Which city has better food, Houston or New Orleans?

28 comments

1. New Orleans, perhaps best in whole country

2. New Orleans. no contest. amazing place for food and tourism in general.

3. It’s apples and oranges, really. Houston is 6x the size of New Orleans and will have a much greater variety to choose from. New Orleans is its own thing, though, and is rich in history — so much so that the food there is one of the cornerstones of American cuisine.

4. New Orleans. I prefer Cajun food over BBQ. Sorry Texas, I still love you

5. This is gonna be a contentious debate. I’d say Houston has the greater variety of food (huge immigrant populations, especially from Latin America, so lots of fantastic Mexican), but New Orleans’ local cuisine is more unique. Cajun and Creole cooking are a cultural fusion of French, African, and Native American elements, with food unlike anywhere else in the world. Dishes like gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée, beignets… I’d have to go NOLA on this one.

6. There is no debate: New Orleans

7. That’s not even a contest, New Orleans.

8. Houston has great food, don’t get me wrong. But this isn’t even a question. NOLA will always win. The end.

9. NOLA

   Though I been to Houston, I never explored their culinary scene at all but to their credit, they apparently have a really underrated one.

   But for cuisine that actually represents the city, its hard to beat NOLA. Prob has the best homegrown food scene in all of the US.

10. Houston has some good food, for sure, but in New Orleans, every restaurant you walk into has a reasonable chance of having excellent food. Bad restaurants just can’t survive in that market!

11. New Orleans is a food city. Houston is great for food but New Orleans is famous for it. Don’t insult New Orleans like that.

12. STOP CALLING NEW ORLEANS CAJUN

13. New Orleans.

    And I’m genuinely surprised it’s not more of an international tourist destination.

    We went in 2019 (from the UK, easy flights there too) and lots of people here said “oh we’d love to go there”….go on then.

    It has such a great reputation, and we weren’t in the least bit disappointed.

14. If they are interested in seeing an historic city with amazing food, then New Orleans.

    If they are interested in seeing characterless sprawl with many good restaurants, then Houston.

15. Never been to New Orleans have have been to Houston. Food there is pretty good. I really enjoyed both my trips to Texas.

16. I think it depends on what kind of food they actually like. Polish cuisine does not use much shellfish, so a lot of NOLA food may not actually be their cup of tea, ya know?

    Someone else here pointed out that Houston has a ton of restaurants, so that might be the better bet because they would get a lot of variety, and barbecue is probably something they’d really like.

17. Here’s a little primer. New Orleans= Creole. Southeastern LA/swamps= Cajun. There is Creole food in Cajun country and there is Cajun food in New Orleans.

    Creole- saucy, complexity of spices (more balanced), use of herbs, tomatoes

    Cajun- smoky, game based, more spicY, no tomato.

    The lines have blurred, but if you’re Cajun, you are of French Canadian decent (Acadian). If you’re Creole, you are descended from people who came to New Orleans when it was a European colony (1718-1803).

18. Agreed with everyone that NOLA is an incredible food city, but I’ll add that it’s also a tourist city and Houston really isn’t. Not a lot of Americans go on vacation in Houston. New Orleans is just going to be a better place to visit for more reasons than just the food.

19. New Orleans has some of the best food in the country. Obviously the Creole is unmatched. It’s also just a great place to visit. So much to do and see and learn about.

20. “Better” is a matter of taste. Both cities have awesome food.

    The better question is what do your *rodziny* like to eat?

    For “I don’t know, I just want to try everything”? Houston. Hands down. Every conceivable cuisine in the world.

    But if they want to have New Orleans food? Well, there’s only one place in the world to find that.

21. Houston has a better array. Southern, BBQ, Indian, Ethiopian, soul food, Korean, Mexican, Tex Mex, Vietnamese etc

    New Orleans is the best at what they do. You have a higher concentration of excellent restaurants in New Orleans.

    But you’re gonna get super skewed results because New Orleans is a vacation destination and Houston is very much not.

22. Houston. NOLA does creole well but there is little variety.

23. If you have to ask, just go to Houston.

24. Houston. While new orleans it great, it’s limited to a few cuisines. Houston has really good food, from many different cultures: Viet, Thai, Indian, Chinese, middle eastern, Filipino, bbq, Mexican, Tex-mex, soul food, and even Cajun/creole food.

    But if I had to visit one place it’d be NOLA only bc houston driving sucks really bad. If driving doesn’t bother you then houston.

25. As an unbiased midwesterner…. new orleans may have the best, most unique food in the US.

    I mean, I love the food scene here in Detroit. And many cities around the country have excellent food scenes. But no one in the world has new orleans food.

26. Traditional specific Louisiana foods?? NOLA. It’s going to be unique to that region of the US

    But, Houston is a huge immigrant city. Not just an immigrant city, but leans into into it.

    You can go to huge Asian strip malls all across the city for authentic restaurants run by immigrants from pretty much every Asian, southeast Asian, Polynesian culture.

    Neither is better, both are don’t miss

27. New Orleans for sure

28. New Orleans. My friends mom was from that area and her cooking is amazing!