Compère Lapin

Compère Lapin opened in June 2015 in the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery in the Warehouse District and has been one of the city's most acclaimed restaurants since. Nina Compton grew up in St Lucia surrounded by the flavours of the islands, reached the final of Top Chef, was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef in 2017 and won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South in 2018; she runs it with her husband and business partner Larry Miller. The name means Brother Rabbit — the trickster of St Lucian folk stories she grew up with. The cooking is Caribbean through French and Italian technique: curried goat with sweet potato gnocchi at $40, fried chicken with jerk honey and coconut grits at $32, semolina dumplings with shrimp in run down sauce at $34, and buttermilk biscuits with honey butter at $8. Dinner runs nightly from 5.30pm.

The bar's credentials are real — this was the first New Orleans restaurant to take a Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Award for Best American Hotel Bar — and the non-alcoholic section is built with that seriousness. It is headed Non-Alc and Mocktails, and it does something unusual that is worth spelling out: two of the drinks are written zero-proof first, with alcohol offered as a paid addition. The Sorrel Tea at $8 is spiced hibiscus with ginger, lavender and lime, and the menu notes you can make it boozy by adding rum for $8 more. Silly Songs With Larry, also $8, runs cucumber, ginger, sesame, rice vinegar, chilli and soda, with mezcal as the optional extra. That framing means the non-alcoholic version is the recipe rather than a subtraction from one, which is exactly backwards from how most restaurants build a mocktail — and sorrel, the spiced hibiscus drink served at Caribbean Christmas tables, belongs on this menu more than any imported bottle would. Alongside them sit Athletic Brewing's Run Wild non-alcoholic IPA at $7 and a Unified Ferments jasmine green tea at $10 a glass or $40 a bottle, poured like wine. The list rotates, so earlier drinks such as Tell Tale Heart and Garden Party have already been retired.