Pick your party: the French Quarter is the place to celebrate in style, from romantic dinners to late-night danding—and al that jazz!

Pool & Spa News, Oct 3, 2003 by Laurel Delp

Creole cuisine was born of French, Spanish, Choctaw, West African and Caribbean influences, yet it's completely unique. File, for instance, is a thickener used for gumbo, made of ground sassafras leaves and introduced to the French settlers by Native Americans. Thanks to the Spanish, Creole cooking also uses tomatoes and peppers. The food is spicy, the way food is in all hot climates. Over the years, Cajun cooking (Cajuns are descendents of French Canadians resettled in Louisiana) has been absorbed into the Creole repertoire, and any Creole restaurant also will have Cajun dishes.

Among the must-taste regional specialties are beignets, po' boys, muffulettas, shrimp remoulade, crawfish etouffe, oysters in a variety of preparations, blackhead beef or fish and the created-in-town bananas Foster. (See Dining section)

The culture

The vibrant culture of the French Quarter is rooted in its history. New Orleans may be one of the oldest and most fabled cities in the United States, but it is also one of the most improbable. Built on land between Lake Pontchartrain and a bend in the Mississippi River, from its start it has been flooded, necessitating the building of levees, twice burned to the ground and constantly was beset by epidemics of tropical fevers.

The early French settlers were men, some victims of a land-based Ponzi scheme, others former prisoners until finally, in 1728, the government began sending young upstanding women to the colony to marry the settlers and start families. Their children were the original Creoles. Then for 38 years the Spanish were prominent and at the end of the Spanish rule, in 1803, New Orleans joined the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

Up until the Purchase and the onslaught of Protestant, English-speaking newcomers, the French Quarter was the entire city of New Orleans. But the elegant Creoles refused to welcome the newcomers, considering them to be quite crude. So the new settlers moved into the area known as the Garden District, just outside the Quarter. The U.S. government had to intervene in 1807, and a "neutral zone" was declared along the divider of Canal Street. But by then the steam engine had been invented, cotton and sugar were in demand, and New Orleans became one of the wealthiest cities in the nation.

Throughout the city's history, new waves of people had arrived, first slaves, then French fleeing the slave rebellion in present-day Haiti, as well as flee people of color. The term "Creole" very quickly came to include mixed races as well as French and Spanish settlers. The Acadians banished from Canada in 1755 came to Louisiana, where they were renamed "Cajuns." Other European settlers arrived. In the 20th century, artists, musicians and writers were among the first to appreciate the Quarter's unique appeal and work for its preservation.

All these people mixing in the city over three centuries mated not only a unique cuisine, music, architecture and art, but also the combination of all these things--a unique culture. A final cornerstone of that culture might be called the art of celebration.