Across a vast selection of food vendors at French Quarter Festival, there are huckle bucks, hot tamales and yakamein from New Orleans street food customs. There’s also a gumbo-ramen mash-up, chicken tiki masala tacos, sushi tacos and po-boys made with lamb or Buffalo-style oysters from the city’s increasingly diverse range of restaurants.
These are a few of the hundreds of dishes served by vendors at the 2026 French Quarter Festival from April 16-19.
For the four-day span, the streets and parks and riverfront stretches of the city’s historic core are transformed into a showcase of New Orleans music and food.
Festival-goers explore food options and listen to Joe Hall and the Cane Cutters on the Jax Lot Chevron Stage during the first day of French Quarter Fest in New Orleans, Thursday, April 21, 2022. The festival continues through April 24. (Photo by Sophia Germer, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Sophia Germer
Food vendors are clustered in what feel like individual food courts for quick street eats. Taken together, it’s a tour of New Orleans flavors, including deep-running local traditions and more that show how New Orleans cooks and eats today.
“That’s the goal, to make this reflect the flavor of the city,” said Kenneth Spears, the festival’s food and beverage director.
This is why festgoers can get a classic Creole hot sausage po-boy from the 7th Ward legend Vaucresson’s, and learn about Haitian Creole flavor from the Treme restaurant Fritai, with its passionfruit wings and a fiery shrimp and cabbage slaw (called pikliz).
A beautiful day to listen to music, eat lots of food, and watch boats and ships pass on the Mississippi River during the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans on Friday, April 14, 2023. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
Staff photo by Chris Granger NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
French Quarter restaurants are well represented at the fest. The Tujague’s booth will have the same shrimp remoulade served at the restaurant a few blocks upriver, and also its shrimp-stuffed mirliton, an old-school specialty. The Rib Room is back with its prime rib debris po-boys.
New vendors
The food lineup has also been growing in diversity for years, both in the flavors presented and the New Orleans people behind it. This year brings a lot of new operators to the mix.
New this year is Spicy Mango, with an oxtail melt sandwich, joining the other restaurants from Larry Morrow at the festival (that includes Sun Chong, with its gumbo dumplings).
Willie Mae’s NOLA, the next generation reboot of the historic Willie Mae’s Scotch House, is also making its festival debut this year, with wings and hot honey beignet sandwiches.
Marlon “Chicken” Williams tears into a Buffalo chicken chimmy – his own style of chimichanga – at Chicken’s Kitchen in Gretna. (Photo by Chris Granger | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)
PHOTO BY CHRIS GRANGER
Chicken’s Kitchen, the West Bank hit for plate lunches, is new at the fest, too. It’s serving a hit from the regular menu with its soul bowls, which include its stuffed, fried bell pepper balls, and also its soul rolls, filled with chicken, greens and mac and cheese.
Festival favorites
Some vendors make an annual trip to the festival. One is Lasyone’s Meat Pie Restaurant, the Natchitoches classic. Its zydeco shrimp bowl, with spiced potatoes covered with a creamy shrimp and crab sauce, with a bubble-crusted meat pie on the side, is consistently one of the best dishes around the fest.
A handpie tops a bowl of mashed potatoes with shrimp under a creamy, tangy, lightly spicy sauce from Lasyone’s Meat Pies, a vendor at French Quarter Festival. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Gumbo ramen, meanwhile, comes from Thai NOLA, the New Orleans East restaurant that’s mostly Thai, a little Creole, and home to a delicious traditional gumbo. This mash-up dish has become a hit on the regular menu, while the festival booth gives people a chance to try it in the French Quarter.
Some restaurants use the festival to showcase signature dishes on their regular menus.
The lambeaux is a leg of lamb po-boy, a riff on traditions from Smoke & Honey in New Orleans. (Contributed photo from Vassiliki Ellwood Yiagazis)
That explains the Lambeaux from Smoke & Honey, the deli/taverna in Mid-City. This is a Greek po-boy with lamb leg, whipped feta and crunchy onions and cucumber, stacked on a John Gendusa Bakery po-boy loaf.
Red Fish Grill, the Ralph Brennan family restaurant on Bourbon Street, has made a festival standard of its barbecue oyster po-boy, with fried oysters drenched in butter, tangy-spicy sauce with blue cheese dressing.
A different branch of the Brennan family, Dickie Brennan & Co., now runs historic Pascal Manale’s Restaurant, birthplace of BBQ shrimp, has a new festival specialty based on it, with a barbecue shrimp po-boy.
Ethiopian restaurant Addis NOLA serves a combo plate of jollof rice, awaze wings and sambusa meat pies at French Quarter Festival 2024. (Staff photo by Ian McNulty, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The Ethiopian sambusas start many a meal at Addis NOLA; at the festival, these super-crispy turnovers filled with beef or greens go by a different name to lure curious time-timers to try: “world’s best meat pie.”
Dining and Cooking