Southern Food & Beverage Museum

A 2004 beverage exhibit grew into the only museum in the country dedicated to the full history of food and drink in the American South. Matt Konigsmark, Gina Warner, and Elizabeth Williams founded it. Elizabeth Pearce curated Restaurant Restorative, an exhibit on the revival of restaurants after Hurricane Katrina, which was featured at the 2006 James Beard Foundation Awards. The museum opened at Riverwalk Marketplace in the Warehouse District in summer 2008. In May 2011, Saveur magazine named it one of the five great museums devoted to food. On September 1, 2011, the museum announced a move to a larger space on O. C. Haley Boulevard in Central City. Groundbreaking at the Dryades Market building happened in June 2012. The new facility opened on September 29, 2014, at the corner of O.C. Haley Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. The Leah Chase Louisiana Gallery, named after New Orleans creole chef Leah Chase, covers beignets, crawfish harvesting, and the evolution of jambalaya through colonial and native foods. Bruning's Bar, dating from 1859, was salvaged from the wreckage of Bruning's, the third oldest restaurant in New Orleans, after Katrina. The bar has been fully restored and is used during special events. The Museum of the American Cocktail, housed inside, traces mixed drinks from the 1790s to last call. New Orleans invented the Sazerac, the Ramos Gin Fizz, and the Hurricane — all documented here. The SoFAB Research Center at Nunez Community College in Chalmette houses over forty thousand volumes: cookbooks, magazines, books about food history, food politics, nutrition, agriculture. The archive is open to the public. Open Wednesday through Monday. Admission charged.