Weird eats & drinks in New Orleans
Weird eats and drinks in New Orleans — 10 of them, from Rocky & Carlo's, Melba's Old School Poboys and Dong Phuong Bakery. Themed dining rooms, improbable specialties, and restaurants built around one strange idea and committed to it completely. They spread across Chalmette, New Orleans, Westwego (Avondale), LA and Akers (Manchac), LA, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. Every entry is hand-vetted against real sources — not scraped off a top-ten list or averaged out of crowd ratings.
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Rocky & Carlo's
Five Sicilian men — Tommy Tommaseo, his brother Rocky, and brothers-in-law Carlo, Mario and Joseph Gioe — opened this place on St. Bernard Highway on April 24, 1965, after cooking together at Angelo's, a bar that did not admit women; the 'Ladies Invited' sign out front was the whole point of the new venture, and the name went to Rocky and Carlo because they were the two oldest. Five months later Hurricane Betsy flooded the parish and the staff fed people by candlelight, sticking candles into loaves of bread, a habit they repeated through every storm since. You order at a steam-table counter that runs like a plant cafeteria, and what you order is the baked macaroni and cheese with red or brown gravy — the restaurant's own site calls it the most popular item on the menu, and the portion arrives closer to a serving platter than a plate. The veal parmesan is the other reason regulars drive out here. It is still family-run: Mr. Tommy, his uncle Tommy, and founder Carlo's widow Nana.
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Melba's Old School Poboys
Melba's went up on a blighted corner at Elysian Fields and North Claiborne after Katrina and never really closed again — the listed hours read '12:00 AM – 12:00 AM,' seven days, which is the honest way of saying it never shuts. The building it occupies is shared with Wash World, so the same room that sells you a hot sausage po-boy for $11.99 also has your laundry going, and the frozen drink machines churn away in the corner while you wait. The odder wing of the operation is the literacy program founded by Jane Wolfe, which the restaurant claims is the only one of its kind inside a working restaurant and which has given away more than 20,000 books to customers, sometimes with the authors standing right there. Beyond po-boys there's 9th Ward gumbo, jambalaya, red beans, and a $9.99 Big Man Breakfast that exists specifically for people arriving at an indefensible hour. A second location runs the same 24-hour clock at 3219 Tulane Ave.
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Dong Phuong Bakery
De and Huong Tran opened this bakery in New Orleans East in the early 1980s — Huong had learned pastry in her father's bakery in Vietnam — and it became the bread supply line for a startling number of the city's po-boy shops, which is why the James Beard Foundation handed it an America's Classics award in 2018 alongside Willie Mae's and Hansen's. The New York Times called eating a bánh mì here one of the signal pleasures of the American South, and there are roughly sixteen sandwich variations to argue about. The Carnival king cakes are the thing people lose their minds over: in-store pickup opens January 1, Goldbelly pre-orders start December 15, and the bakery simply closes for Mardi Gras week when the pace becomes unsurvivable. The rest of the year the case fills with steamed bao, pandan and coconut pastries, and mooncakes as Mid-Autumn approaches. It is a bakery counter and a small restaurant, not a scene, and it shuts at 5pm.
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Ted's Frostop
Frostop started in Springfield, Ohio in 1926 and peaked in 1958; about thirteen drive-ins survive, and the giant rotating mug bolted above this one on South Claiborne is the chain's original piece of signage grammar. The root beer is the reason to come — 22 flavors cold-brewed in batches and held at exactly 36 degrees, which the restaurant will tell you unprompted, poured into floats and shakes as well as straight. Food is the Lot-O-Burger, fresh hand-pressed beef fully dressed on a sesame bun for $7.95, escalating through a Double and a Big Bopper for people making bad decisions, plus roast beef and hot sausage po-boys and a rotating plate lunch that puts red beans on Monday and crawfish étouffée on Friday. There is free pinball and free video games inside, video poker for anyone over 21, and covered outdoor seating that fills with Tulane students since the stadium is directly across the street. Breakfast — shrimp and grits, ribeye and eggs — runs first thing in the morning.
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Creole Creamery
The Tchoupitoulas is eight scoops with eight toppings, whipped cream, cherries and wafers, and if you finish it without help your name goes on the Hall of Fame plaque — the running list is up to 751 finishers, the most recent added on January 26, 2026, and one Steven Hammond is logged at seven minutes flat. The sundae is sold at all four shops but the challenge itself is only sanctioned at the Prytania Street location, which is the point of coming Uptown. The permanent board is where the real personality lives: Nectar Cream sherbet, Lavender Honey and Creole Cream Cheese sit there year-round, with rotating guests like Thai Basil Coconut, Ube, Strawberry Jalapeño Cheesecake and a Grapefruit & Campari sorbet. It is a narrow neighborhood scoop shop, not a spectacle — the plaque just happens to be on the wall.
