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Where’s the best gumbo in New Orleans? If you live here, that’s something you’re asked all the time. Being a Creole girl from the 7th Ward—a multigenerational native New Orleanian at that—I certainly have opinions on gumbo. I’ve been eating it since I was a bald-headed baby with only two teeth and I’ve been making it since I was 18.
At its core, gumbo is somewhere between a soup and a stew. It’s a blend of a roux (flour and fat that’s cooked until brown), stock, the Louisiana seasoning trinity (bell peppers, onion and celery), plus meat and/or seafood. When I make gumbo, which is usually only for holidays because it’s expensive to do it “right,” I put everything in it: chicken thighs, andouille, hot sausage, deveined shrimp, cleaned blue crabs, oysters, and okra. There’s also filé (ground sassafras) on the table for me and whoever else wants it. Never in my entire life would I include a tomato in any form. Certainly not an egg, not snow crab claws, not loose crab meat, not crawfish, never anything crunchy unless it’s cooked all the way down, and, for the love of all that is holy, never corn! These ingredients just do not belong—that’s me though. Needless to say, everyone here has strong feelings about this dish.
Some people’s favorite gumbo comes from Broad & Banks in Mid-City, while others prefer the spicier gumbo from Heard Dat Kitchen in Central City. No two restaurants will make gumbo the same—even sister restaurants like Saint John and Gris-Gris. One thing I learned from interviewing chefs across the city as I put this list together is that pretty much every chef’s gumbo exemplar is the one they ate growing up. For me, it’s my mama’s gumbo and the gumbo Ms. Fields made in the cafeteria at McDonogh 39 elementary school—the latter served with a grilled cheese sandwich. For others, it’s their family’s, or the one served at their office or their school.
We New Orleanians are protective of gumbo, and hypercritical of anything related to it. If you want to see us unite as a city, getting us talking about gumbo is one surefire method. “Anytime you talk about gumbo, it’s a long conversation,” says Frank Brigtsen, the chef-owner of New Orleans Cajun-Creole restaurant Brigtsen’s. “Of all the dishes in Louisiana, gumbo really stands out as unique and identifies us as Louisiana people. And to me the best gumbo in the world is the gumbo you grew up with. It’s a very personal, passionate thing.”
When it comes to finding the very best gumbo in New Orleans, at least outside of our own homes, these eight restaurants—some old, some newer—are where I turn.
The first time I had Brigtsen’s gumbo was around 2013, and I’ve been recommending it to everyone ever since. Dining at Brigtsen’s is like going to a relative’s house for the holidays. The restaurant is located in an old home, with separate rooms, a hodgepodge of art and seasonal decor on the walls, the “good” silverware you pull out for special occasions, and a team of kind people who treat you like family.
Most of the time, Brigtsen’s gumbo has chicken, andouille sausage and ground sassafras powder, which we call filé. Chef-owner Frank Brigtsen trained under the late Chef Paul Prudhomme, the man credited with introducing Cajun cuisine to the masses. That’s who introduced Brigtsen to the very Cajun style of gumbo he serves at his restaurant, which usually contains no seafood or okra. On certain occasions, such as Lent, Brigtsen will serve seafood gumbo.
There are two techniques that make Brigtsen’s gumbo stand apart from the rest. First, he makes his roux and sets it aside to cool. By doing this, the oil rises to the top and he can skim the fat away before adding the roux to the gumbo—ensuring the ideal consistency of slightly thickened soup. Second, unlike many chefs, he doesn’t mix the trinity of vegetables in with the roux. Instead, Brigtsen adds the vegetables in two stages to add more browning, caramelization, and dimension. “Almost all Cajun cooking is based on very humble ingredients,” Brigtsen says. “The key to success is in the use of seasonings and techniques to build layers of flavor.”
Order: You can never go wrong at Brigtsen’s. Most recently, I ordered chicken and andouille filé gumbo and the crawfish pasta. The crawfish pasta here is a bright take on the classic dish, with shells tossed in pesto and topped with fresh crawfish tails—not the typical linguine in crawfish cream sauce that you’d find at casual gatherings.
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Broad & Banks Seafood
Chances are that if someone’s going to Broad & Banks, it’s for gumbo and grilled cheese. If a person grew up in New Orleans between the ‘70s through Hurricane Katrina in 2005, especially if they attended public school, they likely remember the cafeteria serving this combo around the holidays. In fact, it’s a staple at Broad & Banks owner Ken Nguyen’s restaurant because his kids ate it at their school.
Broad & Banks gumbo is packed with smoked sausage, hot sausage, shrimp and chicken. In 1998, at 30 years old, Nguyen came to New Orleans from Vietnam. “I put every kind of meat in there,” Nguyen says of his gumbo recipe. “Back in Vietnam, we didn’t have much, so now that I’m in America and we have so much to eat, I include a lot.”
