Antoine's Wine Cellar & Archive

Antoine Alciatore founded the restaurant in 1840. Five generations later, his family still runs it — the oldest family-run restaurant in the United States. New Orleans was the South's largest city when the Civil War began, already the region's dominant port for cotton and farm exports to Europe and New England. The French Quarter had been built and rebuilt for more than a century by then, a layered district of colonial trade routes, Creole families, and institutions built to last. Antoine's was one of them. In 1889, the restaurant invented Oysters Rockefeller. The recipe remains a family secret. Fourteen dining rooms on St. Louis Street hold 185 years of Carnival memorabilia and a wine cellar of 25,000 bottles. The Rex room is reserved for Mardi Gras royalty — more than a century of Carnival kings and queens have been hosted there. Every president since the restaurant's founding has dined here. Jacket required at dinner. Reservations recommended. 713 St. Louis St.