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Loretta's Authentic Pralines
Loretta S. Harrison built this business more than 35 years ago as the first African American woman to own and run a praline company in New Orleans, and the pralines are still the anchor — but the beignet is what people cross the Quarter for. The house line is three-way: Sweet Praline Beignets, Crabmeat Beignets and Burger Beignets, all fried to order, which is a very different proposition from the powdered-sugar assembly line a few blocks down Decatur. The French Market operation is a stall — number 9, in the row at 1100 N. Peters — so this is a counter-and-a-napkin situation, not a table. The N. Rampart cafe is the sit-down half, open mornings only and closed three days a week.
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Hansen's Sno-Bliz
Ernest Hansen built his block-ice shaver himself in the 1930s and didn't get a U.S. patent on the design until 1950; the machine currently doing the work dates to 1939 and is still behind the counter. It cuts the ice almost hollow, so the from-scratch syrups — cream of nectar, cream of chocolate, spearmint, orangeade, Ernest's Own root beer — soak all the way through instead of pooling at the bottom of the cup. Granddaughter Ashley Hansen reopened the cinderblock stand in 2006, after Katrina and after both founders died, and still cooks the syrups to Mary Hansen's recipes. The James Beard Foundation handed it an America's Classics award in 2014. It runs roughly March into fall and goes dark all winter — the shop is currently advertising its 87th season.
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Clover Grill
Burgers go on the flattop under an actual hubcap, which traps the steam and domes the patty; the sign outside calls them the world's most delicious and nobody on staff has ever contradicted it. Twelve red stools run along the pink-tiled counter facing the grill, four tables sit under the windows onto Bourbon, and the menu reads like a monologue — "If you're not served in 5 minutes, it may be another 5. Relax. This isn't New York City." A sign by the door says Be Nice or Leave. It's been on the Dumaine corner since 1939 and runs three shifts around the clock like a hospital ward, scrubbing the grill at every changeover, which is why the 4 a.m. burger tastes like the noon one.
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Mosca's
The building sits alone on a dark stretch of US-90 with almost nothing to announce it, which is roughly how it looked when Provino and Lisa Mosca opened in 1946 — in a building owned by New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who then ate there regularly. Inside it's wood panelling, paper placemats, and a garlic smell that gets into your coat and rides home with you. Everything comes family-style and the list is short on purpose: Oysters Mosca baked under seasoned breadcrumbs, Chicken a la Grande sautéed with rosemary and whole garlic cloves, Spaghetti Bordelaise that is angel hair with oil, butter and yet more garlic. The James Beard Foundation gave it an America's Classics award in 1999 and the kitchen appears to have read that as an instruction not to change anything. The FAQ states the position plainly: no chicken parm, no fettuccine, no separate checks.
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Middendorf's (Manchac)
Josie Middendorf started slicing catfish paper-thin in 1934, in a cafe she and her husband Louis opened in a Manchac fishing village on a $500 loan co-signed by a former New Orleans mayor; the cut is now a registered trademark, World-Famous Original Thin Fried Catfish. The fillets come out translucent and brittle, closer to a chip than a fish, and the dinner lands at $18.25 with fries, slaw and hush puppies. Since 2007 it's been run by Horst Pfeifer, a European Master Chef who decamped here after Katrina killed his French Quarter restaurant, and who spent a decade lifting the original building onto stilts in a campaign the staff call Operation: High & Dry. You eat on a covered waterfront deck between Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, with a sand pit full of buckets and shovels for other people's children and a chicken coop out past the parking lot.
Weird eats & drinks in New Orleans — FAQ
Which weird eats & drinks in New Orleans are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Rocky & Carlo's, Dong Phuong Bakery and Ted's Frostop. Rocky & Carlo's — Five Sicilian men — Tommy Tommaseo, his brother Rocky, and brothers-in-law Carlo, Mario and Joseph Gioe — opened this place on St.
Where in New Orleans are they?
Across Chalmette, New Orleans, Westwego (Avondale), LA and Akers (Manchac), LA. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Is this a good weird date in New Orleans?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Rocky & Carlo's, for instance: Drive out any Tuesday through Saturday and get there by 6pm — they lock the doors at 7. Order one baked macaroni with red gravy and one veal parmesan at the counter, split both, and eat under the neon at a formica table surrounded by people who have been coming since the refinery shifts changed. Fifteen minutes back into the Bywater afterward for a nightcap.
How were these weird eats & drinks chosen?
An agentic research system digs for the genuinely obscure — the spots even locals miss — and every one is verified against real sources before it makes the list. We deliberately skip the landmarks already on every New Orleans guide.