Nguyen says his restaurant goes through 10 big pots of gumbo and between 30 and 40 loaves of bread each day. Whenever I visit Broad & Banks, now in its 25th year of business, I marvel at how smoothly the line flows: huge pans of grilled cheese sandwiches moving through the space, staff replenishing the gumbo on the cafeteria-style line, both diners and employees honoring New Orleans’ unique blend of southern hospitality with plenty of sirs, babies, and yes ma’ams.
Something that makes the Broad & Banks gumbo special is that it doesn’t use a traditional roux. “We use a Vietnamese technique in our gumbo. So we’ll say it’s Cajun-Asian. We put our own spin on it,” Nguyen says of his technique, which involves cooking down a large amount of stock, made with bones and flavorful scraps of the meat and vegetables used in the gumbo, until it's rich and flavorful. “Like phở and bún bò Huế or the other soups from Vietnam, we use a lot of stock, and that’s how we build the layers of flavor. Ours is more of a stock-based gumbo.”
Order: Gumbo and grilled cheese. The red beans and lima beans are two other famous dishes at Broad & Banks, both rich with pickled pork and served with smothered pork chops.
Dooky Chase’s
2301 Orleans Ave., New Orleans
There’s so much about Dooky Chase’s (Dooky rhymes with cookie) that can’t be replicated: the collection of Black art on the walls, the stained glass hall partition, the fabrics on the chairs. And of course, the gumbo.
The gumbo at Dooky Chase’s—and at sister restaurants Chapter IV in downtown New Orleans and Leah’s Kitchen in the Louis Armstrong International Airport—is traditional Black Creole gumbo, made with smoked sausage, Creole chaurice hot sausage from fellow multigenerational business Vaucresson’s, chicken, shrimp, stewed down ham hocks and veal, blue crab, and filé. On Fridays, it’s made with okra instead of filé.
Dooky’s kitchen is now helmed by the late chef’s great great granddaughter, Zoe Chase, and great grandson, Edgar “Dook” Chase IV. But little has changed since the restaurant first opened in 1941, and for many community elders, it still feels the same now as it did when Leah and Dooky Chase Jr. took over for Emily and Dooky Chase Sr. around 1946. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the restaurant became a headquarters for Civil Rights leaders. The late chef Leah Chase—the inspiration for The Princess and the Frog, the star of Beyonce’s “Lemonade” video, la belle grande dame of Creole cuisine—would be so pleased with how her family has maintained and built upon her restaurant legacy since her passing in 2019.
“The proudest moment I get is when somebody that’s been coming to Dooky’s for generations, they come in now and say, ‘This gumbo tastes the exact same as when your grandmother was making it,’” Dook says.
Order: On Friday, order the okra gumbo. Any other day of the year, order the Creole gumbo. Always order the fried chicken, stewed okra, veal panne, and Lavender Lemonade.
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Gabrielle
No two dining experiences at Gabrielle are the same, and that’s what makes it so fabulous. Unlike most other restaurants where chefs make huge batches of roux at once, chef-owner Greg Sonnier makes small-batch roux, slow-roasted in the oven. By cooking the roux like this, Sonnier finds it easier to control the darkness. He grew up on the light, low temperature, slow-roux gumbo of his New Iberia, Louisiana-born mother. But he also trained under the late Paul Prudhomme, who taught him about dark, high-temperature, quick-roux gumbo.
At Gabrielle, Sonnier works to find ideal ingredients to pair with time-tested techniques. “What kind of cool gumbo should I make?” Sonnier regularly asks himself. Guinea hen, a meat often used in Cajun cooking, is almost always in the gumbo, but he also makes different types of sausages so he can incorporate a variety of meats, like alligator or rabbit, into the mix. “It really does perk the gumbo up and make it special,” he says of all these variations. Another thing that sets the gumbo apart at Gabrielle is that Sonnier does not cook the rice for his gumbo in flavored stock like many other gumbo establishments do. “I think rice has really evolved, and the people who sell rice are really proud of that,” he says. With all the flavor packed into the gumbo at Gabrielle, the subtleness of the rice is an ideal base.
Order: The duck, rabbit, and guinea hen gumbo, or any seasonal gumbo. Plus, duck liver mousse pâté, and for dessert, a Peppermint Patti, which combines a fudgy dark chocolate-chip brownie, housemade pink peppermint ice cream, and chocolate sauce.
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Heard Dat Kitchen
2520 Felicity St., New Orleans
Heard Dat is named for chef-owner Jeffery Heard, but you could also say it’s representative of how customers find out about the restaurant: through word of mouth. Heard’s daughter Tia'Nesha Heard-Dorest says people often come in showing her photos on their phones of what their friends told them they should order. Heard Dat’s gumbo has shrimp, chicken, sausage and “a crazy amount of spices,” as Heard puts it. It’s served with a grilled cheese sandwich and a side of potato salad, which Heard-Dorest calls “the best of both worlds.”
