Palm&Pine

Palm&Pine sits at 308 North Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter, in what was a white box before Amarys Koenig Herndon, Jordan Herndon and a third partner turned it into the room it is now. The two chefs met as sous chefs at Bayona and Ralph on the Park and spent years popping up together before opening here in 2019; they were James Beard Best Chef: South semifinalists in both 2023 and 2024 and Rising Star Chefs in 2022. The cooking runs from Louisiana through the wider South and into what they call South of That — the Caribbean and Mexico. There is a kitchen counter where you can talk to them while they cook. Dinner Thursday through Monday, brunch on Sunday, closed Tuesday and Wednesday, and a 20% gratuity is added to every check for the servers, hosts and bartenders.

The non-alcoholic list is named, which tells you how it is treated. It is the Kitten Club, and it appears as its own titled section on both the dinner and brunch drinks menus rather than as a line at the bottom. At dinner it runs four deep: the Rosella Refresher at $13, built on Pathfinder non-alcoholic spirit with hibiscus, lemon and Mineragua sparkling mineral water; St. Buena Vida non-alcoholic sparkling chardonnay at $17 a glass or $56 a bottle, which is the detail worth noticing, because a bottle price means the restaurant expects a table to share one over dinner the way any other table shares wine; Parleaux sparkling hop water at $6 from a local brewery; and Untitled Art American Gold non-alcoholic beer at $8. Brunch swaps in a Holy Margarita! on Almave non-alcoholic agave spirit at $15 and a non-alcoholic michelada at $7. The list rotates with the seasons, so names change — earlier Kitten Club drinks including the Heartfruit Tonic are no longer served — but the section itself is permanent.