A visitor to New Orleans in the early part of this century described the city as "a paradise for gluttons," and considering that the Big Easy has the highest number of restaurants per square kilometer in the United States and its denizens have the lowest life expectancy in the country, it's easy to see why.

The food in New Orleans has been the inspiration of songs and many a cookbook (including one by Lafcadio Hearn, who resided for a time in New Orleans), and a sojourn here is guaranteed to add inches to your waistline and leave your mouth watering for another piece of crawfish pie or bowl of file gumbo.

A mixture of geographical and cultural factors combined to bless New Orleans with the unique brand of cuisine it possesses. The city's location on the Gulf of Mexico and the mouth of the Mississippi River provides fish and shellfish from the ocean, brackish coastal waterways and freshwater lakes and streams.