New Orleans

New Orleans dining rests on Louisiana Creole cooking, described by food historians as a composite of French roux, African okra, Indigenous filé and Spanish peppers. Its institutional record begins with Antoine's, opened in 1840 by Antoine Alciatore as a restaurant and boarding house for immigrants and merchant seamen, relocated in 1878 to 713 St. Louis Street, and generally cited as the oldest family-run restaurant in the United States. Under Antoine's son Jules the kitchen produced oysters Rockefeller, pompano en papillote and eggs Sardou — dishes that entered the wider Creole repertoire.

The city's second defining moment came through Paul Prudhomme, raised in Cajun country outside Opelousas, who returned to New Orleans in 1970 and in 1975 was hired by Ella Brennan as the first American-born executive chef at Commander's Palace, where he introduced the bread pudding soufflé. He later opened K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen at 416 Chartres Street, carrying south Louisiana cooking into national visibility.

Drinks history is equally documented. The apothecary Antoine Amédée Peychaud, working on Royal Street, gave his bitters to a brandy toddy named for Sazerac-de-Forge et fils; rye later displaced cognac after phylloxera curtailed French supplies. The Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel has poured the drink since 1938, and the city named it its official cocktail in 2008.