Jewel of the South

Jewel of the South won the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Bar award in 2024 — the national one, not a regional nod — and beverage director and partner Chris Hannah's reaction on the night was simply that it was the highlight of his entire career. He had already spent years making the French 75 Bar one of the best-known cocktail rooms in America before opening this with Nick Detrich and John Stubbs in March 2019, in a renovated 1830s Creole cottage on St Louis Street with a courtyard and parlour rooms. The restaurant calls itself a classic New Orleans tavern reimagined, and the kitchen backs that up: crawfish bread at $19, red beans at $23, shrimp and grits at $23, blackened fish at $49, and caviar service running from $110 to $220 for anyone marking an occasion.

The spirit-free drinks get their own printed section, Spirit-Free Sips, and it is one of the better-built lists in the city precisely because it does not lean on a single supplier. Four drinks, three of them $11 and one $13, against full cocktails at considerably more. The Floreal And Tonic is Martini and Rossi's Floreale non-alcoholic aperitif with tonic and lime — a straightforward long drink with real bitterness. The Faux-Groni at $13 is the ambitious one, layering Lyre's Dry London Spirit, Martini and Rossi Vibrante and Bols Fluère non-alcoholic bitter to rebuild a Negroni's three-part structure with three separate non-alcoholic products rather than one bottled shortcut, which is why it costs more and why it tastes closer to the original. The Blueberry Sling and the Tangerine Daisy are built on Mockly, with rose, mint and soda for the first and basil and lemon for the second, and both are lighter and fruit-led. It is a list assembled the way a bartender assembles a back bar — by what each bottle does — rather than by what one distributor happened to sell.