Cooking: Guidebooks

Easy to read ratings for quality and value help locals and tourists avoid dining disappointments and overpriced restaurants as they discover the city's best dining establishments.

· An epicurean adventure in America's greatest food city, with the best of Big Easy eats--all about Creole and Cajun cooking, gator on a stick, Mardi Gras feasts, po'boys and other great discoveries for food lovers, from temples of Creole elegance in the French Quarter to Cajun cafés in the bayous.· A tantalizing portrait of how Louisiana's diverse and sometimes unexpected cuisines have simmered together to create the rich culinary stew that has made the Big Easy one of America's great food cities.· Visits to the French Market, Mardi Gras, Indian food festivals, Enola Prudhomme and the Evangeline Oak; with dinner at plantations worthy of Scarlett O'Hara. · Written (with an infectious gusto that will have you packing to go in no time) by Fred Halliday, who has written on food, wine, and travel for the New York Times and the New York Daily News, as well as for the New Yorker, Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, and other national magazines.· Loaded with practicalities, including driving directions, addresses and phone numbers of restaurants and lodgings, city and regional orientation maps, and recipes and instructions for favorite local taste treats from gumbo to crawfish boil.

Completely revised and updated with brand-new restaurants, Eat Dat New Orleans is the ultimate guide to America's best food city When Mario Batali was asked his favorite food city, he responded, "New Orleans, hands down." No city has as many signature dishes, from gumbo and beignets to pralines and po' boys, from muffuletta and Oysters Rockefeller to king cake and red beans and rice (every Monday night), all of which draw nearly 9 million hungry tourists to the city each year. In this fully revised and updated new edition, Eat Dat New Orleans celebrates both New Orleans's food and its people. It highlights nearly 250 eating spots--sno-cone stands and food carts as well as famous restaurants--and spins tales of the city's food lore, such as the controversial history of gumbo and the Shakespearean drama of restaurateur Owen Brennan and his heirs. Both first-time visitors and seasoned travelers will be helped by a series of appendices that list restaurants by cuisine, culinary classes and tours, food festivals, and indispensable "best of" lists chosen by an A-list of the city's food writers and media personalities, including Poppy Tooker, Lolis Eric Elie, Ian McNulty, Sara Roahen, Marcelle Bienvenu, Amy C. Sins, and Liz Williams.

From backwoods bars and small-town dives to swampside dance halls and converted clapboard barns, Louisiana Saturday Night offers an anecdotal history and experiential guidebook to some of the Gumbo State's most unique blues, Cajun, and zydeco clubs. Music critic Alex V. Cook uncovers south Louisiana's wellspring of musical tradition, showing us that indigenous music exists not as an artifact to be salvaged by preservationists, but serves as a living, breathing, singing, laughing, and crying part of Louisiana culture. Louisiana Saturday Night takes the reader to both offbeat and traditional venues in and around Baton Rouge, Cajun country, and New Orleans, where we hear the distinctive voices of musicians, patrons, and owners -- like Teddy Johnson, born in the house that now serves as Teddy's Juke Joint. Along the way, Cook ruminates on the cultural importance of the people and places he encounters, and shows their critical role in keeping Louisiana's unique music alive. A map, a journal, a snapshot of what goes on in the little shacks off main roads, Louisiana Saturday Night provides an indispensable and entertaining companion for those in pursuit of Louisiana's quirky and varied nightlife.

New Orleans is an American city unlike any other, and its rich diversity is reflected in the world-class bar scene. In Drink Dat New Orleans, Elizabeth Pearce takes us on a tour of the city's many unforgettable drinking spots, including a candle-lit tavern favored by pirates in the early eighteenth century and a watering hole so beloved by locals that several urns containing the ashes of former patrons rest in peace behind its bar. A Louisiana native and co-founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, Pearce brings her lifelong love of food, beverage, and local lore to this ultimate drinker's guide. From the nonstop parties on Bourbon Street to the classy cool of the Garden District, Drink Dat is the perfect way to explore America's most spirited city.