Hype vs. History: A Local Tour Guide's Defense of New Orleans’ 3 Most Famous Spots

I love New Orleans, from the seeing the most obscure swampy corner in our inflatable kayak to the teeming Mardi Gras parades where you can't hide from the millions. You'll find many jaded folks putting down the old school New Orleans treasures, but that's not me. The New Orleanians of the past were right, and here are some of their best. Should we go to Preservation Hall, or is it too touristy?

Preservation Hall is absolutely touristy, but only because us locals have been passionately telling everyone they must go see it for over 65 years.

I always tell our customers at A Street Tour Named Desire how much I love questions—lots of questions. They give me entirely new ways to look at things as I formulate answers, and coming up with ideas at the spur of the moment always gives us the best responses. Sometimes, the questions are so simple that they lead to the greatest answers, like the time a customer asked me this exact question.

Can I use the term “timeless” again? Because it is the only word that fits. Yes, they finally installed an air conditioner in 2019, meaning the old sweltering line outside—where everyone held cold to-go cocktails they could bring inside in lieu of cold air—is mostly a memory. That physical queue has largely been replaced by the modern convenience of quickly sold-out, advanced-ticket performances. But step inside those doors, and you wouldn't be able to tell a show today apart from one in the 1960s. It features the exact same acoustic sound, the same historic songs, and the same deep love for the music.

It is called Preservation Hall for a reason. The city’s most famous modern musicians, like Jon Batiste and Trombone Shorty, were heavily influenced by that specific sound and have both collaborated extensively with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. I have seen New Orleans bounce hero Big Freedia team up with them on stage. Honestly, the most fun night of my entire life was watching local rap legend DJ Jubilee become the first bounce artist to ever share the stage with the Preservation Hall band during a rare, surprise midnight show.

So, we have to ask ourselves: if that stage is good enough for some of the greatest and most popular New Orleans musicians alive, it should probably make the cut for anyone. Go enjoy the show, and don’t forget to dance—absolutely no one is looking. Is the Napoleon House still a great place for a cocktail?

The Napoleon House remains one of the absolute best places for a classic cocktail in New Orleans because it perfectly preserves a timeless, unscripted connection to the city's living history. 

The theme for me in our city is timelessness. When I think about where I want to eat, my brain does not ask the modern question of, “What’s that new place doing new things?” My mind naturally veers to, “What about that old place doing the same things?” It’s not because I'm old and cranky and hate change—I completely love the incredible influx of new post-Katrina neighborhood Mardi Gras parades—but I live in New Orleans as much for its connection to the past as its connection to the present.

Everyone will tell you the historical myths of the building. While others choose to believe in ghosts, I choose to believe in unwritten legends, but you can track those basic facts down about the Napoleon House anywhere online. I love it, though, for the surface things that come from the true depth—just the physical look and the feeling of the space. Forget the old expression, “If these walls could talk.” The Napoleon House walls scream. The cracked plaster walls are covered with the scribbled names of a hundred years of customers, each with a deep story implied but never explicitly told. 

The food is just as legendary. The signature muffaletta is an absolute classic (served warmed, the way it should be), the shrimp remoulade on avocado is a mandatory order, and because truly good boudin is surprisingly hard to get within the city limits, it is a phenomenal place to taste that Cajun classic.

But we haven’t even reached the real draw: the most refreshing cocktail in the entire city, the Pimm’s Cup. The Napoleon House goes through more Pimm’s liqueur than any bar in the United States, meaning Mario, the timeless bartender, pours more Pimm’s than any other human being in America. That is a hell of something to hang one's hat on. A customer on our New Orleans Cocktail Bike Tour once described it as "an alcoholic Arnold Palmer." It is exactly that, but much more. There is simply no better place to drink it than the literal courtyard that popularized it in our city and serves more of it than anyone else on earth. The crowds, once again, are completely right. Is the line at Cafe Du Monde worth the wait?

Cafe Du Monde is absolutely worth visiting because after 160 years in business, it remains a timeless, historic New Orleans institution that still makes both tourists and locals genuinely happy.

Fried dough, mountains of powdered sugar, and a hot cup of coffee and chicory with a direct view of Jackson Square is hard to beat. It reminds me of a time I was dining at Galatoire’s and my girlfriend said, “We could have made this fish at home.” I told her, “Yes, but you never would have dumped that much crab meat on top of it, and you wouldn't be sitting inside Galatoire’s.” Similarly, you can fry dough in your own kitchen, but you’d never dump that much sugar on it, and you wouldn't be at Cafe Du Monde. If the ghost of your bald-headed great-great-uncle who passed through New Orleans on his way out to fight in WWI in 1917—stopping just long enough to catch syphilis and get some beignets—came back to life in 2026, he’d feel as if absolutely nothing had changed on that patio, besides the prices. That is the magic of New Orleans, and I love it.

But the real question you should be asking is: what wait? There have always been clever ways around that infamous line. When I was younger, we would usually ride over at 2:00 AM, and the chaotic cross-section of late-night customers using sugar and caffeine to keep the party rolling was never dull—and there was never a line. In the years following the Saints' Super Bowl win, when the crowds we lost to Hurricane Katrina finally came flooding back ready to devour our food, I’d slip around to the takeout window in the back and eat my treats right on the Mississippi River levee. Again, there was never a line.

These days, the takeout line is often just as long as the dine-in queue. If you show up there in the morning, the wait is completely unbearable to a local like me. We simply do not do lines in this city, especially when there are always two handfuls of other incredible things to do within a few blocks. Because the years of me roaming the French Quarter at 2:00 AM are long behind me, I now visit with my eight-year-old daughter. To keep me happy, we have a strict rule: we only go to Cafe Du Monde after 5:00 PM, when you can walk right up to a table. After 5:00 PM, it feels exactly like the old times. Beignets taste great any time of day. While we still love the neighborhood alternatives, like Loretta’s Pralines or Henry's Original Bakery & Cafe and we try to show modern alternatives on our New Orleans Culinary Bike Tour, you can't argue with 160 years of making tourists and locals happy.