The South’s first food-and-beverage museum reopened in this mid-renaissance, off-the-tourist-beat part of town. The large room features clusters of alimental artifacts from each Southern state. It’s a jumbled but informative assemblage, showcasing farms, tables, and everything in between, and illustrating how different ethnic groups, geography, and time have contributed to the regional cuisines of the American South. A Creole cooking class with tastes in the gorgeous demo kitchen runs $45 (including museum admission). Interesting events and rotating exhibits—always its forte—detail obscure but fascinating food topics from absinthe drips to Appalachian soups.

The Museum of the American Cocktail (MoTAC), a stumble through 200 years of cocktail history and New Orleans’s vital role in same, is also here. Founder Dale “King Cocktail” Degroff and curator Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh’s mind-blowing collection offers an original and lively glimpse into the colorful history of everyone’s favorite poison. The booze-obsessed will lose it over the extensive historical artifacts here, including defunct product packaging, glassware, and Prohibition-era photos. (We love the bottles of commercially sold gin, rye, and bourbon flavoring used to spike homemade rotgut to make it palatable.)