New Orleans’ hottest new restaurants to try right now

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]Welcome back. Despite the news of some restaurants closing in New Orleans, new places to dine are popping up, too. Ian McNelte is the food culture writer for the Times Pikyu New Orleans Advocate and has been taste testing around town and we talked to him about his new favorites.

[00:00:15]We are entering the slowest season of the year for hospitality, for restaurants, tourism in New Orleans, but that doesn't mean that the industry is asleep by any means, right?

[00:00:26]>> No, certainly not. that is wide awake and quite hungry. Uh there have been uh lots of new restaurants that have opened in the last few months, Devon, and uh recently took a a look at um some of the ones that I found myself recommending the most. And what's impressive is uh the variety of restaurants, the the the real diversity of flavors and restaurant styles that keep on joining the New Orleans restaurant scene. It's um you know there's tried and trueue New Orleans flavor, but these days when you want to dine out uh you literally have a a world of culinary options and it keeps growing as more chefs and restaurant people step up with new concepts.

[00:01:08]>> When you listed out your absolute favorites that you have tried recently, are you talking more about one style of food? Is it kind of all over the place?

[00:01:17]Tell me what what scope we're looking at. Okay, the few of them that come to mind that really illustrate this are uh we're going to go from Basque country cooking in Spain to legit French cooking on the Northshore to a taste of Cuba on Ferret Street and a little tie thrown in there in Mid City. So, how's that for a teaser for you? Uh start on Ferret Street with Dolphies. This is a new restaurant from a young chef named Adulo Garcia. His dad has been a big deal in New Orleans restaurant scene for a long time. This is the next generation.

[00:01:47]Dolphies is a Spanish restaurant and specifically from the Basque region of Spain. There's a woodfired oven in there and a lot of just fresh flavors. It's um it's a fun place for a cocktail, for a few tapas that they call pinchos here, almost like cocktail party food to get you started. Uh and a nice place to take a few people when you want to get together and share a few dishes around the table. Now, from there, go to the Northshore to Feliciana. This is a grand new restaurant in downtown Covington and it's all about traditional French cuisine. It is it is transporting you to the French countryside on the menu and it is a really beautiful restaurant too and there's a lounge upstairs called Paradise on the second floor for cocktails. Now, back on this side of the lake in Mid City, uh Chada is a new Thai restaurant. uh and Devon, they took over what was just a kind of an ordinary mid-ity shotgun house and really turned it into this temple of Thai food and high style. You walk into this place in one room after the other. It's just really pretty, gorgeous cocktails and the flavors ring true, too. And then just one more to round it out because we've gone from high-end to mid-range.

[00:02:56]Here's an anytime casual spot that you could just drop by for a cup of coffee or a quick sandwich and it's called Cafe Con Migo. It's back on Ferret Street and Ferret Street is just a buzz of restaurants these days. But uh this one is a bit of Miami street food. So just a perfect crisp Cuban sandwich, a coffee with a strong kick to it. You have a quick breakfast if you're if you're in the morning time time and u a really tasty flavor. So I mean around the clock with those four places uh it couldn't get more diverse.

[00:03:25]>> All right, with restaurant week coming up, uh is there anything that you are looking forward to? Anything you're covering that we should be keeping an eye out for? Restaurant week is a great opportunity for what I just talked about. Get a few people go out. Uh this is one week long specials at restaurants from again from old school French Quarter Creole Grandams to some of the new kids on the block. So for me it's always a chance to get back to a place I haven't been to in a while because they've got a special menu deal and a place to check out um somewhere new and maybe get some of my friends together that I haven't seen in a little while.

[00:03:58]Uh, and we said we were going to catch up all year long and it's been so crazy busy through Marty Gro festivals. Uh, and now we finally have a chance to do that. So, get a sitter, go out and do it up. It the impact that you make as a local diner will definitely be felt in these dining rooms.

[00:04:15]>> Sounds delicious. Thank you to Ian for that.