Commander's Palace

The turquoise Victorian mansion on Washington Avenue has been the spiritual centre of New Orleans dining for over a century. Commander's Palace opened in 1893, and since then it has produced more significant American chefs than any other restaurant: Paul Prudhomme, who went on to define Cajun cuisine for the world; Emeril Lagasse, who took the cuisine to television and global fame; Frank Brigtsen, Jamie Shannon, and others whose careers began in this kitchen. The restaurant's ability to incubate great chefs while remaining a great restaurant in its own right is without parallel in American dining.

Today, Chef Meg Bickford leads the kitchen with a menu that she describes as contemporary Creole — meaning the classics are honoured and present, but the cooking is alive rather than museum-quality. The signature Commander's turtle soup, finished tableside with sherry, is one of the great ceremonies of Southern dining. The Creole bread pudding soufflé is one of the best desserts in America. The Haute Creole dinner service is matched in quality by a jazz brunch that has its own culture: musicians circulating through the dining rooms, 25-cent martinis at weekday lunch, $0.25 Sazerac cocktails for the initiated.

The dining room is a series of jewel-box spaces — the front room with its hand-painted Audubon murals and embroidered three-dimensional birds, the coveted Garden Room with sweeping windows overlooking the courtyard below. The service is precisely calibrated to the occasion; this is a room where the staff understand that a birthday table needs to feel different from a business dinner. Private dining rooms are available for groups and have hosted everything from rehearsal dinners to corporate celebrations. The wine list runs to 2,600 bottles, with particular strength in Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Napa Valley.

In February 2025, Commander's Palace was named one of the James Beard Foundation's America's Classics for the South — a recognition of restaurants with timeless appeal and quality that endures. Reserve at least two weeks in advance for weeknights, considerably more for weekend brunch and holiday periods.

No restaurant in New Orleans understands how to celebrate like Commander's Palace. The dining room staff have executed thousands of birthdays over 130 years, and the institutional memory shows in every gesture: the pacing that ensures courses arrive when conversation pauses, the tableside theatre of the bread pudding soufflé, the jazz musicians who seem to know exactly when a table needs a second wind. The garden rooms can be reserved for private birthday dinners; the main dining rooms offer the full spectacle of New Orleans' finest celebration culture.

The 25-cent martini lunch — available on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday — is a specific Commander's tradition worth knowing: for any birthday lunch, this ritual becomes part of the mythology. The weekend Jazz Brunch for birthday celebrations is equally legendary; the combination of live music, $0.25 Sazerac cocktails, eggs Sardou, turtle soup, and that soufflé is a sequence that guests discuss for years afterwards. For a group of eight or more, the private dining rooms allow for a completely curated evening. For large milestone birthdays — 40th, 50th, significant celebrations — this is the only New Orleans table that makes the occasion feel genuinely historic.