Best Tasting Menus in New Orleans
Six restaurants on this list serve a tasting menu, an omakase, or both. The Michelin-starred ones are Emeril’s in the Arts District and Saint-Germain in Bywater. Emeril’s also holds a Wine Spectator Grand Award and a sommelier-led list. Saint-Germain's wine is natural, and the menu runs 10 courses, moving between bar and dining room.
Dakar NOLA in East Riverside serves a pescatarian tasting menu family-style and holds a Michelin Plate from 2025, plus a James Beard Award for Best Chef: South. August Restaurant in the Central Business District serves a tasting menu and a la carte, with a Michelin Plate and a sommelier-led Best of Award of Excellence list. Kenji Omakase, also in the Central Business District, is a counter omakase with a sake program. Nanami Sushi Diner & Onigiri in the Garden District serves omakase and onigiri, and guests bring their own bottles.
How this list is chosen: Restaurants serving a tasting menu or omakase, listed alphabetically. Updated October 8, 2026.
August Restaurant
Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence · Deep wine list
August Restaurant holds a 2025 Michelin Plate at 301 Tchoupitoulas Street, placing it firmly within New Orleans' contemporary fine dining tier. The kitchen works in a price range that signals serious intent without the reservation arms race of the city's starred counters. For visitors mapping the upper register of the New Orleans dining scene, August belongs on the shortlist alongside the city's most recognized addresses.
Dakar NOLA
Dakar NOLA is a rarefied dining experience where Senegalese heritage is reimagined through the prism of New Orleans’s soulful abundance. In an intimate, reservation-only setting, a choreographed tasting menu unfolds like a travelogue—jolof rice polished with jeweled aromatics, pristine Gulf seafood perfumed with attiéké and citrus, and cassava rendered silken beside deeply spiced stews. The cadence is gracious and unhurried, the storytelling vivid, the hospitality quietly magnetic. Here, West African technique speaks fluently with Creole terroir, revealing a cuisine that is both deeply rooted and thrillingly modern, designed for those who collect meals the way others collect art.
Emeril’s
2 Michelin stars · Wine Spectator Grand Award
Emeril's opened on Tchoupitoulas Street in 1990 and built a category of its own: New New Orleans cooking that placed Louisiana's produce at the centre of serious fine dining. Now holding two Michelin stars and a 2026 La Liste score of 92 points, the Warehouse District flagship operates under Chef E.J. Lagasse, whose tasting menu reframes the restaurant's founding classics through a lens shaped by Frantzén and Core by Clare Smyth.
Kenji Omakase
An omakase counter on Camp Street places Japanese precision inside one of America's most flavour-driven cities. Kenji Omakase sits in the small cohort of chef-driven tasting formats that have taken root in New Orleans over the past decade, offering a deliberately narrow, sequenced experience in a neighbourhood better known for Creole grandeur and Cajun exuberance.
Nanami Sushi Diner & Onigiri
On Magazine Street in the Garden District, Nanami Sushi Diner & Onigiri brings a Japanese counter-dining sensibility to a city built on Creole tradition and live-fire cooking. The format pairs sushi with onigiri, placing it in a small but growing tier of Japanese casual-specialist spots that have found an audience in New Orleans well beyond the tourist corridor.
Saint-Germain
1 Michelin star
Saint-Germain earned a Michelin star in 2025 alongside a Resy Best of the Hit List nod, marking St. Claude Avenue's arrival as a serious dining address in New Orleans. The contemporary format sits at the upper end of the city's tasting-menu tier, drawing a repeat clientele that treats the room less like an occasion restaurant and more like a trusted neighborhood anchor with technical ambition.
Planning tasting menus in New Orleans
- Which restaurants on this list have Michelin stars?
- Emeril’s in the Arts District and Saint-Germain in Bywater are the Michelin-starred restaurants on this list. Emeril’s holds two Michelin stars from 2025 and also serves prix fixe and a la carte. Saint-Germain serves a 10-course tasting menu with natural wine. The meal moves between the bar and the dining room.
- Which omakase counters are on this list?
- Kenji Omakase in the Central Business District and Nanami Sushi Diner & Onigiri in the Garden District are the omakase counters on this list. Kenji serves a seasonal omakase and tasting menu at the counter, with a sake program and a wine list, under chef Matthew Nguyen. Nanami serves sushi, handmade onigiri, and omakase, and guests bring their own bottles.
- Which tasting-menu restaurants on this list hold a Wine Spectator award?
- Emeril’s and August Restaurant are the restaurants on this list with Wine Spectator awards. Emeril’s in the Arts District holds a Grand Award and a sommelier-led list. August Restaurant in the Central Business District holds a Best of Award of Excellence for 2026, and its list is sommelier-led.
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