19 Best Restaurants For Brunch In New Orleans

Few cities in the United States are as celebrated for their food as New Orleans. For the locals and many transplants who call the city home, the culture revolves around eating and drinking. Festivals, crawfish boils, and Saints game watch parties are all huge food events of the season. You can find something to eat (and a beer) at any time of day or night in the Big Easy: After all, Cafe du Monde is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The city is home to an amazing volume of restaurants and bars for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late-night eats, and everything in between.

Naturally, whether you're a born-and-raised native or visiting the city for the first time, you'll want to kick off your adventure in America's culinary capital the right way, and the best way to do that is brunch ... but with so many options, where does one begin? It's tough to go wrong food-wise in New Orleans — the Crescent City's most mouthwatering bites can be found in an unassuming hole in the wall or even a gas station. To avoid FOMO, you'll probably want a starting point. Consider these the absolute best restaurants for getting your brunch on in NOLA.

With 20+ locations throughout the South, it might be tempting to brush Ruby Slipper off as a chain — after all, there are plenty of one-of-a-kind restaurants to be found in the Big Easy. Yet, the operating restaurant group, Ruby Sunshine, knows how to maintain local flavor and quality across all of its locations. While each brings its own unique flair, decor, and overall vibe, every slipper has one thing in common: Top-tasting brunch food.

The menu is a hodgepodge of Southern favorites with funky, elevated twists. Take, for example, the pig candy bacon bites starter, consisting of Applewood-smoked bacon bites with a mouthwateringly crunchy, caramelized candy glaze. Eggs Benny are a specialty — Ruby Slipper offers quite a few varieties. The eggs cochon, a Southern twist on eggs Benedict in which slow-cooked braised pork is swapped out for traditional Canadian bacon, acts as a standout item. Craving something sweeter? The berry Chantilly pancakes and seasonal stuffed French toast are sure to impress.

Commander's isn't the only place in New Orleans with a swingin' jazz brunch. Palace Cafe, a classic Dickie Brennan restaurant located on the world-famous Canal Street, serves up brunch favorites with a NOLA twist every Saturday and Sunday morning. Compared to others, you'll find more true breakfast-forward items on Palace Cafe's menu: Palace Cafe benedict, shrimp and grits, duck hash, and a fresh berry crepe, for starters.

If you or your dining companions aren't in the mood for brunch, there are plenty of other foods to choose from as well — shrimp remoulade, moules frites, and the Brasserie Burger are all great choices. Drinks-wise, the build-your-own Bloody Mary bar is a huge hit, but there are a number of other cocktails to choose from here, too (the frozen bananas foster is truly unique).

The diverse brunch menu at Brennan's is filled with classics like quiche Lorraine and omelets alongside more eclectic dishes such as a Breton ham buckwheat crepe and the restaurant's signature eggs Hussarde (English muffins, hollandaise, coffee-cured Canadian bacon, and a house-made Marchand de Vin sauce). The delicacies may vary, but all are owed to a founding family with a long lineage as prominent members of the New Orleans culinary community.

It all started when Irishman Owen Brennan opened up a French restaurant, Brennan's, in 1946. Today, Owen's descendants operate a number of restaurants around Southern Louisiana, but the original Brennan's remains a local favorite. Known for its creative play of French, Spanish, and Creole cooking, Brennan's is a fine dining restaurant that also serves one of the best brunches in the Crescent City — including the Bloody Bull, a Bloody Mary elevated by beef broth to become the perfect hangover cure for last night's hand grenades.

Like many of Bywater's best-kept secrets, Elizabeth's Restaurant may not look like much on the outside, but as the restaurant's slogan happily proclaims, inside, you'll find "real food done real good." While a handful of lunch-friendly items are on the menu (gumbo, salad, fried green tomatoes), Elizabeth's focuses primarily on breakfast and brunch food, and the food is an incredible showcase of New Orleans cuisine.

If you're dining with a group (or just really hungry), indulge in some of the appetizers. Kick things off with fried grit cakes dressed in tasso gravy or the sweet and savory fried chicken livers served with housemade pepper jelly, all reasonably priced with generous portions. The main entrees — including highlights like a duck waffle and the Bayou Breakfast (fried catfish and eggs) — all come with a choice of cheese grits or hash browns.

