My friends went to wine country, to Napa. They kept texting back photos of wine caves, tastings and cabernet-stained smiles. I was stuck in deep New Orleans summer, and I desperately wished I was there. So I went to Pluck, a wine bar in downtown New Orleans that feels like a portal to wine country.
The smothering embrace of a hot New Orleans summer was waiting again just outside the door. But inside, I was eating tuna crudo with grilled peaches and sipping a crisp, clean German white wine, followed by a bistro-worthy burger with a properly chilled Nebbiolo, and for this spell inside Pluck I was transported.
This is what I call the one-meal staycation. It’s a temporary lift from the dregs of a New Orleans summer, if only for a meal, if only in our flavor-driven imagination. I seek these places out this time of year, and these days there are more that fit the bill.
Uptown, the Spanish restaurant Costera just nails the flavors and style of eating I recall from travel in Barcelona and Madrid and yearn for when I want to mentally return.
For more domestic travel vibes, the Italian sandwiches at Francolini’s take me to the northeast, and the delis of that region from Jersey to Boston for a satisfying, stacked cold sub.
On St. Claude Avenue, in the Marigny, there’s Bar Pomona, which feels like that café you encountered in France, or maybe Italy, the spot that wasn’t on your travel list, but instead you stumbled on and it became a highlight of your trip anyway. It’s a small space with low ceilings where the short menu splits the difference between aperitivo snack and proper supper, and the wine list is both deep and affordable.
Don’t go thinking wine is the common thread here. I mean, there’s also beer, and in the Bywater there’s Bratz Y’all, a German restaurant that pus the garden in biergarten with beer steins the size of Volkswagens and the feeling of a flower-strewn Bavarian summer. Here in New Orleans summer, we find ways to get to fall, one glass, one meal at a time.
