New Orleans’s 2024 Eater Award Winners

At this point in the evolution of the restaurant and bar industry, one marked by excellence for so many decades, it’s not enough for a restaurant to just be great. Who is it reaching? What is it trying to say? What is its impact in the community? These are the questions we, as Eater editors, ask ourselves about the places we patronize. Greatness abounds, especially in a city like New Orleans, but purpose also matters.

In 2024, purpose is the thread that connects all of New Orleans’s Eater Award Winners. As we explored the great new restaurants and bars that opened in the city between September 2023 and October 2024, the ones we were most wowed by, and kept coming back to, intend to do something with their time in this fleeting, precarious business. A Central City bakery aims to reconnect the Black foodways of the South with West Africa. A restaurant that celebrates precolonial Mexican culture with Mesoamerican ingredients offers its diners definitions. A sustainable seafood market creates a platform for less-sought-after Gulf-caught fish. A bar that uses woman and BIPOC-owned liquors rises in Bywater. And, finally, we recognize a chef who makes it a point to feed New Orleans’s children. We can’t imagine a better group to honor in 2024.

Josh Brasted

Josh Brasted

Acamaya: Best New Restaurant

Presented by SevenRooms

Acamaya’s menu of hot and cold Mexican mariscos (a genre that chef Ana Castro calls an entire culture of its own) is a mix of the traditional — shrimp aguachile, seafood coctel, carne asada — and the unexpected. In the latter, diners can find dishes like a bass ceviche that mixes chamoy, cherries, and jicama; a hamachi tostada where the fish is cured al pastor style; or green adobo shrimp that mimic the flavors of chorizo verde, to be eaten with the shells. But the restaurant’s defining dish is also its most symbolic, a creation that embodies Castro’s desire to “move on” from previous roles at other people’s restaurants. It’s the arroz negro: bold but comforting, a bowl of crunchy-creamy black rice flavored with smoky huitlacoche and topped with bouncy mussels, lush squid, and bright lemon zest.

With it and others, Castro aims to advance a style of Mexican cooking that uses staples of the Mesoamerican diet key to pre-Hispanic culture and shaping the cuisine of Castro’s native Mexico City. However lofty that goal, Acamaya’s atmosphere is upbeat, spirited, and lacking in strict seriousness. Ana and sister Lydia, her business partner who also leads the front of the house, mix and mingle with the guests, servers, and each other, always laughing, in a space awash in a mix of organic textures, warm colors, and ethereal light sources. A glossary of ingredients like chapulines, chiltepin, epazote, and quelites empowers the diner generously; a meal here is never intimidating. Worthy of a celebration but equally inviting for a last-minute Monday night meal, Acamaya is somewhere we want to return to again and again.

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Randy Schmidt

Randy Schmidt

Lagniappe Bakehouse: Best New Bakery

Restraint and artistry comingle in Kaitlin Guerin’s approach to viennoiserie, a balance shaped by decades of intensive dance training and, later, baking. Lagniappe Bakehouse is the culmination of Guerin’s dedication to her craft and a deserving home for her exquisite pastries in Central City. The neighborhood, and its part in New Orleans’s piece of the civil rights movement, is a fitting setting for the goal of Guerin’s business: Reconnecting the Black foodways of the American South using local, seasonal, and West African ingredients. Her chocolate croissant, made with single-origin Tanzanian batons from a local chocolatier, soars beyond any typical presentation of pan au chocolat. The cardamom bun, zested with orange and filled with cinnamon sugar, is topped with grains of paradise, an aromatic West African spice that comes in many varietals (this one from Cameroon). The benne sesame seed toffee cookie — benne being the heirloom West African sesame variety — is chewy, buttery, and not overly sweet. Cornmeal muffins are Southern comfort wrapped in a husk, while the gateau Breton could be served for petit déjeune in Brittany, France. Even better, though, is that they’re served in the coziest of spaces, where customers descend in droves on sleepy weekend mornings for their chance to experience Guerin’s talent.

