The best oysters in the French Quarter are not in the French Quarter. They are out in the Garden District, and if you desire oysters it is worth taking the street car named Desire.

Founded in 1913, Pascal’s Manale on Napoleon Street serves nothing as small as its street name might imply. A restaurant known primarily for its shrimp – which makes sense – arguably have the best oysters in the Big Easy.

Once you enter the bar, via trolley or car, you will find a warm bar that is usually crowded with people waiting to enter the doorway past the host stand that leads to various dining rooms. Go to the bar and order an Abita or Rolling Rock – which seems to go especially well with Gulf oysters – and pay for your oyster tokens. The oyster bar to the right does not except cash except for the tips which even Jack Benny would provide after the experience.

The oyster shuckers look like they are right out of the Green Mile. I’m not saying that they did time…but let’s just say I wouldn’t want to share a cell with them.

They masterfully shuck beautiful oysters from their sea of ice. The oysters keep coming without registration; no matter how many people are at the bar they keep a mental track of the number they serve. The baker’s dozen is the norm.

You get to prepare your own sauce from the small condiment center across from the oyster bar. Catsup, Horseradish, Tabasco, other Louisiana hot sauces, and Worcestershire sauce are all prominent to let you concoct a sauce that you will brag about and make your neighbors try. Like creating Barbeque sauce, the testosterone level rises when you make your own cocktail sauce.

The oysters are so good and your sauce should be so tangy that you will go back for another token, and another cold beer.

Heading back to the dining area – give yourself a good 15 or 20 minutes before your reservation for the oysters – you will go back to comfortable tables and be tempted to indulge in the Barbeque shrimp – the most famous in NOLA – in butter sauce that the Surgeon General would ban if invited. The shrimp aren’t really barbequed but they are tasty, and you get a cool bib to wear to keep the butter from dripping on your shirt. There are a number of private rooms that comfortably house a party of ten or more.

But with all of the great restaurants in New Orleans, unless you want to do the butterfly stroke in your pool of shrimp-tainted butter, you can opt just for the oysters in the bar and head out for a more memorable meal. Despite the cab or trolley ride, you may be able to accomplish that feat in the same amount of time that you would spend standing in line waiting for a place at the more revered and less satisfying Acme Oyster House bar. D.M.

POST KATRINA: Pascal’s is down, but not out. Reopening very soon is the word on the street, but the restaurant missed JazzFest 2006.

Chuck’s Bar seems to be known as a lot of things: a sports bar, “Your Home Town Bar,” and “The Last Neighborhood Bar in the Central Business District.” Open 24 hours, I have found the place to be friendly in a “watch your back” kind of way.

Out of the Quarter and one of the few bars in the Central Business District, Chuck’s takes on a personality depending upon what personality it wants to be.

On weekends it wants to be a sports bar, even though a Golden Tee coin operated video game machine and a signed photo of the Golden Bear Jack Nicklaus are the only supports for that claim. In fact I had to ask the bartender to turn a game on the TV.

“Your Home Town Bar” is a slap at the chains that come in and dominate New Orleans real estate. The bar is very friendly – the bartender introduced himself and the customers to me – and a bowl of fresh, free popcorn accompanied my drink order.

“The Last Neighborhood Bar in the CBD” is a tribute to its roots, but more of an oxymoron since there is very little neighborhood left on Gravier St. Chuck’s is a place where people feel real comfortable – the F-Bomb was easily worked into conversations – and a good selection of bottled beer and drink specials await.

The beers on the back bar are perfectly displayed to make selection easy. Signs on the back bar included “no sleeping at the bar” and “Tipping. It’s just not for cows.” I knew I was going to like the place.

Almost no bar in New Orleans is totally free of drunken riff-raff, and Chuck’s is no exception. The Big Easy promotes over consumption. So it is suggested that a “pop your head in” look is better than a grand entrance at Chuck’s. Chances are you will find a mix of friendly people just having fun.

One will never confuse this place with the Grill Room or Galatoire’s, but this may be a place to find if you’re fighting insomnia at the five-star Windsor Court Hotel just two block away. But remember, “no sleeping at the bar.” – D.M.

POST KATRINA: Chuck’s is tough. They reopened about three weeks after the hurricane hit.

When we were in college, a group of us would drive down to Phoenix from the Bay Area every year for spring training baseball games. Being college student poor, we would stay in a dive hotel near hooker row in downtown Phoenix called the Kon Tiki. “A slice of Waikiki right in the heart of Phoenix” the matchbooks and cocktail napkins proudly stated. What does that have to do with a bar on the fringe of the French Quarter? Enter the Port of Call and one finds “a slice of Waikiki right in the heart of New Orleans.”

The Port of Call is on the “other” side of the French Quarter on the Esplanade. Walk up a couple of steps and you find a bamboo ceiling and bamboo walls in this smoky den right out of 1950’s Honolulu. The signature drink is the “Monsoon,” the Port of Call’s answer to the Hurricane and just as lethal, served in plastic cups. Drink it fast or the plastic may melt in your hands.

There is always a wait for tables – on my last visit at 3:00 PM the wait was 45 minutes – but the large bar seems to turn dining patrons quickly. The small galley behind the bar produces tons of food from 11AM to 2 AM with naval-like execution. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen someone just drink there without sampling something off of the menu.

The Port of Call is famous for their hamburgers and stuffed baked potato and both are large and flavorful. The potato is loaded with mushrooms, which makes for a very interesting combination.

Other menu items include the steak that is as popular and plentiful as the hamburger.

