It’s no secret that New Yorkers would kill for outdoor space in the summer. But cooped-up city dwellers have found another way to deal with a winter’s worth of claustrophobia: outdoor dining. Too bad the quest for an outdoor table can become as competitive as the hunt for an apartment with a backyard.

Fortunately there are [...]

In theory, staying in New York City on a summer weekend when everyone else is away should mean you have access to plenty of restaurants, free concerts and barbecue real estate in the park while everyone else fights for a parking space in the Hamptons. In reality, the city is just as crowded as ever. [...]

Certain hometown restaurants inspire a kind of mania among their fans. In New Orleans, that restaurant would be Mother’s, whose po’ boy gets raves from longtime patrons of the creole lunch counter. Go here and locals will give you one important instruction about that sandwich: “Make sure you get the debris.”

As with many recent additions [...]

To answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind: yes, there is still excellent seafood to be had in New Orleans. Much of it is top quality shrimp, crawfish, blue crab, and much of it is local. Though National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed 60,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico to commercial fishing [...]

Life is grand at Galatoire’s, the century-old restaurant in the French Quarter, where ladies in hats and men in white linen jackets gather under the ceiling fans in the sunny, tile-floored interior for a lunch that stretches into the afternoon. An oasis of air-conditioned civility on rowdy Bourbon Street, Galatoire’s still requires men to wear [...]