Antoine's Restaurant

Antoine Alciatore was eighteen years old and homesick for Marseille when he opened a restaurant at 713 Rue St. Louis in 1840. The French Quarter was barely a century old, built on silt the Mississippi had deposited over millennia, and New Orleans was already the largest port in the Southern United States. Alciatore cooked the food he missed. What he started became the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States — same family, same address, unbroken. When Antoine died in 1875 at fifty-five, his wife Julie ran the restaurant while their son Jules trained in France. Jules returned in 1887 and took over until 1934. He bought property as it became available around the original building — a former slave quarters, a carriage house — until Antoine's could seat 800 people across fifteen dining rooms. Each room carries a theme. The Rex Room displays Mardi Gras memorabilia from a century of Carnival royalty. During Prohibition, the staff carried alcohol in coffee cups through the ladies' restroom into the Mystery Room. The Japanese Room closed at the beginning of World War II and stayed closed for forty-three years. In 1899, Jules invented Oysters Rockefeller. He never revealed the recipe. The original contains no spinach. Pompano en papillote was invented here. The restaurant still serves Haute Creole — the current owner's term for innovative, sophisticated Creole cooking with strong French traditions. The menu is not seasonal. It features turtle, pompano, redfish, shellfish, preparation techniques that reflect a French aesthetic. There has been very little Cajun influence throughout its history, no Italian foods. New Orleans sits below sea level. Cellars flood. Antoine's has a wine alley instead: a corridor 165 feet long, lined by wine racks, air-conditioned, with a 25,000-bottle capacity. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the French Quarter stayed above the flooding but the winds damaged part of Antoine's roof and knocked down a section of exterior wall. The climate-control system failed. The entire wine cellar was lost. The restaurant reopened on December 29, 2005. Two years later it nearly declared bankruptcy. It survived. Aspiring servers spend two to three years in the apprentice program before they make waiter. Jacket required in the main dining room. Reservations recommended. The restaurant closes to the general public on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mardi Gras, though it can be reserved for private parties. Go because something that opened in 1840 is still run by the family that opened it, still serving the food Jules invented when New Orleans was the trade mouth of a continent.