Hotel St. Marie and Vacherie, 827 Toulouse Street
Make Hotel St. Marie home base for your Toulouse Street exploration. This historic six-story hotel has balcony rooms overlooking the fun below and an intimate French Quarter courtyard with a pool. If you’re looking for the quintessential New Orleans experience, you’ll find it here. The hotel also has a great Creole restaurant inside called Vacherie, named after Chef Jarred Zeringue’s small home town on the Mississippi River. They serve authentic home-style cuisine everyone loves including locals. On the weekends, Vacherie has a fantastic brunch with a DYI Bloody Mary Bar. Need we say more?
Although Hotel St. Marie is close to many famous New Orleans haunts (see 10 Historic French Quarter Buildings Near Hotel St. Marie), we wanted to focus on the ones just on Toulouse Street. We wondered, “What made the Doobie Brothers single out this street in 1972?” Here are our best guesses.
P&J Oyster Company, 1039 Toulouse Street
This 130-year-old company is known for cultivating and harvesting the best oysters out there. We know a chef with a P&J logo tattoo – these oysters are that fantastic. They say Antoine’s proprietor Jules Alciatore, the inventor of Oysters Rockefeller, used oysters from P&J.
One Eyed Jacks, 615 Toulouse Street
If flocked crimson wallpaper, vintage nudes on black velvet and a horseshoe-shaped bar sound right up your alley, you’ll love One Eyed Jacks, a club famous for live music and sexy burlesque shows. Legend has it the upstairs balcony is occupied by the ghosts of a Prohibition-era couple who didn’t know when to go home.
Molly’s Bar, 732 Toulouse Street
This dimly lit late-night bar in an old Creole cottage is known for its “Irish car bombs,” gourmet Jell-O shots and Guinness on tap. In the summer, they serve a refreshing white sangria, and they make wonderful hot-buttered rum when it gets chilly outside. Grab yourself a windowsill seat and have a great time.
The Dungeon, 738 Toulouse Street
Pick a cage and let the good times roll. In the old days, Kiss, Queen, ZZ Top, 38 Special and Bad Company hung out in this heavy metal bar. Maybe they liked the specialty drinks such as the Dragon’s Blood, Witches Brew and Midnight Potion.
Tennessee Williams Apartment, 722 Toulouse
Look up at windows of the attic room at this old townhouse and imagine the writer of A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof looking back down at you. Tennessee called New Orleans “his spiritual home.” In letters to his mother he described his love affair with the French Quarter. “I’m crazy about the city,” he wrote. “I walk continually, there is so much to see.” We hope you’ll feel the same way.
Toulouse Street Wharf at the river
At the end of Toulouse Street (or the beginning, depending on how you look at it), you’ll find Toulouse Street Wharf where the Steamboat NATCHEZ offers daytime and nighttime jazz cruises. Gray Line Tours is also located at the wharf, making it your jumping off point for all kinds of adventures – city, plantation, swamp tours….you name it.