EASY DOES IT

New Orleans-a place best known for its Mardi Gras festivities and rollicking French Quarter-has a new polish. Design-forward boutique hotels have opened in unexpected neighborhoods and globally-minded bars and restaurants have followed suit. As Kate Donnelly finds, there are a number of fresh reasons to visit the Crescent City.

- Kate Donnelly

NEW ORLEANS IS ALWAYS a good idea, I told myself, even as I landed in the Southern port city on a particularly sultry mid-June day. Inside the gleaming new Louis Armstrong International Airport, I was greeted by a few unmistakable geographical reminders: a Café Du Monde counter frying its signature powdered-sugar-dusted beignets, an outpost of Bar Sazerac slinging its namesake drink, and a spirited four-piece brass band playing by baggage claim. Settling into my Uber, I asked the driver to crank up WWOZ, a station owned by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation. "Take It to the Streets," a horn-heavy track by a group of Treme musicians named the Rebirth Brass Band, ushered me into town.

I first visited New Orleans roughly 20 years ago, when I was in college and could slurp down Pat O'Brien's sugar-laced Hurricanes with gusto. In my mid-20s, I returned as an enthusiastic Jazz Fest attendee. In my early 30s, I finally made it inside Galatoire's—the famed jacket-required institution where tuxedoed waiters serve shrimp rémoulade to society ladies and Preservation Hall, a family-run venue for jazz performances. In recent years, I'd heard that the Big Easy had evolved beyond the familiar trappings of the French Quarter and embarked on a sophisticated new chapter that my fortysomething self would find deeply appealing.