The Restaurant We Take Every Visitor To

Every time someone tells me they're planning a trip to New Orleans, my phone buzzes.

"Can you send me your restaurant list?"

It's happened so many times over the years that I've come to expect it. Friends, family members, coworkers, and complete food lovers all seem to know the same thing: I keep notes, I love to eat, and I'm probably way too excited to talk about restaurants and food.

Part travel journal, part food obsession, and part planning tool, it's where I keep track of places we've visited, what we ordered, what we loved, what we'd skip next time, and the restaurants still waiting for us to try. The list is constantly growing, changing, and evolving.

More often than not, I end up sending screenshots from my list along with a detailed explanation of what to order and what not to miss.

Mahony's has been near the top of that list for years.

The first time we visited, it wasn't even our destination.

It was the first stop on a food tour.

Like most food tours, there were multiple restaurants on the itinerary. The plan was to sample a little at each stop and pace ourselves throughout the afternoon.

That plan lasted about five minutes.

Our first bite was Mahony's roast beef po-boy, and Blake loved it so much that he practically ate the whole thing himself. The problem was that we still had several stops left on the tour.

Most people show a little restraint at the first restaurant.

Blake did not. (Side note, he still has very little self-control at New Orleans restaurants!)

For the rest of the afternoon, he bravely tried to keep up while being completely stuffed from the very first stop. It became one of the running jokes of the trip.

Ironically, the restaurant we visited first ended up being the one we remembered most.

Not long afterward, we were watching one of our favorite shows, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. When Guy Fieri featured Mahony's and introduced us to their famous Peacemaker Po-Boy, it immediately moved to the top of our must-try list.

The next time we visited New Orleans, while we were house hunting and trying to decide whether this city might someday become home, we made a point of going back.

This time we ordered the Peacemaker.

It was every bit as good as we hoped.

The Peacemaker

Since then, Mahony's has become one of our traditions.

It's where we take visiting friends and family. It's one of the first places I recommend when someone asks for New Orleans restaurant suggestions. It's one of those restaurants that has become woven into our story of this city.

The Peacemaker remains one of our favorite po-boys in New Orleans, but if you ask us what absolutely has to be on the table, we'll tell you not to skip the debris fries and the onion strings. At this point, ordering them feels less like a choice and more like a requirement.

One of the things I've learned over the years is that the best restaurants become more than places to eat.

They become landmarks in our lives.

They're where we celebrate, gather, laugh, tell stories, and introduce people we love to places we love.

Mahony's started as the first stop on a food tour.

Today, it's the restaurant we take every visitor to.

And yes, it's still near the top of my list.