A good meal, a nice drink and a great read. These might be some of the best uses of our time. Combining them has a multiplier effect I find rejuvenating, refreshingly offline.
Around New Orleans, there are now a number of places with books and food and drink for just such a spell, making a visit feel like more than a meal and much more than a shopping errand. Let’s take a tour.
The Garden District Book Shop occupies just one part of the Rink, the 19th century roller skating rink long ago converted to an arcade of shops and offices. But there’s an open flow through the common space around them, all under the high rafters and skylights , connecting both a stand-alone café called Chicory House for breakfast, and lunch and the shop’s in-store bar, called, wonderfully, Bar Epilogue.
It feels like a library lounge. People are browsing the shelves one minute and then at the bar the next ordering a drink and a snack.
Further uptown at Octavia Books a bank of pivot doors that double as bookshelves and open on their hinges to connect directly to the restaurant Cafe Malou. Of course these bookshelf doors are stocked with cookbooks.
Someone who arrives just for a Café Malou brunch will inevitably discover the sprawling and colorful shop just through the doors, and someone wandering the Octavia Books retail aisles might find their favorite new brunch spot, or maybe just a warm brown butter chocolate chip cookie to go.
Down in Faubourg Marigny , a night spot called NOLA Art Bar has been redesigned as a “reading lounge.”
It’s an extension of Baldwin & Co., the adjacent bookstore and coffee shop that has become a Black literary hub for New Orleans. At NOLA Art Bar, sofas and easy chairs plot out semi private spaces and walls are lined with books.
Many patrons cut into their own books too, while sipping a Negroni or old fashioned cocktail and nibbling from charcuterie and cheese boards. It feels grown up, mellow, and right.
In the rapacious online marketplace for our attention span, logging out with a book and a bite and maybe a glass can feel almost radical, like turning the tables by turning a page.
