New York Restaurants Are Embracing New Orleans Food

It’s indisputable that New Orleans is a singular, inimitable destination unlike any other — its cuisine is rooted in Cajun, Creole, Black, and French food traditions, leading to richly flavorful dishes with so much seafood, pork, and good-time drinks. For all the other cuisines New York has in spades, surprisingly, there weren’t too many restaurants in New York City that properly honor the Big Easy. But over the past three years, a crew of restaurants has opened embracing the Louisiana city’s motto of “laissez les bons temps rouler,” French for “let the good times roll,” at least regarding Southern hospitality and food, especially with the Mardi Gras season ending on Fat Tuesday on March 4. But their relevance in New York will last longer than just the celebration: There’s Cajun and Creole gumbo bar Filé in Tribeca, New Orleans seafood spot Strange Delight in Fort Greene, and Asian American restaurant Bananas in the East Village.

Filé Gumbo Bar knows the importance of gumbo

Even though Filé owner and chef Eric McCree is from Idaho, his grandfather taught him everything he now knows about true Cajun and Creole cooking during his many visits to Lake Charles. As an adult in New York, he realized there weren’t as many Cajun and Creole restaurants in town — “It’s weird that New York is a food mecca of the world, but we have very little Cajun Creole here,” he tells Eater — so that’s when he set out to open his restaurant in 2022.

During McCree’s research trips around Louisiana, he learned the truth about a core New Orleans dish: “Everyone’s perfect bowl of gumbo is different,” he says in an interview with Eater. That led to the creation of the restaurant’s gumbo bar, where people can select their made-to-order stews based on personal preferences. “Some people think land and sea should never mix,” he says, “some people think that it should always just be chicken and sausage, or just crab and shrimp. Some like tomatoes.” And this way, he’s catering to people who don’t eat pork — a more prevalent dietary restriction in New York than in New Orleans, something he’s come upon a lot. “It still throws me off because I can’t imagine having [gumbo] without pork,” he says, but it’s what the people want.

McCree’s ideal gumbo is shown through “Tiny’s all-in version,” named after his grandfather. It’s a luscious mix of chicken, andouille sausage, crab, and shrimp with a dark roux made with pork and chicken fat. Former Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema called it some of the best gumbo in New York.

Strange Delight is bringing the “everydayness” back to oysters

When co-owners Anoop Pillarisetti, Ham El-Waylly, and Michael Tuiach opened Strange Delight in May 2024, they wanted to create a restaurant that had the casual ease of dining out in New Orleans, with a Brooklyn angle, bringing in their years of experience from Momofuku to Empellón.

Pillarisetti is from Louisiana and spent a lot of time in New Orleans, so getting the NOLA-ness right was important. The team realized that a common thread between the two cities is their love and history of oysters. El-Waylly talks about how New York’s oyster culture is typically “over-the-top and very fancy, a very buttoned-up affair.” But that bougie oyster approach isn’t the prevalent case in New Orleans. Instead, the Louisiana city has what Pillarisetti describes as “an everydayness” to seafood dining. The very kind of place where seafood towers can be a solo endeavor.

Lanna Apisukh/Eater NY

Strange Delight’s two oyster options are loving nods to legacy New Orleans restaurants. The charbroiled oysters are inspired by oyster bar Felix’s. “My goal was to capture the certain aroma that Felix’s has when you walk in and you get the charbroiled oysters coming to your table,” El-Waylly says. “It’s kind of a really pleasing gasoline smoky smell that we captured in a kitchen without gas, which was difficult, but we got there.” The oysters are doused in black pepper-garlic butter, Parmesan cheese, and breadcrumbs, and then broiled.

There are the oysters Rockefeller, taking its cues from the famous Galatoire’s, which serves Pillarisetti’s favorite iteration and even gets a mention on the menu. “We just wanted to show our love and respect for that dish by modeling ours after that,” he says. The result is oysters topped with a sauce made of anise liqueur, spinach, and anchovies (aka the Rockefeller sauce) that are baked in an oven that was formerly a pizza oven, inherited by the last tenant. What could be a more Brooklyn x New Orleans story than that?

El-Waylly wanted to make sure that they weren’t overdoing it when it came to the food. “I didn’t want it to feel like you were entering a fine-dining interpretation of New Orleans food,” he says, apparent in dishes like the fried oyster loaf on milk bread. “I wanted to maintain that New Orleans soul and that if you eat something, you know exactly what it references. I wanted to make sure that people felt comfortable diving in and getting a little messy.”

Bananas injects Asian American sensibilities into NOLA classics

Through Bananas, co-owners and chefs Chris Ng and Kyaw Lwin set to reclaim the derogatory term by opening a restaurant embracing American food with Asian inflections in inventive ways in January. “The food that I go out to eat is not always traditional Asian,” Ng tells Eater, “but I love Asian flavors and American comfort foods.”

Raychel Brightman

Raychel Brightman

That guiding principle is how the team added two dishes with evident New Orleans roots. There’s the NOLA barbecue octopus, which sprung from the iconic barbecue shrimp. Ng visited New Orleans restaurant Mr B’s Bistro when he had the dish for the first time and was taken by it. “It was rich and savory,” he says, “with a great seafood flavor.” He even had it twice in the same seating. For Bananas’ version, he swapped in octopus, since it’s one of his favorite proteins at Japanese restaurants.

Then there’s Bananas’ etouffee, where the shellfish-roux stew comes with shrimp and shrimp wontons. “I just thought that it would be great to combine the holy trinity,” Ng explains, referring to a base Cajun ingredient mixture of onions, peppers, and celery, “with wontons,” one of his family’s go-to comfort foods.