Following our adventures on Avery Island I went down to New Orleans to do a couple of gigs at the American Food Writers’ Conference. It was strangely liberating to eat out in a variety of places without the need to write anything specific. However, old habits die hard, and here are some of my notes regarding the various restaurants visited. In keeping with the spirit of the times I shall list them in reverse order and save the best for last.

Prejean’s in Lafayette, “Cajun Dining” a.k.a. vast tourist trap. Soggy fried everything. Gloopy gumbo. A deep fried cheesecake (a slice wrapped in a pancake and then crisped up in old oil). A jolly place with dire food and hen parties.

Poking fun at Brennan’s (one of the oldest and best thought of restaurants in New Orleans) is rather like saying something horrid about the late Queen Mother. It’s full of happy, smiley customers all dressed up and out for a treat. The chef is a charming, gentle fellow who has worked there for 46 years. The food is nudging its way out of 1960s into the early 1970s. There is a dish on the menu called “fillet Stanley” which teams fillet steak with a white sauce made from horseradish with plenty of cream, and then they garnish with fried bananas! In all but the finest Louisiana restaurants the predominant flavour note is sweetness. This dish was very unpleasant.

Ruth's Chris Steak House in Lafayette is rather like an upmarket Angus steak house. The steaks are good, but strangely lacking in taste. The beef is US Prime and maybe the feed lot system (they grow the steers in large pens feeding them barley) accounts for the end product – very tender almost flabby meat that is low on flavour. Nothing on the menu could touch grass grown, properly aged British beef.

Upperline is an idiosyncratic and notably popular restaurant run by an enthusiastic middle-aged lady called JoAnn Clevenger. The cooking is steady, but once again there is sugar and more sugar. Perhaps that’s what the New Orleanians want? “Tom Cowman’s roast duck” came to table as half a roast duck that had been mercilessly over-cooked and then plonked onto a mound of unadvertised sweet potato mash. Few gastropubs would have sent this plateful out.

One of my regrets is that I never got to eat at Susan Spicer’s restaurant Bayona, I did give the canapés an exhaustive trial at a reception held in the pretty garden, and suspect that had I managed to eat there properly it would probably have merited a high ranking.

GW Fins is a large, slick and buzzy fish restaurant. The chef used to be a development chef for the Ruth’s Chris organisation but the food here is a great leap forward. Stand outs were the Louisiana baby conch (that’s what you have to call whelks in the US to have any hope of selling them!)they came roast, sizzling with snail butter; the seafood gumbo; and the tuna sashimi. From the mains the Chilean sea bass (aka Patagonian Toothfish) was magnificent – a large lump first grilled and then served in a seafood nage. The stone crab claws were good. The wood grilled lemonfish (ling) was good and came with jumbo lump crab, asparagus, mashed potatoes and roast corn butter. Every restaurant in Louisiana seems to serve bread pudding – I tried half a dozen variants (avoid b-pud at Prejean’s; Ruth’s Chris; Upperline but order it at GW Fins and Mother’s).

Mother’s is an astonishing place. Yes, they have the American “over-facing” syndrome in spades – a single “po’ boy” sandwich would feed a family of four, but the food is honest and authentic. Try some “debris” – the leftover bits of beef, shreds really – implausibly delicious. Try the seafood gumbo it’s great. The ham (modestly billed as the “world’s best baked ham” since 1938) is pink and amazingly tender, rather on the sweet side. The fried chicken was a revelation – very crisp and dry outside, very tender within. A good, cheap place to eat as attested by the lengthy queue.

Both Cochon and Herbsaint are the brainchild of a very capable chef called Donald Link. At Cochon his partner is another chef called Stephen Stryjewski. The food here may be based on local dishes and hail from the Bayou but there is a sophisticated hand at work. You know that you’ll be happy when you see a menu with Jalapeno spoonbread with stewed okra; fried rabbit livers with pepper jelly toast; fried boudin with pickled peppers; fried pigs’ ears with spicy honey mustard; hen and andouille gumbo soup. Mains are good too, rabbit and dumplings; smoked beef brisket with horseradish potato salad. Good cooking and all in a light bright airy room with friendly waiting staff. This is the kind of genuine, unpretentious food you long for when in foreign parts.

Jaques-imo’s is a loud, brawling, cheap, jolly, busy, frantic place. The food is amazingly good for the price and the sixty other people in the dining room know it. Smothered chicken with biscuits; crab cakes; duck and andouille sausage gumbo; crawfish etouffee; bronzed veal chop with red flannel hash; pan fried drum (a fresh fish from the bay) with a pecan meunière sauce. Decent local beer, but the highest praise of all must be reserved for the simplest thing… as you sit down they pop a basket of hot, slightly sweet cornbread muffins onto the table – mind-bogglingly, greed-provokingly good, very crisp outside (doubtless baked on a tray crusted with lard) tender middle. Afterwards you can step down the street to the Maple Leaf, a particularly seedy bar where there are strong drinks and a live rock band. Charles Campion

Gazetteer – in the right order!

Jaques-imo’s. 8324 Oak Street, New Orleans (504) 861 0886) www.jaquesimoscafe.com Maple Leaf bar, 8316 Oak Street New Orleans (504) 866 9359) www.mapleleafbar.com

Cochon, 930 Tchoupitoulas Street, New Orleans, (504 588 2123) www.cochonrestaurant.com & Herbsaint, 701 Saint Charles Avenue, New Orleans, (504) 524 4114) www.herbsaint.com

Mother’s 401 Poydras, New Orleans (504) 523 9656) www.mothersrestaurant.net

GW Fins, 808 Bienville Street, New Orleans (504) 581 3467) www.gwfins.com

Bayona, 430 Dauphine Street, New Orleans, (504) 525 4455) www.bayona.com

Upperline, 1413 Upperline Street, New Orleans (504) 891 9822) www.upperline.com

Ruth's Chris Steak House, 620 West Pinhook Road, Lafayette (337) 237 6123) www.ruthschris.com

Brennan's Restaurant, 417 Royal St, New Orleans (504) 525 9711) www.brennansneworleans.com

Prejean’s, 3480 I-49 North, Lafayette, (337) 896 3247) www.prejeans.com