Jillian Greenberg

Jillian Greenberg

NightBloom: Best New Bar

Twenty-two years after the founding of legendary Bywater wine bar Bacchanal, owners Joaquin Rodas and Adrian Mendez took a chance with a member of their team, Justin “Juice” LeClair, to open a late-night bar just blocks away. NightBloom, set in a small, unmarked corner building on St. Claude Avenue, opened in New Orleans in April. With its dusty pink and teal walls and windows draped with grandmacore curtains, it might read as a low-key neighborhood spot. But really, it’s a bar that reads the room. Sometimes that means it’s a place to turn up a bit, dancing by candlelight to a soundtrack of Sade, Erykah Badu, or tunes from a DJ. Most importantly, it’s a place that fits its neighborhood, serving “not overly bespoke” drinks that still surprise and delight — and use a mix of woman-owned, BIPOC-owned, and single-family liquors. It captures the spirit of a great New Orleans bar, reminiscent of Bar Tonique or Black Penny, with tongue-in-cheek cocktail names, minimalist, moody design, and cred within the industry, thanks in part to its frequent guest bartender nights. And it’s open late, as any great New Orleans bar should be.

Randy Schmidt

Randy Schmidt

Porgy’s: Best New Seafood Market and Restaurant

Of course, New Orleans has seafood markets, particularly in the Bucktown neighborhood of Metairie. But in Orleans Parish, there aren’t as many as you might expect. That’s why Porgy’s feels like such a big deal: It’s a neighborhood seafood market focusing on finfish right in the middle of the city. It’s a place where customers can rely on specific products — like shrimp, oysters, and crawfish (when in season) — but also find something unexpected. It operates on a smaller scale than some other local seafood markets, aiming to provide an outlet for fishers that may have just five to 10 of a species. Its purpose, ultimately, is to create a market for bycatch: lesser-known, lesser-coveted Gulf-caught fish.

Owners Caitlin Carney and Marcus Jacobs intend to achieve that goal with knowledge. The restaurant at Porgy’s knows its audience, of course: It serves boiled crabs, shrimp, and crawfish; raw oysters on the half shell; fried soft shell crab sandwiches, seafood gumbo, and po’ boys. But customers can also get any fish in the case — like tilefish, sheepshead, barracuda, and almaco jack — prepared for them in any format to eat in-house, or receive suggestions about the best way to cook it at home. It’s a supportive, educational approach to business, but Porgy’s is also just plain delicious. The muffulettu, which replaces Italian cold cuts with Gulf tuna conserva, rotating crudos and sashimi, fish brandades, and specials like barracuda bites, tuna poke, and grilled Gulf squid are examples of the best the Gulf has to offer locally.

Denny Culbert

Toups Family Meal

Isaac Toups of Toups’ Meatery: Chef of the Year

Cajun culinary whiz Isaac Toups has long been known for his approach to regional cuisine, helping build recognition of and appreciation for the depth and breadth of Louisiana food through his restaurant, Toups’ Meatery, and his appearance on Top Chef: California. And he’s long been a force for community good — he and his wife Amanda Toups distributed thousands of free meals to New Orleans residents during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But when Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry refused $70 million in federal aid for Louisiana residents through the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer Program this past year (a decision ultimately countered by the state legislature), the Toups’ calling to support their community grew even stronger.

Enter Toups’ Family Meal. According to the City of New Orleans, Isaac and Amanda provided 70,500 free meals between June and August, reaching 533 food-insecure children and 200 families. The couple went beyond food, however, with Toups often alerting his social media followers to various families’ needs, including beds, clothes, and more — and the followers came through. The fall has been no different, with Toups Family Meal delivering free pumpkins to families for Halloween and most recently distributing 1,500 free Thanksgiving grocery meal boxes. Simply put, the world needs more people like Isaac and Amanda Toups in it — and in New Orleans, we’re lucky to have them.