Saint-Germain

Saint-Germain occupies a converted century-old double-shotgun house on St Claude Avenue in the Bywater, and it holds a Michelin star — one of very few in Louisiana. It began as a wine bar and bistro from chefs Trey Smith and Blake Aguillard, who met working at Restaurant August under Michael Gulotta and went on to cook for him at Maypop and MoPho, and it has since narrowed to a ten-course tasting menu shaped by refined technique and whatever is in season. The dining room seats sixteen, with a maximum of four guests per table, and there is a back garden. The Times-Picayune's review captured the register better than any description could: the critic wrote that when he took the job he was promised no math, and yet there he was scribbling down numbers he would never memorise as the chef explained that the bread had fermented twelve hours while the butter was forty-nine days old. Service runs Thursday through Monday from 5pm to 10.30pm, and the building has four steps at the front and four to the garden.

For a non-drinker, the appeal and the caveat are the same thing: this is a wine-led restaurant that takes beverage seriously, and it offers non-alcoholic mocktails alongside its natural wine list — but it does not publish what they are. No named zero-proof drink, no ingredients and no prices appear anywhere on its site, and we could not confirm whether any non-alcoholic wine is poured, which at a restaurant built around a wine list is the thing worth knowing. What can be said with confidence is that a kitchen fermenting its own bread and ageing butter for seven weeks is not going to hand a non-drinker a glass of cranberry juice, and a ten-course tasting format all but requires a beverage progression of some sort. This is a venue to ring ahead about rather than arrive at hopefully — tell them when you book, and the pairing will almost certainly be built for you.