Mouth watering. Historic. Outstanding. Muriel’s Jackson Square is uniquely New Orleans. By that, we mean to say that this place has character. Each room is decorated differently-- deep red walls with art nouveau downstairs, golden shades upstairs-- so your friends will think you read Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil and suddenly you were transformed into landed Southern gentry, seersucker suit and all. Hence your choice of Muriel’s for dinner. Sure, the food here is good-- it’s New Orleans, even the Popeye’s fried chicken is awesome here-- but you didn’t come to Muriel’s simply for the flavors. You come for the experience. Specifically, the adventure of sampling the New Orleans you can’t find embedded in the rhymes in a track by Lil’ Wayne.

Instead, Muriel’s brings you back and your bachelor party back to a time when mint juleps were de rigueur and phrases like de rigueur were used with regularity.

So, book a reservation for the bachelor party at Muriel’s, download some Kermit Washington onto your iPod, and pretend you know what a crawdaddy is. Eat it anyway.