Marrero To Lafitte

New Orleans is in close proximity to many Ends Of The World. Restaurant des Familles is not quite that remote, but well down the road to a place that is: Barataria, the hangout of Jean Lafitte and his pirates. The surroundings of the restaurant are primordial enough that there are swamp tours nearby. Yet it's close enough to town that if you have a visiting client or friend who wants to eyeball the unique Louisiana environment, it's not too long a trip to come here. And eat some gumbo, oysters, crabmeat, and all the other comestibles for which our town is celebrated.

Uptown 3: Napoleon To Audubon

Trying to think of a place for dinner recently, with the limitation that one of us didn't want Italian, the three of us could think of nothing but Italian restaurants. We finally settled on an Italian restaurant that was just different enough from the standard to make it seem. . . well, not really Italian. Whatever that means. Avo's take on Italian food is very new to the scene, having premiered only six months earlier. It wasn't until we were deep into the meal before we saw that not only is Avo's very Italian but very deep New Orleans-Italian roots. Avo's main selling point is its premises, a rebirth of the former Martinique restaurant and its hedge-surrounded, open-air courtyard. That part of the renovation was the deepest: it's now a weatherproof dining room that nevertheless has an outdoor-dining feeling. If the weather is even remotely nice, they open all the big windows. The menu is different enough from any other in that part of restaurant-loaded Magazine Street to be attractive. You will walk past at least three restaurants between your parking space and Avo.

CBD