CITY OF DREAMS

On the ever-shifting banks of the Mississippi River, French, Spanish, Haitian, and African influences have shaped the contours of modern New Orleans, that singular mecca of jazz, jambalaya, and Mardi Gras. Now, 20 years after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Crescent City resident Leslie Pariseau finds a complex but resilient community where no idea is too far-fetched

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Clockwise from top left: The stage at storied French Quarter jazz club Preservation Hall; Lagniappe Bakehouse owner Kaitlin Guerin; pastel de nata and an espresso martini at 34 Restaurant & Bar; outside Café Du Monde, a saxophonist plays

New Orleans is a city of mood," chef Serigne Mbaye tells me one Wednesday morning in September. We've been discussing the merits of Parkway's po'boys and the old-school kitchen at Commander's Palace. While growing up in Senegal and New York City, Mbaye cooked with his mother, and his Uptown restaurant, Dakar NOLA, braids his memories of this time with his haute restaurant experiences and the deep-rooted African heritage of New Orleans.

"New Orleans is a woman," declares Biba Islah. We're talking in her studio, tucked away on the ground floor of an old bread factory in the Irish Channel neighborhood. An eighth-generation French, Spanish, and Haitian Creole New Orleanian, Islah does hair, makeup, and healing, and she reads tarot at Patron Saint, the wineshop and bar that my husband, Tony Biancosino, and I opened a year ago in the Lower Garden District. The night before we debuted our restaurant and tavern, St. Pizza, a couple of doors down from Patron Saint, she cleansed it with sage and rum. "New Orleans is empathetic. She feels everything," offers Islah.

"New Orleans is a two-way embrace," says Ben Jaffe, the director of historic French Quarter jazzclub institution Preservation Hall, when I ask him what it takes to endure here. "It comes with what I call the 'New Orleans tax."" This manifests not in the form of dollars, he explains, but in the responsibility to love and understand the city as it is.