SnugHarbor

Snug Harbor opened on Frenchmen Street in 1983 and has been the most important venue for contemporary jazz in New Orleans ever since. While other Frenchmen Street clubs embrace the full spectrum of New Orleans music, Snug Harbor has remained focused — this is a jazz club in the most serious sense, a room built around the idea that jazz deserves to be listened to.

The format is formal by New Orleans standards: two sets per night, reserved seating in the music room, and a separate bar area for those who want to eat and drink without the cover. It is the closest New Orleans comes to the great jazz clubs of New York, and in some ways surpasses them for the quality and depth of its regular bookings.

Ellis Marsalis — the patriarch of the Marsalis family and one of the great jazz educators and pianists — held a long residency at Snug Harbor that defined the club's identity. His Friday and Saturday night performances were among the most important regular jazz events in the city for years. Charmaine Neville, Nicholas Payton, and virtually every significant jazz musician in New Orleans has performed here.

Snug Harbor is also a restaurant, and the food is good — but the music is why people come. It is one of the few venues in New Orleans where you will find an audience sitting quietly, leaning forward, listening hard. That quality of attention is its most precious offering.