""New Orleans is a city of mood," so says Chef Serigne Mbaye, who I'm sitting with one morning in September. We've been discussing the merits of Parkway's po'boys - those iconic Louisiana sandwiches - and the old-school kitchen at Commander's Palace. Growing up in Senegal and New York City, Mbaye would cook with his mother. His Uptown restaurant, Dakar Nola, weaves together childhood memories with his haute restaurant experiences and the deep African roots of New Orleans."
"An eighth-generation French, Spanish and Haitian Creole New Orleanian, Islah does hair, make-up and healing, and she reads tarot at Patron Saint, the wineshop and bar that my husband, Tony Biancosino, and I opened a year ago in the Lower Garden District. We talk in her studio, tucked away on the ground floor of an old bread factory in the Irish Channel neighbourhood."
New Orleans combines a distinctive mood, rich culinary traditions, and deep African and Creole roots that inform daily life, restaurants and celebrations. Residents describe the city as a woman: empathetic, feeling everything, and as a two-way embrace that demands reciprocity and care. Musicians, chefs and healers merge ancestral memory with contemporary creativity in places like Dakar Nola, Preservation Hall, Commander's Palace and neighborhood taverns. Rituals such as cleansing with sage, tarot, and communal gatherings sustain social bonds. The city's origins as a swamp colony, port of the slave trade and diverse European influence shape its complex identity and resilient community.
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