Willa Jean has made major waves in the Big Easy's brunch scene since its inception in 2015. Earlier this year, Mashed listed the hotspot as one of the best breakfast restaurants in America, and the restaurant is beloved by locals and tourists alike. Its reputation is so legendary that the Queen herself, Beyoncé, has popped in (per NOLA.com). The brunch joint melds elegant cooking with rustic charm, and while breakfast is available all week, the weekend brunch menu takes things to a new level.

Appetizers, like griddled banana bread and artichoke dip, are the best way to brunch at Willa Jean. You can't go wrong with any of the options nested under the "biscuit situation" portion of the menu. Entrees span lighter fare like a granola bowl and avocado toast to heartier plates; the Hangover Bowl (brisket and grits) or pastrami smoked salmon are both belly-filling examples. Pro tip: Do NOT leave without ordering the homemade cookies (served with cookie dough and vanilla milk) for dessert. They're $11 but worth every penny.

Emeril Lagasse is a name with which every foodie should be familiar. The Food Network star rose to fame via live cooking shows, and while he's not a native New Orleanian, Emeril, and Cajun food go together like beignets and powdered sugar. The highly entertaining chef currently operates a handful of restaurants in New Orleans, Miramar Beach, and Vegas. Although New Orleans's Emeril's Restaurant may be more popular, the lesser-known Meril may just be one of his best.

Up until 2023, Meril was limited to slinging out lunch and dinner, but earlier this year, the restaurant kicked off a Saturday brunch. It may not satisfy brunch purists clamoring for eggs and bacon, but it's well worth a visit for the fried chicken and waffle bowl, the bacon, egg, and cheese flatbread, and a barbeque shrimp and grits dish.

Dickie Brennan, yet another Brennan family member, operates some of the Crescent City's finest dining establishments, and among them is Tableau.  Like many Big Easy restaurants, seafood is heavily featured on Tableau's roster, and the brunch menu gives a quintessential local-fisherman-meets-fine-dining vibe embodied in choices like a fried oyster pan roast, which is heaven on earth. 

Based in the dreamy, otherworldly French Quarter with a balcony overlooking picturesque Jackson Square, Tableau offers the perfect blend of Southern charm and laid-back elegance. More traditional brunch main courses include selections of Wagyu steak and eggs, a mushroom duxelles omelet, and the restaurant's signature Eggs Tableau (tasso ham, poached eggs, and pepper jelly on a Hollandaise-doused English muffin). Don't forget the tarte à la bouillie for dessert — the caramel rum sauce is transcendent.

The Country Club is a bit of a legend in New Orleans (if you know, you know). With a gorgeous indoor dining space as well as a large pool out back, complete with cabanas, locals and tourists alike flock to the Bywater hangout for great food, strong drinks, and the chance to escape from the year-round humidity. Sure enough, it's one of the most fun places in the city to grab a bite and experience a truly magnificent drag brunch.

The Country Club's drag brunch menu is almost as impressive as the performers. Here, you'll find innovative, NOLA-inspired eats like polenta and eggs; fried green tomatoes; and a not-to-be-missed corn, curry, and blue crab bisque. As mentioned, the food is only outshined by the roster of local drag queens who sing and dance their hearts out from room to room throughout the Country Club.

Gris-Gris hasn't been around for long — the Magazine Street hotspot opened its doors in 2018 — but it's already made a mark on the Big Easy, earning a number of awards in just five short years, including several for serving the city's best brunch. Upon first glance, the brunch menu might appear a little chaotic (most brunch menus don't include pot roast, right?) but take a deeper look. Gris-Gris took home its awards for a reason.

Gris-Gris's brunch leans heavily on the "lunch" part of the word. Some of the standout items include oyster pie, a catfish and Cajun caviar po'boy, and yes, the open-faced pot roast on Texas toast. Still, there are a couple of breakfast-forward items available: Try the chicken gizzard grillades with grit cakes, the Big Brunch Sammy (elevated by elderberry jam), or the cochon de lait benedict for a real treat.