Guest Blogger: Judy Walker

Posted on July 16, 2008
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Judy Walker is the food editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune; she keeps readers up-to-date with restaurants and events around town on her Times-Picayune blog.

Friday, the Times-Picayune’s entertainment section, Lagniappe, will publish our second annual Bar Guide, timed to appear during Tales of the Cocktail and aimed at our readership. If you want to know where the locals go, do not miss it. (We will send links to nola.com)

If you just got here from Sweden, Lagniappe means “a little something extra.”

I researched and wrote the section about bars with patios, and here’s my lagniappe for Tales attendees. I couldn’t include the prettiest patio I found, because it’s not a bar. It’s a restaurant and it closes at 9 p.m.

But you do have to eat; this place is relatively undiscovered; and it does have a nice drinks menu that includes several absinthe cocktails.

Cafe Amelie, 912 Royal St., is flat-out gorgeous, too. Blooming blue vines drip off the walls, the fountain is a cast-iron classic, and they put candles everywhere at night. Very shady, not buggy, and it’s such a large space the tables aren’t on top of each other.

Downside: It’s also a popular venue for weddings, which means it’s often closed to the public on weekend nights.

Sadly, I couldn’t include what to me is the quintessential patio in a bar in New Orleans, that of the Napoleon House. Ever since Katrina they close at 6 p.m.