Lagasse has been the most famous exponent of New Orleans cuisine since the death of Paul Prudhomme in 2015. His Fish House, one of 11 restaurants he currently has in four states, brings a solid repertoire of Creole-style seafood dishes to Las Vegas’s MGM Grand Hotel. Look for offerings like Louisiana-style broiled oysters, buttermilk-fried frogs’ legs, and pecan-crusted redfish.

Huey’s was originally opened in 1987 as an offshoot of a well-known restaurant of the same name in Atlanta (now closed). It’s owned today by a former partner in the place, Bill Hall, who’s from New Iberia, Louisiana. Located in an 1817-vintage former cotton warehouse, Huey’s serves both Lowcountry and New Orleans specialties — the latter including shrimp Creole, crawfish étouffé, and the heroic-scaled cold-cut-and-olive-salad sandwich called muffaletta.

New Orleans-born-and-bred executive chef Brian Jupiter serves chargrilled oysters, eggplant Orleans with crawfish beurre blanc, and “gumbo ya-ya,” among other Crescent City fare at this self-described “New Orleans inspired corner store tavern housed inside an old-school bar.” A five-day Mardi Gras celebration begins on Friday, Feb. 21, including $8 frozen Hurricanes on Friday, a blues brunch on Saturday and Sunday, $10 po-boys on Monday, and numerous food specials, live music, and a 10 p.m. burlesque show on the day itself.

Jackson’s is a steakhouse, not really a New Orleans-themed restaurant. However, dishes like jumbo shrimp and crab gratin, Cointreau duck breast with butternut squash-rice grits, and petite filet with fried green tomatoes and lump blue crab wouldn’t be out of place on any New Orleans menu. And Jackson’s gets a jump on Mardi Gras this year by featuring carnival-inspired specials for brunch and dinner on Sunday, Feb. 23 — “to celebrate,” says the restaurant’s website, “the rich history of Pensacola’s Mardi Gras… (The origins of Mardi Gras observances in the city date back to 1874.)

Louisiana native Mandy Jenevein opened this place in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in 2018 in partnership with chef Matt Watson from Bear’s — a small chain of po-boy restaurants in New Orleans and vicinity especially famous for their roast beef versions of the sandwich. Roast beef po-boys are featured here, too, along with blackened catfish, Cajun pasta with shrimp or chicken, Cajun cheese fries, and a range of non-po-boy sandwiches and burgers.

New Orleans-born Jessie Rayford and his wife, Andrea, started Smokin’ NOLA as a food truck offering “fresh authentic New Orleans cuisine” before opening this brick-and-mortar location in a suburb of Denver. The menu includes gumbo, jambalaya, seafood platters, and a selection of po’boys — including the Cajun Manning (named for former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning, a New Orleans native), filled with fried shrimp, crawfish tails, and Cajun sausage.

“New Orleans,” promises the Liliana’s website, is “closer than you think” — even though the Crescent City is about 900 miles due south of this Madison suburb. Fitchburg native Dave Heide and his wife opened the place in 2007, naming it for their daughter. Jambalaya, gumbo, and a shrimp po-boy join non-New Orleans dishes on the menu (the Midwest and NOLA meet with the fried cheese curds dusted with Cajun spices.)

Marcus Christiana-Beniger, who grew up in New Orleans, opened this modest establishment with his wife, Eunah Kang Beniger, in 2014. Po-boys are a specialty, but other choices include house-made boudin blanc sausage, crawfish mac n’ cheese, and New Orleans-style bread pudding. A market on the premises sells such NOLA staples as Café du Monde chicory coffee, Zapps potato chips, and Slap Ya Mama! Cajun seasonings.

Louisiana-born Tulane University alumnus John Verlander’s tiny New Orleans-inspired dining room seats only 14. The food, he says, is “pure Creole soul.” That translates to oysters both fried and on the half shell, barbecued shrimp, ham bone red beans and rice, roast beef po-boys, and a handful of other no-frills examples of the Crescent City’s cuisine.

The late Billy McKinnon, whose first wife was from New Orleans and who apprenticed at the esteemed Galatoire’s in New Orleans, opened McKinnon’s in 1972, selling it 30 years later to longtime employee Aziz Mehram. It is said to be the oldest continuously operating restaurant in Atlanta. Oysters Rockefeller, crab rémoulade, and trout Pontchartrain (with a fried soft shell crab and béarnaise sauce) are among the Creole-style specialties.

A family-owned establishment run by siblings who were born and raised in New Orleans, Nola serves such items as 11 different po-boys, four variations on Creole fried chicken and waffles, and a sampler plate that involves fried catfish, crawfish and shrimp étouffée, gumbo, jambalaya, and red beans and rice with two kinds of sausage. If any Mardi Gras observances are planned, they won’t be on the day itself: The restaurant is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Owned by the Avenir Restaurant Group, which also has nine other restaurants around the Bay Area, NOLA started as a small place in 1996 and now covers three floors with nine dining areas, two bars, and a lounge with an oyster bar. Dishes like the Beach Bod Bowl and the Black & Blue Ahi Tacos might be more Californian than Gulf Coast, but the restaurant justifies its name with its spicy jambalaya, barbecue shrimp and grits, chicken andouille gumbo, and other New Orleans fare.

Tisha Johnson hails from Toledo, Ohio, but her menu offers plenty of traditional New Orleans dishes — including oysters Rockefeller, seafood gumbo (Dungeness crab may be added to the usual lump crab, crawfish, and shrimp for an extra charge), and cast-iron-fried catfish with crawfish étouffée, as well as such Southern specialties as barbecued spare ribs and chicken and waffles.

Not surprisingly, there are more than a dozen po-boys on the menu here, including some unconventional ones (mahi mahi, Caribbean jerk chicken). There’s also plenty of fried seafood, though (including alligator and frogs’ legs), along with the requisite jambalaya, étouffée, etc.

Opened by a member of the fabled NOLA restaurant family the Brennans, the Jazz Kitchen is an upscale but casual New Orleans-themed eatery located in the Downtown Disney District, an outdoor shopping center that links three Disney resort hotels with the two Disneyland theme parks. Boudin sausage balls, gumbo, and bourbon-glazed New York Steak Pontalba share the menu with French Quarter flatbread, Creole Caesar salad, and pasta jambalaya. There’s live music nightly.

New Orleans-bred Wayne Schilleci Sr. and his sons, with partner Brent Shook, grew Schilleci’s from a modest po-boy shop into a full-scale restaurant serving all the Creole and Cajun classics, along with such innovations as pan-seared fresh fish with scallops and hominy, blackened lamb with stuffed shrimp, and duck St. Charles with jambalaya. The restaurant hasn’t announced its Mardi Gras plans for this year yet, but last year it threw a five-hour party featuring crab cakes, étouffée, bread pudding, and other holiday standards, along with entertainment and plenty of Mardi Gras beads.

The sign outside this Astoria favorite reads “Louisiana Home Style Cookin / Seafood Boils and Sweets.” The original Sugar Freak, opened by pastry chef Michele Addeo in 2011, closed in February of 2017 but reopened four months later in a new, larger location. In addition to muffuletta, po-boys, jambalaya, and the like, those “boils” are a choice of clams, mussels, shrimp, lobster, or crab legs boiled with a spice mixture and served with corn and potatoes.