Heard worked at hotels in New Orleans for most of his adult life, and was disappointed that he couldn’t tell guests where to get good gumbo in the city. “It was always too thick in hotels,” Heard says. “That’s them not letting the roux cook and break down enough to get to the right consistency, so as soon as they put liquid on that roux it swells and turns to paste.”
Growing up, one of Heard’s fondest memories is of his mom cooking the roux on the stove. “It always made me feel some type of way when I smelled that roux cooking,” he says. Heard still refuses to serve his gumbo as soon as it’s made, because he insists upon letting the roux cook down and the spices mellow out.
Order: The Gumbo Combo, which is served with a grilled cheese sandwich and a side of potato salad. Also, try the lobster mashed potatoes, BBQ shrimp fries, and anything under the signature section of the menu.
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Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe
1500 Esplanade Ave., New Orleans
If you want to feel loved, walk through the door of Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe. You’re not only greeted by a chorus of staff, but by diners too. It’s a must that you “speak” or “pass the time of day” in New Orleans, which means saying hello to everyone when you enter a room, and greeting everyone you pass on the street. If someone “speaks” to you, it’s a must that you speak back. Li’l Dizzy’s embodies this spirit.
The gumbo recipe at Li’l Dizzy’s is about 60 years old. It’s the same gumbo you’ll find in The Baquet Family Cookbook, and is full of ham, smoked sausage, crab, shrimp, and the Baquets’ own pre-packaged hot sausage and gumbo base. Co-owner Arkesha Baquet credits her mother-in-law Janet Jourdain Baquet with some of Li’l Dizzy’s most revolutionary concepts, like making their own hot sausage and gumbo base recipe, and having its production outsourced to a commercial kitchen. Chef John Cannon IV says that getting those two key ingredients outsourced gives him the time to focus equally on the food and business aspects of running a restaurant, without sacrificing quality or consistency. “Gumbo is a simple dish, but it takes a lot of steps to get it right,” he says.
The Baquet family has been in the restaurant business in New Orleans for three generations, and many of Li’l Dizzy’s guests were once patrons of past Baquet restaurants, including Eddie’s, Zachary’s, Cafe Baquet and Paul Gross Chicken Coop. “For this family to still be holding onto the same recipes that got them started, it just blows my mind,” says Cannon.
Order: The gumbo, of course. Plus fried chicken, housemade hot sausage, and whatever the daily special is.
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Liuzza’s by the Track
“Oh you gotta get the gumbo, you just gotta get the gumbo, it’s the best gumbo in New Orleans,” a grandmotherly diner told the table sitting behind me on a recent visit to Liuzza’s by the Track. If you even mention Liuzza’s, someone will say you have to get the gumbo. If you post a photo and someone recognizes that you’re there, they will ask how you liked the gumbo.
The gumbo here consists of chicken, andouille, shrimp, okra and tomato, made in 12-gallon batches three times a week, and chef Road Runner has been single-handedly making the gumbo at Liuzza’s for around 20 years. Cooks often ask him to teach them how to make it, but he’s a stickler for consistency. “I’m going to pass it on, but while I’m able to make it, I’m going to continue to make it,” he says.
Order: The gumbo, along with half a fried shrimp po’boy (“dressed” with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickle, add butter and Crystal hot sauce). And, with whatever stomach space you have left, try the turtle soup, BBQ shrimp po’boy, and the peach bread pudding.
Saint John
The gumbo at Saint John and sister restaurant Gris-Gris is cognac-brown and rich with chicken and andouille sausage, the latter from Poche’s in Breaux Bridge. The stock is made daily, using the carcasses from chickens roasted for the gumbo. “It smells like Thanksgiving,” executive chef Eric Cook says of the restaurant.
Both Cook and chef de cuisine Daren Porretto are from New Orleans, but have lived in cities in and outside of Louisiana. Those experiences have shaped their approach to gumbo. “If someone doesn't tell me once a week that I burned my roux, then I’m not doing it right,” Cook says. He’s lived in many Louisiana cities including Mamou, Lafayette and Lake Charles, near Vermillion Parish (or Paroisse de Vermillion) and learned to make gumbo from a friend’s mom, who lived “down the bayou,” just outside Lafayette. This was the darker seafood-free gumbo that many Louisianians associate with that part of the state.
Though people don’t always associate New Orleans with this style of gumbo, it’s just as prevalent here because many New Orleanians have down-the-bayou roots. “There’s a spectrum of gumbo in New Orleans,” Porretto says. “Gumbo, potato salad, you only like it the way you like it, and everybody makes it different.”
Order: Paroisse de Vermillion-inspired gumbo with popcorn rice, served with what Porretto calls “push bread” to sop up what you can’t get with a spoon. Also, the duck popper, a plate of seared duck breast, root beer-braised pork belly, jalapeño Creole cream cheese, and shards of fried duck skin. The rotating desserts are seasonal and immaculate.
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