The Quarter has been serving drinks longer than the republic has been collecting taxes on them, and it has been telling stories about it for just as long. Nearly every founding date on this walk is younger than the sign claims, and in one case the room itself moved four blocks and left its famous bar behind. Walk it in this order and skip Bourbon Street until it cannot be avoided.
- 1 · The Cold Open
Napoleon House
Nicolas Girod's main house went up in 1814, and the federal landmark file settles the rest of it in three words: local stories tie the mayor to a plan to fetch Napoleon out of exile. The house's own telling puts the offer in 1821, by which year Girod had been out of office six years and Napoleon had been dead since May. The grocery downstairs became a bar in 1914 when Joseph Impastato took the lease at twenty dollars a month, and the family held it for a hundred and one years. The muffuletta comes out warm here, which they will point out most places do not do, and the Pimm's Cup is the version this city measures the others against.
the main house 1814, a bar since 1914, this name since about 1933 · daily 11am till 9pm, Fri and Sat till 10pm; closed all day Monday 10 Aug 2026; walk in only, no bookings · verified Aug 2026
- 2 · The Detour
Buffa's Bar & Restaurant
Vincent Buffa opened on the corner of Esplanade and Burgundy in 1939, and the line the bar still prints, on the border of the Quarter since 1939, turns out to be exact rather than sentimental. The Vieux Carré Survey holds a full chain of title for 1002 Esplanade across the neutral ground and nothing whatever for this side, because every one of the eighty five Esplanade lots it carries is an even number. So the room faces the Quarter from just outside it, which is most of the reason to walk down here. The front bar keeps no closing time and no closing day, and the back room runs live music seven nights a week. Order the blackened Buffa Burger, half a pound of it, from a kitchen that readers of Where Y'At have voted best bar food in the city twelve years running. In July 2023 the operators announced they would close within the week, then did not, and the calendar has run unbroken since.
a bar since 1939, this operator since 2010, one side of the street outside the Quarter · front bar 24 hours, seven days, no closing day published; live music in the back room nightly. It is about a mile from the stops either side, so this is a real detour · verified Aug 2026
live music in the back room, seven nights, and no closing time out front
- 3 · The Anchor
Tujague's
Founded in 1856 and second oldest restaurant in the city, but since 28 December 2020 this is a different door from the famous one, four blocks up. The stand up bar did not come with it. Their own site admits this under a heading that calls itself a tribute: too fragile to move, so what you lean on is a replica, and the French mirror stayed behind entirely. The foot rail, the light fittings and Otis Guichet's portrait did make the trip. The Grasshopper is Philip Guichet's, mixed for a competition in New York in 1918 where it came second, and the boiled beef brisket under horseradish and mustard has outlasted every owner since.
the business 1856, at this address only since 28 Dec 2020 · dinner daily from 5pm, Fri and Sat till 10pm; brunch Fri 11am, Sat and Sun 10am; the bar opens Fri, Sat and Sun only; there is a dress code · verified Aug 2026
- 4 · The Wildcard
Erin Rose
Half a block off Bourbon and not of it. Jim Monaghan had it from the early eighties and left it to his bar manager when he died in 2001, and the Monaghan came off the sign soon after. Their own line for the place is local prices, local chaos, local love. The frozen Irish coffee is four dollars from ten till two, and the Killer PoBoy counter in the back is a separate business keeping separate hours: shut all day Tuesday, and food off at eight on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. That detail has ended more evenings early than the bar ever has.
a bar since the mid 1950s, the locals' exception since · the bar runs 10am to about 7am, over 21s only; the kitchen shuts Tuesday and stops at 8pm Mon, Wed, Thu and Sun · verified Aug 2026
- 5 · The Last Call
Carousel Bar
Walter Bergeron made the Vieux Carré at this hotel in 1938. The bar you would drink it at did not exist for another eleven years, a gap the hotel's own timeline prints twice on one page without noticing. The carousel came in 1949, the ride itself was rebuilt in 1992 with eight jesters and eight cherubs, and it turns once every fifteen minutes whether you are ready or not. Truman Capote told a chat show he was born upstairs; his mother only lived here while expecting him and reached the hospital in time. The American Library Association made the hotel a literary landmark in 1999, one of three in the country.
the hotel 1886, the carousel installed 1949, the ride you sit on 1992 · daily 11am till midnight, over 21s only after 6pm; the carousel itself stops turning for refurbishment 3 to 23 Aug 2026, though the lounge stays open · verified Aug 2026 · 🏨 the night ends at Hotel Monteleone
🎁 The one we took off this road, and why. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop at 941 Bourbon is still the oldest building in the country with a bar inside it, and it is worth walking past. A notary wrote down one house on that corner on 3 April 1781 and the carpenter who owned the lot is named in the same chain of title. No Lafitte is. The pirates were fastened to the place by Lafcadio Hearn in 1883 and by a guidebook two years later, so the legend is a tourist invention of the century after, and the room was a home, a workshop, an ice cream parlour and a tinsmith's before it ever poured a drink in the early nineteen hundreds. We cut it because it publishes no hours, no drinks list and no evidence it opened this year: the site returns a fresh date but every file on it carries the same timestamp to the second, which is a bulk re-upload of a page stamped 2014. Go and look at the building. Do not plan your evening around the door.