New & Noteworthy in New Orleans

New Orleans has completely recovered from Katrina in the tourist areas. In many ways the city has improved since "the storm" with more restaurants, entrepreneurial businesses, and even a new food truck movement.

The uber-hip and artsy Bywater neighborhood just downriver from the French Quarter is gaining new bars and restaurants and boutiques all the time since "the storm." Some of the cooler spots include Bon Castor boutique arts and crafts, Maurepas Fine Foods, and Lost Love Lounge for drinks and down-home New Orleans Vietnamese chow in the back. Mimi's is the local favorite for late night drinks and upstairs casual dining and dancing. The Orange Couch is great for coffee and roaming chickens. The art scene along adjacent St. Claude Avenue is the most recent cutting edge gallery collective to open in the city.

If you go Uptown, Freret Street between Napoleon and Jefferson Aveneues now has a new scene that includes the mixology bar Cure, gourmet dog joints Dat Dog, gourmet hamburgers at Company Burger, gournet cakes and "cake pops" at Pure Cake. The Hi-Hat offers incredible modern southern comfort food with local fresh ingredients, and the bar makes some of the most innovative and fresh-tasting home-made mixology cocktails of anywhere in the city!