Any bar that offers a $3 beer-and-shot combo and has an open call for go-go dancers posted on its website is not typically one where you expect to find good eats. But 169 Bar is not your typical LES dive. Owned by former New Orleans musician Charles Hanson, the bar boasts a salty Crescent City vibe unabashed in its neon lights and a leopard-print pool table.
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Through the slim celadon doors of Josh Boissy's
Maison Premiere, the call of the French Quarter beckons from the Napoleon-adorned absinthe tower standing guard from the bar. Sharply dressed bartenders shake up Sazeracs as the bluesy wail of Son House croons in the background. Find yourself a corner seat, and settle in for a long night of New Orleans wining and dining at this newly opened oyster and cocktail bar.
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As this review goes to press (are we allowed to use that term, here in Internet-land?), I'll be on a plane back to New York from New Orleans, my second trip in six weeks, part of a gloriously futile effort to sample all of the Crescent City's best eats in the name of researching the upcoming Serious Eats book. And one of the things I'm struck by, when I visit the city, is how its offerings truly span the economic spectrum. Sure, there's fine dining to be had—but there are also life-changing $8 fried chicken plates and $6 po' boys that will ruin you for all other sandwiches. It's in this tradition of cheap, satisfying fare that
Honeychiles, a Cajun food counter inside divey Williamsburg punk bar The Charleston, opened a few months ago.
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If you visited many of New York's cocktail bars last week, you might have noticed that some of your familiar faces behind the bar weren't there. They were in New Orleans at Tales of the Cocktail, an annual conference...
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Chris Bicknell has organized roughly 100 crawfish boils, but he still remembers his first. It was high school in Metairie, Louisiana (his hometown), where he was in a backyard, surrounded by about thirty 11th graders and eighty pounds of crawfish....
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Here in New York City, those of us who have lived in (or just plain love) New Orleans are on a constant hunt for any of the foods that brought us joy from that area. Oysters, beignets, crawfish, jambalaya,...
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A BY CITY GUIDE TO THANKSGIVING PIES I once wrote a piece for the New York Observer advocating the nation skip the turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes, and opt for an all pie Thanksgiving meal. A meal consisting of, say,...
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