We stopped on the way down in Abita Springs, La, which is a little out of the way, but allows you to drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which is a pretty cool 20 mile long bridge over the massive lake. Abita Springs in right next to Covington and the area seems like a really nice little suburban type place full of strip malls, restaurants and stores. The part of Abita Springs that the brewpub is in is an older, quainter part of town and it really adds to the charm of the place. There's a little neighborhood bar (Rosie's Tavern) and a grocery/deli right across the street with a park and bike trail sitting right next to it. The Abita Brew Pub actually used to be the Abita Brewery building itself until their production got too big. The brewery is now down the road a bit (we didn't visit it) but the pub is great, with a little white picket fence out front and huge old oak tree hanging over the front patio area. It's gorgeous and very inviting. The inside is just as nice with antique collectibles everywhere and cypress paneling.
We had the Andygator Crawfish Cake (with Turbodog Remoulade sauce) with some fried tomatoes to get started with an Abita Golden and an Abita Restoration Pale Ale, before following that up by splitting a huge Catfish Po-Boy and fries. Excellent food, good beer and good service make it a place I highly recommend. I grabbed a 12 pack mixer on the way out to take a bit home with me even. Yes, I paid for it.
In the days wandering the streets of New Orleans, we mainly stayed in the French Quarter District, with only 1 afternoon trip to the Garden District. Bars are definitely plentiful, but good beer wasn't really. I did find some places with Abita and NOLA brews though and since I was looking for these local products I was happy, but if you want a big craft beer selection I don't know where to tell you for the French Quarter. Most of the bars are more about partyin' and have much more of a drunken frat boy type crowd than craft beer lovers, so it's really not something they probably want to waste their time on. Why get a huge assortment of good craft taps when you can just shell out keg after keg of cheap stuff? Wouldn't be a good business move I guess.
While in the French Quarter we hit too many places to name probably, but some of my favorites among them were Johnny White's, Lafittes Blacksmith Shop, Three Legged Dog, Razzoo and Famous Door.
Now over in the Garden District I found a couple of good places for craft beers. First is The Avenue Pub. It's a cozy little neighborhood bar that has a killer beer selection. They've got 31 rotating taps and dozens of bottled brews and they know their beer. Myself, I had a NOLA Brewing Co. Hurricane Saison, NOLA Brewing Co. Hopitoulas IPA and a Mikkeller Single Hop Nelson Sauvin IPA as we watched the first game of the Final Four. It was heavenly. Also there's a place called The Bulldog which isn't too far away and has a pretty wide variety of craft beers but lacks the more "extreme" beers like The Avenue Pub. Also, it was extremely crowded so we ended up on the patio and were having to wade through people to get to the bar or bathroom and no chance to get food. We didn't stay long, but on a slow afternoon this might be a fun place. The only really good thing that came out of it for us was that we found a place nearby for dinner called The Rum House that was really good. Their specialty was a bunch of different kinds of tacos. Very good.Our hotel bar had Abita beers and also Dixie Blackened Voodoo, a nice dunkel I'd had before and like:
For food, a place we found that we both really enjoyed was Cajun Cabin on Bourbon Street. It claims to be the French Quarter's only authentic Cajun restaurant. I'm not sure if that's true but it's the only we saw and it's the only one we needed as they had an excellent menu and were very reasonably priced. You could also sit on their balcony overlooking Bourbon Street and watch the "entertainment" stroll by. They've got an oyster bar so we started with some on the half-shell, followed by a sausage trio of alligator sausage w/ sauce piquant, boudin w/ Creole mustard sauce & crawfish andouille sausage w/ honey mustard. Oh my.... delicious. Goes well with the beer too I must say (Abita Mardi Gras Bock for me). If that wasn't enough (and trust me, it probably was) we also had their plate called "A Taste of New Orleans" which is a cup of red beans and rice, a cup of shrimp creole, jambalaya and shrimp remoulade. Let me tell you folks, if you like Cajun food and you leave this place hungry, you've got nobody to blame but you and your stupid diet. Pig out here. Typing this paragraph actually just made my mouth water.
Also, we were told that Acme Oyster House was THE place in the quarter to get chargrilled oysters, but we noticed every time we went by there was a huge line (a good sign, but I hate waiting). We found a local that told us we should try Deanie's Seafood Restaurant for chargrilled oysters and seafood. This turned out to be an excellent tip as we got a table right away, without a reservation, and had some delicious food which was reasonably priced. It's just off Bourbon Street on the corner of Dauphine and Iberville.
So we also had one of their signature sandwiches, the muffuletta, a couple of different times from different places and enjoyed them. We also ate at several more places and drank at plenty more I'm sure, but these are some thoughts from the places we enjoyed more than others. One of the great things about this city and the French Quarter area in general is that I'm sure you could stay for a month or so and not eat at the same place twice, there's so much to choose from. A good excuse to go back and explore more I guess.
So I tried 10 beers that I haven't tried before and rated them on BeerReviewsOnline.com and here they are in order of ratings:
Mikkeller Single Hop Nelson Sauvin IPA (9/10)
NOLA Hopitoulas IPA (9/10)
Abita Strawberry Harvest Lager (8/10)
NOLA Blonde Ale (8/10)
NOLA Hurricane Saison (7/10)
Abita Satsuma Harvest Wit (7/10)
Abita Mardi Gras Bock (6/10)
Abita Restoration Pale Ale (6/10)
Abita Golden (5/10)
Abita Light (4/10)
The Mikkeller is the only one not from the area. You can see I like IPAs better just from this list if you didn't know already... and light beer the least. The most surprising for me was the Abita Strawberry, as I'm not a big fan of fruit beer usually and this was really tasty. I probably couldn't have more than a couple in a row though... too sweet for me. Overall, Abita has bumped up into my list of favorite breweries as I've got some memories to go with some of their beers now and they make plenty of very drinkable beers. Somewhere over the 3 days I worked in their Jockamo IPA and Turbo Dog as well. Looking back at the list, I'm not sure where or when. Not surprisingly actually.
