Every month, nola.eater.com offers recommendations of the best new places to eat in New Orleans. Recently, nola.eater included Jamaican restaurant, Afrodisiac, among its top options.
Shaka and Caron Garel, the husband and wife team behind the innovative Afrodisiac, operated a popular Jamaican-Creole food truck in the area for some eight years. Now, they have set up at a permanent location on Franklin Avenue in Gentilly, bringing their shrimp curry, jerk goat burgers, jerk chicken nachos, gumbo, crawfish étouffée, and more to lucky diners in a full-service restaurant and bar. The restaurant serves lunch and dinner and offers cocktails that can be enjoyed inside the mural-adorned cottage or outside on the patio. Afrodisiac serves dinner Wednesday through Sunday, with lunch served only on Sundays.
Other new and exciting restaurants to try in New Orleans this month include the following.
Queen Trini Lisa, which opened in January of 2022, serves the Jamaican standards of curry and jerk chicken; island stir fry cabbage; fried fish sandwiches on coco bread, and vegan-friendly doubles. Queen Trini Lisa’s jerk chicken won the 2019 Marley Festival prize.
Jacqueline Blanchard, the founder of Coutelier, has opened the homegrown Japanese restaurant Sukeban as part of the Oak Street revival to serve sashimi specials, rotating handrolls, and traditional sides like Japanese potato salad. Beer and saki are available.
A second location of the Wishing Town Bakery Café has opened in Orleans Parish. The Asian bakery and dim sum eatery offers custom cakes and desserts including green tea, durian, and taro crepe cakes; fruit-covered Wishing Cake; and egg yolk puff pastries; dumpling varieties that include scallop and shrimp, crawfish, onion and beef; crispy fried chicken; spicy soups; and hot pots.
Zee’s Pizzeria offers New England-style pizza and pepperoni cups in Uptown’s Milan neighborhood. Zander White has transformed his food truck into a restaurant featuring his thin crust pizza that combines Neapolitan, New York, and Connecticut styles of pizza with classic toppings. The new restaurant now offers whole pies, slices, salads, beer, and wine.
Piece of Meat has been a local and national hit since it opened in 2018 as a butcher shop and sandwich shop. Its newly offered dinner service and modern steakhouse atmosphere make it worth another visit to try its 8-ounce filet; 16-ounce Mishima wagyu; 20-ounce prime ribeye; and 36-ounce bone-in ribeye for the table, and dinners start with a beef-fat candle and grilled bread.
Flour Moon Bagels is the second shop in NOLA dedicated to bagels. Launched during the pandemic as a bagel pop-up, Breanne Kostyk turned it into a restaurant and now serves all types of bagels, breakfast sandwiches, and bagel tartines topped with herbs, veggies, and smoked fish. Also on offer: Bloody Marys and Mimosas.
Tava Indian Street Food was opened by Chef Manish Patel in late March 2022 following his work as a pop-up and food hall vendor. Located in the Warehouse District and CBD, this contemporary take on Indian street food offers exceptional choices, including Chana salad, kati rolls, vegetable pakora and Chicken 65, a dish popular in southern India.
Bisutoro on Magazine continues the trend for sushi places in New Orleans and features chefs who are classically trained in Japanese sushi. A place to sample rare fish, specialty sake, and traditional specialties from Japan.
Le Chat Noir has transformed from a cabaret and lounge to an upscale casual restaurant owing to a partnership between James Reuter, owner of the Bearcat Café, and Gene Todaro, owner of the eatery’s new building and founder of Marcello’s. It combines the cuisine of the Bearcat Café with a more upscale approach to dinner, featuring, for example, heirloom carrots with tofu hummus and chiles and white anchovies with lime and chile.
Margot’s is the simple and intimate spot to find Neopolitan pizza and natural wine. Located in the 7th Ward, it serves charred, bubbly pizzas with meat and without, in an atmosphere marked by large windows, wood booths, and a great bar where dinner can be enjoyed in addition to tables.
