The best things to buy in New Orleans are the ones you can't get anywhere else, like food from local companies or a shirt people here actually wear. Skip the airport gift shop and the Bourbon Street T-shirt stands. Bring home something that would make a local nod.
We've run a shop in this city for twenty years, first as a reaction to those crude Bourbon Street shirts and then as a place to find the New Orleans we actually live in. So yes, we have opinions. This page pulls together everything we've written on the subject, plus the short version for anyone in a hurry.
Start Here: Our Guides
Depending on what you're shopping for, one of these will get you further than this page:
- New Orleans Souvenirs That Are Not Embarrassing. The souvenir guide. What to bring home if you'd like your friends to keep respecting you.
- Gifts for Someone Who Misses New Orleans. For the cousin in Houston and anybody else who left and still talks about it.
- What to Wear to a Saints Game. Black and gold, done right.
- Tourist Traps in New Orleans Locals Quietly Skip. Read this before you shop on Bourbon.
Now the short version, by category.
Food You Can Pack
Food is the most New Orleans thing you can bring home, and some of it travels well.
Dried goods. Camellia red beans are the classic. The company has been around since 1923, according to Biz New Orleans, and a bag in your suitcase means red beans on Monday wherever you live. Coffee with chicory and seasoning blends pack flat and don't care about TSA.
Hot sauce and anything liquid. This is where people get caught. TSA limits liquids in carry-on bags to 3.4 ounces, so a full bottle of hot sauce goes in your checked bag or gets left at security. Check TSA's What Can I Bring tool if you're not sure. We carry hot sauce in the shops, and we'll tell you the same thing at the register.
Pralines. They travel fine and make a good gift. Buy them from a candy shop that makes them fresh.
King cake. In Carnival season, yes, people carry king cakes onto planes. Get a sturdy box.
Things that don't travel: snowballs, beignets, fried oysters, and that po-boy you were planning to eat over Tennessee. Eat those here. Our po-boy guide will tell you where.
Art and Prints
New Orleans has always been an art town, and taking some of it home beats a magnet shaped like a saxophone.
Local galleries and artists' markets are the obvious place to start, and Magazine Street and the French Quarter are full of both. If you want something smaller, prints and tea towels are easy to pack. Our Po'Boy Patent Print is a favorite for kitchens, and the New Orleans Street Tiles Magnet Set borrows the tile street names you'll see set into corners all over town.
Local Goods
Look for things made here, by people who live here. Candles, jewelry, books by local authors, cookbooks from local chefs. The Mosquito Supper Club cookbook is a good example: Cajun recipes from chef Melissa M. Martin, whose hometown is Chauvin, down on the bayou.
Our gifts under $20 collection is built for exactly this kind of shopping, when you need something for six people and your suitcase is already full. The full gift collection is here.
Shirts
Here's our bias out in the open: we think the best shirt to bring home from New Orleans is one a local would wear. That means no crude Bourbon Street jokes and no shot glasses with alligators in sunglasses.
Our shirts are designed in New Orleans about New Orleans. Some are inside jokes. Some are about neighborhoods or food. A few have stories that go back to the city's hardest days, like Be A New Orleanian. Wherever You Are., which Blake Haney sketched on a sticker at Mello Joy coffeehouse in Lafayette during the Katrina evacuation.
If you're buying for a Saints fan, start with our Black and Gold collection and read the Saints game guide before kickoff.
Where to Shop
Our two shops are on Magazine Street Uptown and on Chartres Street in the French Quarter, and both are in neighborhoods full of other locally owned stores worth your time. Make an afternoon of it. If you can't make it in, everything is online.
What to Buy in New Orleans: FAQ
What is New Orleans known for buying?
Food is the big one: Camellia beans, coffee with chicory, pralines and hot sauce. Local art and shirts designed by New Orleans companies are also popular choices for bringing home.
Can I bring hot sauce home from New Orleans on a plane?
Only in small amounts in your carry-on, since TSA limits liquids to 3.4 ounces per container. Put full-size bottles in your checked bag.
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