By Kelly Foss New Orleans is famous for its food and restaurants, and rightly so. Local chefs have mastered the art of making the common taste royal. It ’s magical what people can do in a kitchen with simple ingredients and secret recipes. Even the lowly Shrimp Po Boys prepared anywhere else just don ’t taste as good. Recently I had the opportunity of visiting New Orleans and dining at seven very special eateries. Each was intent on showing us, the out of town journalists, what they could do. I was a willing victim of this wretched over indulgence. The problem with visiting a city like New Orleans is that there are so many great places to eat and so little time. And each has a lengthy menu that would require many visits to fully explore. So, where do you start? To begin with, pick a downtown hotel to make getting around easier. Try the new Harrah ’s in the city center close to both the river and the French Quarter. The hotel is gorgeous, the service is great and the location couldn ’t be better. The Magnificent 7 If you’re not sure where to eat in New Orleans, here are seven restaurants I would recommend. I ’m confident that you’ll enjoy them as much as I did. Brennan’s – This is one of the top restaurants in the country. What sets Brennan’s apart is their consistent high level of service and the quality of food. Executive Chef Randolph has been at Brennan ’s since 1965 where he started working right out of high school. We met him, and he comes across as a very accomplished, yet down-to-earth, chef who has mastered his craft by spending countless hours in the kitchen. This is the kind of man you want to learn cooking from! The atmosphere in this restaurant is thick with history. As you enter the place, you can feel it in the air. Located on Royal Street in the French Quarter, Brennan’s has safeguarded its heritage without becoming irrelevant. Several famous dishes including Bananas Foster and Eggs Hussarde were born at Brennan ’s. Brennan’s is known for its elegant breakfasts and brunches. In addition to the above mentioned dishes, Maude ’s Seafood Okra Gumbo is wonderful. If you’re a turtle soup lover, their New Orleans Turtle Soup is especially good. Even simple strawberries and cream are memorable at Brennan ’s. www.brennansneworleans.com. Galatoire’s – Dining at Galatoire’s is as much about socializing as it is about actually eating. Both, however, are accomplished with great skill and artistry. This is the place to see and be seen. Located right on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, Galatoire ’s has been serving food from this same location for more than a century. Unlike most modern restaurants, Galatoire ’s cuisine is not the creation of a singular superstar chef but rather of a family that has carefully safeguarded a tradition of impeccable cuisine, service and ambiance. Consistently providing this exquisite experience is itself an artform that Galatoire ’s steadfastly maintains. Galatoire’s traditions have been preserved with little change through the decades. Its “no reservations” policy along with its intense popularity explains the famous waiting lines. It is said that local businessmen will pay people to stand in line for them and wait for hours to get a

table. If you can’t wait that long, you can make a reservation for their upstairs dining room. You will miss out on some of the people watching, but the menu is the same. One dish you might want to try is the Green Salad with Garlic … this dish has lots of garlic. The Sauteéd Poisson with Crabmeat Yvonne was wonderful, and the Lamb Chops Béarnaise is expertly done. www.galatoires.com Grand Isle Seafood Restaurant – Grand Isle is located right on the Fulton Street Mall across from the Convention Center. Designed to give the feel of a Coastal Louisiana fish camp, this restaurant celebrates the joy of local seafood. Whether spiced and boiled, fried, saut éed or grilled, the seafood comes straight from the waters off Grand Isle, Louisiana, to your table without touching the freezer. The dining is casual, and the restaurant’s atmosphere is open and sunny with large windows and light colored wood. If you’re a seafood lover like I am, you may opt for the Seafood Platter, which spares you the agony of having to decide what to get, or more importantly, what you might miss. To no one ’s surprise, it is all very good. I don’t think there is a bad speck of seafood in this restaurant. The real surprise was two of the desserts. The Bread Pudding was a real New Orleans treat and the Lemon Ice Box Pie was just superb. www.grandislerestaurant.com Besh Steakhouse – This is a steakhouse with a twist. Located in Harrah’s, the restaurant is a combination of Chef Besh’s own ideas about traditional steakhouse menu items combined with a New Orleans influence. This spacious restaurant is both modern and traditional. There exists at once a comfortable dining environment with traditional service juxtaposed against a stainless, brushed metal kitchen and oversized Blue Dog artwork on the walls. The menu also contains some pleasant surprises such as the Plum Lacquered Pork Belly Spring Rolls, an item you don ’t see on every menu. I saw one optimistic diner trying to handle her 38-ounce (for real!) Cowboy Steak. It looked delicious, and she was certainly enjoying it, but it ’s just too much for one person to handle. www.harrahsneworleans.com/casinos/harrahs-new-orleans/restaurants-dining/the-bes h-steakhouse-at-harrahs-detail.html Tujague’s – The second oldest restaurant in New Orleans, Tujague’s celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2006. At the end of the Civil War, a French immigrant family named Tujague (pronounced twojack) began by serving breakfast and lunch to the dock workers, market laborers and seamen who crowded that part of the riverfront. The restaurant ’s style is as refreshingly unpretentious as ever. And the food is as delectable as it was in the days of the first Tujague ’s. It’s located in the heart of the French Quarter, just east of Jackson Square on Decatur across from the market. It is unmistakably a New Orleans classic neighborhood restaurant. The building is ancient and the interior has intentionally been kept simple and original looking. In a place like this, tradition and links to the past are much more valuable than modernism and change.