Chateau Sonesta Offers French Quarter Luxury
By Kathie Farnell and Jack Purser

Chateau Sonesta, located in New Orleans’ French Quarter on the corner of Dauphine and Iberville, occupies a stately pre-Civil War building which was once the D.H. Holmes Department Store. Today, the Chateau is a luxury hotel whose amenities include the largest guest rooms in the French Quarter. The 251 rooms--including 11 deluxe suites--cluster around a lush, landscaped courtyard and pool area.

The hotel is a popular wedding venue for local families. Ten meeting and banquet rooms provide a total of 10,000 square feet of space, in addition to outdoor gardens and pool courtyards. Full catering services are available. Three restaurants are located on the premises. La Chatelaine is open for breakfast daily from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.; the Clock Bar is open daily from 3 p.m. and serves cocktails and light fare.

The Red Fish Grill, brainchild of restaurateur Ralph Brennan, offers fresh seafood selections including its excellent signature hickory grilled redfish. The restaurant has been repeatedly voted New Orleans Best Seafood Restaurant, but the non-seafood menu items are equally delicious, particularly the pork tenderloin which comes with sweet potatoes. Desserts include a winning double chocolate bread pudding.

Executive Chef Robert Gregg Collier is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and began his formal training at New Orleans’ Commander’s Palace, another Brennan restaurant. The décor at the Grill is as much fun as the food. Representations of fish and other potential menu items are etched into the concrete floor. A huge red fish is painted on one wall, while other fish in the form of metal sculptures hover overhead. The oyster bar, which extends the whole length of the restaurant, features black and white photographs of Louisiana’s bayous taken by Ralph Brennan’s mother while she was a graduate student at Tulane University.

Bourbon Street & Beyond

Bourbon Street, with its attendant raucousness, is around the corner from Chateau Sonesta; getting a beer from one of the drinks-to-go shops and wandering around qualifies as an entertainment bargain. The French Quarter, particularly in Fall, is a great place for walking--a compact area filled with flowery balconies, mysterious courtyards and a genteel air of romantic indolence. St. Louis Cathedral and its immediate surroundings are home to the Quarters' sidewalk artists, tarot readers, and wandering musicians.

One of the city’s most popular attractions, Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, is located on the riverfront a short stroll from the Cathedral. Ranked in the top five aquariums in the U.S., it houses more than 15,000 fish, reptiles and other animals in state of the art exhibit areas representing the underwater world from the Caribbean to South America to the waters of the Mississippi. The Caribbean Reef exhibit features a clear, thirty-foot-long tunnel through which the visitor walks while reef fish and other aquatic creatures swim overhead. Ready to sit down after viewing all this marine life? Right next door is the Entergy IMAX Theatre.

Next to the Aquarium at the foot of Canal Street, the Canal Street Ferry Terminal provides free passenger service across the river to the suburb of Algiers. The free ride offers a great, breezy view of the New Orleans waterfront and skyline, as well as the elaborate riverboats which churn past.

Most visits to New Orleans revolve around eating and drinking. We like the Napoleon House, a more than usually beat-up bar on the corner of St. Louis and Chartres, which was actually purchased as a potential refuge for Napoleon during his exile. It serves good jambalaya and has classical music on the sound system. Right up St. Louis is Johnny’s Po-Boys, a long-standing institution which serves every form of the sandwich known to man, including the French Fry Po-Boy. Galatoire’s, another classic on nearby Bourbon Street, is an old-fashioned restaurant with impeccable food and service and is usually filled with local families out for a special occasion. They still don’t take reservations for their downstairs dining room, so get there early.

For More Information

For more information about New Orleans attractions, visit the New Orleans Convention and Visitors’ Bureau website at www.neworleanscvb.com or call 1-800-672-6124. For reservations at the Chateau Sonesta, visit the website at www.chateausonesta.com or call 1-800-SONESTA.

Kathie Farnell and Jack Purser are based in Alabama and have been doing travel writing and photography since the early 90s. Their favorite topics include nature travel, romantic destinations, weekend getaways and offbeat topics. They both come from a legal background; Jack was an attorney for the US Department of Agriculture, and Kathie founded Farnell Legal Research. Kathie also produces programming for public television and radio. kfarnel@gulftel.com, www.artemismedia.org