On a recent afternoon in New Orleans’ Garden District, I hopped off the St. Charles streetcar on what seemed a cloudy but pleasant day. And yes, my walk through those lovely blocks over to La Petite Grocery on Magazine Street started out sublime. But it nearly ended with me cowering under an awning, succumbing to the heaviest rain I’ve ever been caught in. That’s a lesson to learn about New Orleans, and I learned it the hard way. Torrential rain can and will descend at any time.
But it will also let up before you know it, and within minutes I was braving the sidewalk again for the remaining couple of blocks to the restaurant, whose chef won a James Beard in 2016 and in 2017 was named by Eater as one of the 38 essential restaurants in the whole dang country.
My summer dress was very literally dripping when I stepped inside, and the hostess couldn’t have been nicer about it. Another lesson to learn about New Orleans: There’s a thread of southern propriety running through the culture here, but it doesn’t overpower the affability, which is real and just a little less sugary than elsewhere in the region. La Petite Grocery would prove a perfect incarnation of this fact.
La Petite Grocery’s Bar Dining Basics
Number of stools: 11.
Ease of Access: At a little before 1pm on a Friday, the bar was busy with drinkers escaping a rainstorm, but a bar stool for lunch was easy to come by.
Spacing: They could fit a couple more stools in if they wanted. I had plenty of room to spread out.
Bar Stool Comfort: Padded seats and backrests, totally comfortable.
Hooks Under Bar? Yes.
Bartender: Both the bartender and a server took good care of me. They were busy but friendly and attentive.
I got set up with a seat at the bar—a glorious, padded, roomy seat with a back—although I felt too drenched to sit in it, and hovered instead, resting an elbow on the bar-top. I went on to order the apple salad and the ricotta dumplings. (As a vegetarian, I skipped the French-Cajun dishes the restaurant is best known for, like the blue crab beignets.)
People come to New Orleans to drink, and when a storm like this descends they’ll dip into the closest place they can find with a bartender and a cocktail menu. And so it happened that before 1pm on a Friday, in one of the classiest places in the Garden District, the bar crowd grew to a couple drinkers deep, for a few minutes at least. Things got really serious when a group of six came in, beers all around for them. Lucky for me, I’d chosen the stool at the end of the bar, and still had plenty of room to spread out.
The Apple Salad at La Petite GroceryThe bar at La Petite Grocery dominates the front room of a single-story corner building that’s been standing sturdy in that spot since the early 20th century, with yellow siding and a darling canopy that provides cover for the sidewalk seating. I imagine that the big windows on a sunnier afternoon flood the room with light. In 2004, this former grocery transitioned well into a fine-dining affair that pays homage to what came before it, with pressed tin walls and ceilings in warm colors and an overall impression that here is something contemporary and historic at the same time, which is how New Orleans does contemporary best.
My dishes arrived, and both were great, although the apple salad was a revelation. I focused on them for the better part of 15 minutes. When I finally stopped stuffing my face and looked up, the rain had stopped, the bar had largely emptied, and I found that even my soaking wet dress really wasn’t anymore.
The morals of the story to choose from here: If it’s raining, go out anyway. In New Orleans, a restaurant is always a bar, too. Even at a bar running two people deep, it’s possible to enjoy a magnificent solo lunch.
LA PETITE GROCERY | 4238 Magazine Street | New Orleans, Louisiana
