The best Uptown meals happen on streets most visitors never find, at tables where the regulars know the waiters by name. These four restaurants are where New Orleans actually eats, far from the neon and noise of the Quarter.
High Hat Cafe
Freret Street went from blighted to one of the city’s best dining strips in about a decade, and High Hat Cafe at the corner of Freret and Jena is the restaurant most responsible for drawing people there first. It opened in 2011 in the old Long’s Bakery building and built its reputation on a focused, honest menu of Southern food from Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta. In mid-2023, original manager Ryan Iriarte and his childhood friend Chef Fredo Nogueira took over ownership, and the kitchen hasn’t missed a step.
The catfish is the anchor, U.S. farm-raised, fried correctly, served with slaw, hush puppies, and house pickles. The pimento mac and cheese, alongside it, is the side dish people talk about on the way home. BBQ shrimp braised in local beer, smoked chicken, slow-roasted pork, and a rotating slate of daily specials round out a menu that earns its regulars. Chrome and Formica tables, beadboard walls, chalkboard specials, and framed photos of old Freret Street set the room.
High Hat is at 4500 Freret Street, open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Call (504) 754-1336.
Venezia
The neon sign on North Carrollton still reads “Venezia Pizza Pie,” which is about as accurate as calling the Mississippi a creek. Venezia has been serving homestyle Italian in Mid-City since 1957, founded by Anthony Carollo and passed in 1987 to Anthony Bologna, who has kept the food and the atmosphere essentially unchanged through a complete post-Katrina renovation that rebuilt the place from six feet of standing water without altering a single detail. Red-checked tablecloths, a burgundy ceiling, old photos on the walls, and a no-baseball-caps dress code are all still in place.
The menu is no-nonsense: spaghetti and meatballs with red gravy, lasagna, eggplant parmigiana, braciolone, veal pannee with lump crabmeat and mushrooms in lemon butter, and Eggplant Vatican topped with crawfish, shrimp, and crabmeat cream sauce. The portions are enormous. The pizza is Sicilian-style and built to order. A table at Venezia on a weekend night runs long and loud in the best possible way.
The restaurant is at 134 N. Carrollton Avenue, open Monday and Wednesday through Friday for lunch starting at 11 a.m., dinner Monday and Wednesday through Saturday 4 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Sunday noon to 9 p.m. Closed Tuesday. Call (504) 488-7991.
Camellia Grill
The name comes from a butterfly-shaped concrete viewing platform that used to extend over a decorative garden at the front of the building, demolished long ago, but the nickname survived everything, and so did the restaurant. Camellia Grill opened on December 19, 1946, at 626 S. Carrollton Avenue at the bend in the St. Charles streetcar line, and it has been operating on roughly the same terms ever since: 29 counter seats, white-coated waiters, open grills, and a menu of omelets, burgers, sandwiches, and pies that don’t need improving.
The Chef Special omelet is the house flagship, a blender-whipped egg construction stuffed with bacon, ham, onion, Swiss and American cheeses, and fries, then blanketed in chili and delivered piping hot. The pecan pie comes grilled in butter and topped with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream. The freezes, blended with ice cream and available in orange, chocolate, and other flavors, are the cold-weather drink you order anyway. Camellia Grill was also one of the first businesses in New Orleans to hire Black workers for both front and back of house, at a time when that was a genuinely radical act.
Hours are Monday through Thursday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Call (504) 309-2679.
Clancy’s
Ed and Betty Clancy opened a neighborhood po’boy bar on Annunciation Street in the late 1940s. In 1983 they sold it to a group of Uptown businessmen. In 1987 Brad Hollingsworth bought it and turned it into what the Michelin Guide now lists as one of the city’s essential restaurants, without moving it from its residential corner near Audubon Park or changing the fact that a man in a tuxedo greets you at the door. Clancy’s is the kind of place where three generations of the same family occupy adjacent tables on a Thursday night, which happens regularly.
The fried oysters with brie originated here and remain the definitive version: flash-fried Gulf oysters with gooey brie melting over the crunchy edges and a touch of wilted spinach underneath. The smoked softshell crab with meunière sauce and extra lump crabmeat is the other dish people come back for specifically. The menu runs through chicken and andouille gumbo, trout amandine, veal in several preparations, and a lemon icebox pie that closes meals correctly. The wine list is one of the better ones in the city.
Clancy’s is at 6100 Annunciation Street, open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Call (504) 895-1111 for reservations, and make them.