The Port of Call matchbook simply says “Fine Food. Unusual Décor.” No argument here. When docking on the East Side of the French Quarter the Port of Call is a must entry, worthy of the walk. It is the perfect diversion if the system can’t take anymore oysters or file gumbo and after all, it’s right in the heart of the Big Easy. – D.M.

POST KATRINA: The Port of Call is still sailing, serving great food and the wicked “Monsoon.”

New Orleans can be a dizzying place. Then imagine the irony that the first place I always visit upon arriving in the French Quarter is a place that literally gives me the spins.

Revolving bars at hotels are not new, unless they came first. The Carousel Lounge in the Monteleon Hotel on Royal Street claims to be America’s first revolving bar. And unlike the tourist traps that feature “buy the drink, keep the glass” specials located on top of many hotels around the country, something else makes this cozy little bar unique. It is located on the first floor just off of the hotel lobby.

The bar stools, bolted into the motorized floor, move in tandem at the speed of ¼ mile an hour. Old time bartenders of the Carousel tell the story of the well-oiled customer standing outside of the barstools yelling at the seated patron to stop moving while he is talking to him.

The Carousel Lounge was so named because for years it truly was a carousel. The bar was circular with a clown motif. The barstools were red and white striped. The walls featured paintings with the likeness of Emmitt Kelly.

An updating a half a decade ago eliminated the circus atmosphere. The room is now much darker and understated. A piano player joins the party at night. Hors d’oeuvres are brought out for happy hour.

This is a great first stop because they make arguably the best Bloody Mary in the Big Easy. Perfectly seasoned, a spicy green bean replaces the traditional celery stalk to provided added zing. Table seating is available, but nothing is like sitting at the bar. Heck, the bartender doesn’t even have to move because you do.

When Ty was the bartender, we used to go to the Carousel to “ty” one on. Now, it’s simply “I’m going to take a couple of laps around the carousel.” Where else in New Orleans can you go around in circles and never leave the place? – D.M.

POST KATRINA: The Carousel Lounge is still spinning merrily along.

I usually don’t like places with cheap beer prices. That’s not to say that I like to pay inflated prices. It’s just that happy hours generally bring in unhappy people looking for a bargain. But there is a modest little bar in the French Quarter that has all of the bar essentials and just happens to have great beer prices without discounting the fun.

For years, a group of us associated with the beer business traveled to New Orleans for Jazzfest. We would bring significant others, or in my case sometimes just others, for a weekend of great food, outstanding music and lots of drink. We would party like we were soon going to the electric chair.

As folks scattered from the Fairgrounds to tarot readings, shopping, off track betting or more drinking, we felt the need to find a central meeting place prior to our group dinners. A late afternoon place. Keuffer’s Bar, at the corner of Chartres and Toulouse, became the spot.

The featured prices on Rolling Rock longnecks and the Labatt “Big Blue” cans at Keuffer’s got our immediate attention and drew us inside. Once there, you find a quaint brick shell of a building housing a jukebox, pinball machine, pool table, about 20 beers, full bar and a couple of video poker machines. A few tables front the three sided bar, and the bartenders (almost always female in my visits) are friendly and become part of the fun.

The bar is open air, so it never seems to get too hot or too cold inside despite New Orleans’ temperamental climate. The jukebox is loaded with great hits, and a couple of televisions are placed serendipitously in the corners as if no one really seems to care.

And that’s OK. Carefree is a good descriptor of the comfortable and affordable Keuffer’s. You sense that it is run just the way they like it. – D.M.

POST KATRINA: Unfortunately, the little corner bar didn’t make it. A “For Lease” sign hangs where the crest once proudly reigned.

There is a spot in the French Quarter that you won’t find on any tourist map. No hotel concierge recommendation brings people here. This place is on the corner of Chartres and Iberville – north of the river and just south of the Acme Oyster Bar next to a couple of disgusting looking strip joints – in a rather seedy side of the Quarter. But despite an entrance that without knowledge seems most uninviting, the Jimani provides a can’t-miss slice of the New Orleans drinking scene.

Neither a lounge nor a restaurant by common definition, the Jimani is a hole and a find at the same time. And that is meant as a compliment. With just about a dozen bar seats and maybe a half dozen tables, this is definitely a hole in the wall. And always dark no matter what time of day, the Jimani is a great place to escape the heat, the rain, the “I’m with Stupid” t-shirts, or the peddlers that are a part of life in the Big Easy. Places like this are hard to find in the French Quarter.

In fact, the Jimani measures up to four basic tenants of a great joint: cold beer, great music, satellite sports on television, and a grill that can make a mean hamburger or chicken sandwich. At first glance one my think the griller is mean as well; an imposing man in a white T-shirt is usually the first person you see when you enter the small bar.

The door is always open but it might as well be swinging. It seems like everyone that is part of New Orleans hospitality industry makes a pre or post-work visit to the Jimani, which means there are always people in the place. Business cards line the low ledge above the bar.

The bartenders seem to have a personality reflective of the place, whimsical and efficient at the same time, and certainly give you the impression that they are familiar with the business end of a barstool themselves.

At the Jimani, I have unfortunately fallen prey to two things I find irresistible in New Orleans: a great jukebox and a cold shot of Jagermeister. With the green dispenser of “Jaggie” calling when I walk in, a couple of shots and a couple of songs and I am sitting on top of the world in this city below sea level.

D.M.

UPDATE – Gone by way of a remodel is the brown wood and latticework that supported hundreds of business cards. The ceiling is now white which has really brighted up the place. I don’t know if I like that. But luckily, the same characters and copper top bar remain so the place has lost little of its appeal.

POST KATRINA: The Jimani is still jumping and the Jagermeister machine is still humming.