Fat City

In the 1970s and 1980s, this stretch of Metairie between Severn Avenue and Division Street was Jefferson Parish's nightlife capital. The name Fat City dates to the disco era—a moment when New Orleans suburbs built their own centers of gravity, when you didn't need the Quarter for a Friday night. The name outlasted the clubs. What remains is a dining district that tells a post-Katrina migration story. Vietnamese, Latin American, and Creole restaurants now populate the blocks, reflecting the West Bank diaspora that moved north. Jefferson Parish invested in streetscape improvements to revitalize the area, trading neon for a walkable corridor within reach of the Metairie business strip on Veterans Boulevard. Drago's Seafood, which opened in 1969, anchors the district. It predates the disco peak, which means it survived the era that named the place and the decades that followed. Go for what persists—the oysters, the layered accents at adjacent tables, the fact that a suburb can hold its own food memory.