Saturday in New Orleans Is East of the City

If Saturday is one of your days, spend the morning in Village de l’Est. People here still call it Versailles. After 1975, Vietnamese Catholic refugees built a parish around Mary Queen of Vietnam Church, came back early after Katrina, and kept baking. The Saturday market in the church lot on Dwyer Boulevard packs up fast. Saturday morning belongs on Dwyer Boulevard, before eight.

Dong Phuong, on Chef Menteur Highway, is the bakery counter and the restaurant next door: bánh mì and pastry on one side, phở and vermicelli on the other. It is closed Tuesdays. A weekend that lands on Tuesday and expects this lunch has planned the one day the doors are dark. There is no train from the Quarter. Budget a car or a rideshare, and give the drive the morning.

A po’boy downtown later in the weekend may be holding bread that started in this bakery. Eat the sandwich where you like. If you care where the loaf came from, come east first.

Congo Square sits inside Louis Armstrong Park, on the Tremé side of the Quarter. On Sundays, enslaved Africans gathered on this ground, and the city’s music took shape from those meetings. Walk the park while it is quiet. Then find a Creole lunch with a real roux. On a Monday, ask if the red beans are on.

Frenchmen Street can have the music. Keep Bourbon for whatever is left after dark. The New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park visitor center shares a room at 419 Decatur Street, Tuesday through Saturday, roughly 9:30 to 4:30. Check the hours. A bar with jazz on the awning is a different ticket.

Saturday is the drive east. The Quarter will still be there in the afternoon.