New Orleans is a gourmand's dream. The food , commonly defined as Creole , is a spicy, substantial - and usually very fattening - blend of French, Spanish, African and Caribbean cuisine, mixed up with a host of other influences including Native American, Italian and German.

The mainstays of most menus are gumbo - a thick soup of seafood, chicken and vegetables ( gumbo comes from the Bantu for okra, a prime ingredient) - and jambalaya , a paella jumbled together from the same ingredients. Other specialties include po-boys , French-bread sandwiches crammed with oysters, shrimp or almost anything else, along with spicy sauces or gravy, and muffulettas , the Italian version, stuffed full of aromatic meats and cheese and dripping with olive and garlic dressing. Seafood is abundant and can be very cheap. Along with shrimp and soft-shell crabs, you'll get famously good oysters ; they're in season from September to April. Crawfish , or mudbugs (which resemble langoustines and are best between March and October), are served in everything from omelets to bisques, or simply boiled in a spicy stock. To eat them, tug off the overlarge head, pinch the tail and suck out the juicy, very delicious flesh.

Finally, European-influenced New Orleans has always been the American city for coffee ; drunk in copious amounts, fresh, strong and aromatic, and often laced with chicory, it's been a big part of life here since long before Seattle got trendy, and locals drink twice the national average.