Picture a grocery stocked specifically for outdoor happy hours and picnics. Now fuse that with a wine shop and an espresso bar and plant it by a restaurant row of food trucks on a grassy lawn with a sweeping view of the Mississippi River.
This is the scene that’s been drawing me back to a place called The Batture, including on quieter weekdays for what I’ve come to regard as a dinner and a show combo.
On a recent Tuesday, dinner was a spread of Colombian cooking from the pop-up Waska.
The show was the river itself, coursing past in currents of opal gray and rose gold as the sun made its slow descent over the West Bank.
Ducks swooped by, and big ships pushed through. Some tooted boat horns, which we toasted with plastic wine cups.
The Batture is found just over the levee, transforming a once-invisible maritime industrial yard into an enchanting place for New Orleans to relax, play, have some tasty food and drink.
It’s next to The Fly, that waterfront curve of Audubon Park with its own vista of the working river.
The Batture is a private development, and it feels refreshingly low-glitz and easygoing, with a design aesthetic of driftwood and rusty reinvention.
Metal structures from old oil rigs now comprise an office workspace. Helicopter landing pads are now pavilions shading picnic tables.
Food at the Batture began as a roundup of food trucks on the weekends but that's been growing with pop-ups and weekday hours too. Among them, you'll find burgers, barbecue, lobster rolls, fried chicken sandwiches, frozen yogurt and sno-balls.
On Tuesday mornings, the Crescent City Farmers Market sets up at the Batture, you can get a market breakfast by the river too.
The new grocery, built in an old shed, is called Miss Market, and it's stocked with drinks and snacks to assemble a picnic any day. It even lends out cheeseboards.
This is also a grocery that sells kites for riverfront play. The wholesomeness factor is high around the Batture, and right now, a picnic or food truck supper before that sunset show on the river is just a New Orleans spring time delight.
