New Orleans' Best Food Tours

In New Orleans, the Beignet Comes First: Our Magazine Street Beignet and Donut Tour

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A word of advice before you book: make sure whatever you're wearing is okay with a little powdered sugar on it. The first stop involves a lot of it, and powdered sugar always wins.

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Coffee, sugar, then shade

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Any proper New Orleans morning starts with coffee, so ours does too. We meet at PJ's Coffee on Magazine Street in the Lower Garden District for a cup and a plate of classic beignets under a small snowstorm of sugar. A short stroll later there's a postcard-style mural that was practically made for group photos, and then District Donuts, where a spread of creative donuts gets shared on a shaded patio with the fans turning overhead.

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After that the walking tour gets quieter and greener. The route edges along the Garden District and the Irish Channel, past raised cottages, shotgun houses and the occasional grand home, and your guide tells you who built them, which immigrants settled here and how this city came to love fried dough as much as it does. Ruby Slipper serves a seasonal specialty beignet. The tour wraps at The Vintage, also on Magazine Street, where you pick your own beignet off the menu and then head out to explore the shops nearby.

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King cake season and the rest of the year

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Three of the four stops on this food tour serve a beignet, each made to order and each nothing like the last. That's the New Orleans part. The donuts are there, they're good, but here the beignet leads.

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Flavors follow the local calendar. Carnival season brings king cake donuts and King Cake Beignets. Fall has pumpkin cheesecake and pecan pie, winter goes for eggnog and Christmas cookie, and summer leans on peaches and cream and banana pudding. Celebrating something? Tell us ahead of time and we'll make a little fuss.

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There's one tour in the city, the Historic Beignet & Donut Tour, and it's a slow Magazine Street morning with sugar on your fingers the whole way.