Flying to Houston, our seatmate, who was heading home to Tampa, was envious to learn our final destination: "Man, it's not hard to have a good time there," he said. "It's like going to another country." Indeed, there's something about New Orleans that is more Caribbean island than American city. The reliance on tourism, for starters. The moist, billowy heat. The anything-goes atmosphere of Mardi Gras (and of Bourbon Street every day of the year). The colonial architecture and unhurried rhythm and decaying beauty of the French Quarter. Plus the sense of being surrounded by water—a figurative isolation made literal to locals in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and the pathetic official response to it. (For all Washington seemed to care, the disaster might as well have been unfolding in Honduras.)

NEW AND CLASSIC DINING IN NEW ORLEANS

The food, too, has an elusive, almost un-American quality. Dining is central to the city's identity, and the local cuisine is unique in its gumbo of cultural influences: Cajun, Creole, Caribbean, African, Spanish, French, Italian, Vietnamese. The legendary rooms serve the same rich seafood dishes they always have, and no culinary tour would be complete without a visit to Antoine's for oysters Rockefeller (invented at the restaurant in 1889), or Dooky Chase for fried catfish, or Café du Monde for beignets. Paul Prudhomme serves up endless plates of classic crawfish étouffée, and Emeril Lagasse has three rooms in which tourists consume his "kick it up a notch" fare. Stop in for a vieux carre cocktail (sweetly boozy) at the Hotel Monteleone or a sazerac (even sweeter and boozier) at the Roosevelt Hotel and there you have it: old New Orleans in a nutshell.

For classic cuisine, there may be no better spot than Commander’s Palace, a sprawling layout of connected rooms in the Garden District. It's the sort of place where, since 1880, beneath elegant chandeliers, the gentlemen have stood when the ladies return to the table. It’s where birthdays are celebrated (at least five of them the Sunday night we visited), where the James Beard awards are discreetly framed on the stairway wall, and where the best perch in the main room is referred to as "the Ronald Reagan table." A centuries-old live oak provides a canopy above the expansive courtyard, and "Miss Ella" Brennan, now 86, whose family owns the restaurant, can sometimes be seen peeking down from behind the curtains in the third-floor bedroom of her adjacent home. Service is gracious but not obsequious, the superb wine cellar includes 14,000 bottles, and the menu pays careful homage to tradition (the restaurant reopened in 2006 after a long hiatus and an extensive renovation occasioned by Katrina's aftermath).

The food is flavourful and rich, complex but not fussy, and sauces and reductions play a prominent role. To a palate more accustomed to restraint, the turtle soup, spiked with sherry, tastes almost concentrated, as if the chef forgot to dilute it; but then so does the gumbo, which is built on a stock so rich that a mere taste suffices. Pecan-crusted Gulf redfish, topped with champagne-poached blue crabmeat and crushed corn sauce, is impressive, but the fish gets a bit lost and you wonder how it would fare in a simpler preparation. The duck confit, plenty rich enough, is further enriched with pecans and dates. Praline parfait strikes the perfect light note for dessert.

AMAZING CAJUN-STYLE MEALS IN THE BIG EASY

Elsewhere in the city, tradition is being adapted in unexpected ways. Take Cochon, for example. The room itself, in a former warehouse, feels more like Portland (open kitchen, sleek wood, extended banquettes, exposed brick) than New Orleans, at least until you get to the Cajun riffs on the menu. The fried alligator with chili-spiked garlic aioli is addictive, as are the smoked pork ribs with watermelon pickle. The Louisiana cochon with turnips, cabbage and cracklins is exemplary. (And prices all through are more than reasonable: braised pork cheek with sauerkraut potato cakes, goat feta and pear is $12, and when's the last time you saw $5 sides?) Just as Cochon was among the first new rooms to rise out of the post-Katrina devastation, heralding recovery and rejuvenation, the menu signals a fresh, revitalized approach to Cajun fare.

The city's population is still only 350,000 (versus about 485,000 pre-Katrina) and many traces of the devastation remain, yet there are now more restaurants than there were in 2004. The celebrated chef John Besh owns half a dozen rooms, in New Orleans and elsewhere, and Luke (named after his son), adjacent to the Hilton, shows his willingness to include far-flung influences in his take on local. At brunch, the Plat Lyonnais would have made Jean-Georges Vongerichten proud: an Alsatian-style feast of sausage (three types), red potatoes and caramelized onions, along with little pots of cherry and Dijon mustard. The crab salad, meanwhile, was the single best dish we had, fresh as daybreak, heavy on the crab, light on the dressing, providing just the right crunch: bliss. Desserts included a stellar bread pudding and a fine Basque cake, with daubs of créme fraiche. Basque cake, deep in the American south? What country is this again?

It is, as our seatmate suggested, its own country. In New Orleans, local ingredients—from red beans and corn grits to okra and rabbit to catfish and Gulf shrimp—are overlaid with cultural influences and cooking traditions that long ago merged into a singular cuisine. (Something similar could be said of the city's vibrantly eclectic music scene.) Louisiana had a proud history for many centuries before the territory passed from French control to American in 1803, and the upheavals of southern history have only enriched the gumbo. You taste this unique culinary fusion each time you sit down to dine. wl