The Treme is the oldest Black neighborhood in America, and on Esplanade Avenue, in a bright teal building that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it, a family has been feeding this community for three generations. Li’l Dizzy’s Café doesn’t have a marquee out front. It doesn’t need one. The people who know, know.
The Creole filé gumbo at Li’l Dizzy’s is the same gumbo the Baquet family has been serving across its restaurants for decades, built on a pre-made seasoned roux that Wayne Baquet Sr. and his father developed together so they could reproduce it anywhere.
That kind of consistency doesn’t come from a recipe card. It comes from eighty years of muscle memory passed down through a family whose roots in New Orleans food stretch back to the Paul Gross Chicken Coop in the 1940s, through the legendary Eddie’s in the Seventh Ward, and right here to this corner of the Treme.
Since 1947, the Baquet family has owned and operated over ten restaurants in the city, and Li’l Dizzy’s is the only one still standing.
Wayne Baquet Sr. can trace his family tree back before Louisiana became part of the United States. This lineage is French, Spanish, American Indian, and African American all at once.
That history lives in the food. The fried chicken comes out well-seasoned and crispy, the kind of crust that cracks when you bite into it and gives way to meat that’s still juicy underneath.
The gumbo is dark and rich, built from filé the way Creole cooks have made it forever, not the watered-down tourist version you’ll find closer to Bourbon Street.
The café has drawn everyone from Barack Obama to George W. Bush, alongside neighborhood regulars who’ve been coming for years. That mix tells you everything.
This is a place where the city’s political class eats elbow-to-elbow with residents who grew up three blocks away, and nobody makes a fuss about it. As Arkesha Baquet puts it, Dizzy’s is a common ground where people come to meet, a go-to place for families from out of town and locals alike.
The restaurant nearly closed for good during the pandemic, but Wayne and Arkesha Baquet stepped in to carry the legacy forward in February 2021, keeping the recipes exactly as they were while shifting from buffet service to tableside and takeout.
The name itself is a piece of the family story: Zachary Baquet earned the nickname “Li’l Dizzy” because when he played trumpet at St. Augustine High School, his cheeks swelled the same way Dizzy Gillespie’s did. A restaurant named after a kid’s trumpet face might be the most New Orleans origin story possible.
Go on Monday for red beans and rice with house-made hot sausage. Go on Tuesday for the white beans. Go any day for the fried chicken, because that plate will make you understand why this family has been in the business for eighty years.
Li’l Dizzy’s is open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., at 1500 Esplanade Ave. Get there early. The good stuff goes fast.
