Louisiana has never demanded that its restaurants behave normally. The state’s strangest dining rooms include a vampire café, a spinning bar and a restaurant that sets dinner for a ghost, giving them plenty in common with Alabama’s wonderfully weird restaurants.
Here are five of Louisiana’s most unusual places to eat.
New Orleans Vampire Café in New Orleans
New Orleans already has vampires embedded in its folklore, literature and tour industry. New Orleans Vampire Café lets them run a restaurant.
The French Quarter dining room welcomes “vampires and mortals alike” with Gothic décor, dramatic lighting and a menu full of blood-related wordplay.
Customers can order “stake” tartare, a Vampire Burger, Blood Orange Crème Brûlée and cocktails served in blood-style bags. Even the brunch drinks stay in character, with choices such as the Bloodiest Mary and “bottomless mimosas lasting through eternity.”
The café commits to its theme throughout the year, not just around Halloween.
Muriel’s Jackson Square in New Orleans
Most restaurants try to remove uninvited guests. Muriel’s permanently reserves a table for one.
The restaurant says the ghost of former property owner Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan remains inside the building. Jourdan reportedly lost the house in a poker game in 1814 and died on its second floor before having to leave it.
Muriel’s keeps a table set for him near the stairs. The restaurant’s second floor also contains a dark, lavishly decorated Séance Lounge where guests can take drinks.
Employees have reported unexplained noises, moving objects and glasses flying across the courtyard bar. Fortunately, the contemporary Creole food is served downstairs among the living.
Jacques-Imo’s Cafe in New Orleans
Jacques-Imo’s looks as if several restaurants, an art studio and a street party were squeezed into an old house.
The rooms are narrow, crowded and covered in colorful artwork. Diners may pass through the kitchen to reach their tables, and one sought-after table is located inside a parked pickup truck attached to the front of the building.
The food is equally unconventional. The menu has featured dishes such as alligator sausage cheesecake, shrimp and alligator étouffée and deep-fried roast beef po’boys.
Long waits are common, but standing around outside on Oak Street has become part of the experience.
Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans
Turkey and the Wolf takes the foods of an American childhood and rebuilds them with the instincts of a serious chef.
Its best-known creation is a fried bologna sandwich piled onto thick white bread with hot potato chips, mayonnaise and American cheese. Other offerings have included a collard-green melt, deviled-egg tostadas and a fried chicken pot pie.
The dining room looks like a collision between a 1980s school cafeteria and a thrift store. Mismatched furniture, colorful trays and nostalgic decorations reinforce the sense that the restaurant is serving an eccentric adult interpretation of lunch from childhood.
The Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans
Customers who secure one of the Carousel Bar’s 25 seats slowly move around the bartender while they drink.
Installed in 1949, the elaborate bar resembles a vintage carousel, complete with a striped canopy, lights and circus-animal designs. Its rotating platform completes approximately one trip around the room every 15 minutes.
The mechanism reportedly uses thousands of rollers, a chain and an electric motor. The bartender remains in the stationary center and must climb over the bar to enter.
Although primarily famous for cocktails, the Carousel Bar serves a menu of small plates and bar food. Guests should remember that if the room appears to be moving, it may actually be the furniture.
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