Love to old school charm. Dinner jackets are required but if you forget your they have some for you to wear! I went once and they burned my steak, but it was quickly replaced with one that was perfectly cooked and two free glasses of high end champagne. Love that place.

Never been there but as soon as I read the title of the post I knew (and confirmed reading the story):

Bugs Bunny: Of course, if you really want to make something good, nothing beats a good old Louisiana Back-bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise, a la Antoine.

Francois: A la Antoine? ZE Antoine of New Orleans?

Bugs Bunny: I don't mean Antoine of Flatbush.

Just my 2 cents but I've eaten there. It was bad. Maybe it was decent in the 1870s or 1920s. Service feels like a catered banquet where they are short handed, and not tipped. The food between inedible and mediocre. I'd skip it

Have only been once, but loved it. Highly recommend if you find yourself in New Orleans!

I admittedly lived in New Orleans before the modern generation of "celebrity chef" restaurants really got going. K-Paul's had just opened. So most of the best restaurants were all cut from a somewhat similar high creole cloth. But Antoine's was always right near the top of my favorites--though I haven't been there for years.

The way things worked back then was they tended to stick the tourists in the front room but if you knew one or more of the waiters by name they'd give you one of their tables in the back.

Same. I actually hadn't heard of it before going there on a business dinner. The food and service were great, but we were also given a tour of the restaurant afterwards and the size and richness of the history there is staggering. I think the restaurant takes up the entire city block on 2 floors, with about 9 different dining halls / rooms for large catered events, intimate occasions, etc. a massive underground cellar, etc. Very cool experience...

1840 was a long time ago...is there any restaurant, regardless of ownership, that is older? I suppose there may be older restaurants that have passed from one family to another over the centuries?

Spot the american! (I mean that in a good-natured way). There are a few 1700s restaurants in london, plenty of 1800s, and of course if you look at pubs in the UK then 1840 is practically modern. One pf my local pubs dates to 1381. The food is probably better now than it was then.

1381?! Speaking as an American like the first poster: I should move.

Checked my own comment too late to clarify: Of course I meant "are there any older restaurants in the US"...America's just a young'un compared to everywhere else :)

Certainly if you go outside the US there are. Supposedly Stiftskeller in Salzburg was established in 803. Yeah, over a thousand years earlier.

http://www.stpeter-stiftskeller.at/en/the-restaurant.html

I think there's also a hotel in Japan that was established around King Arthur's time. (Approximately speaking; if there was a historical figure who roughly corresponds to King Arthur, he would probably have lived in the 500s or 600s, opposing early Saxon settlement/invasion.)

Correction -- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies -- there's a construction company from the late 500s, but the oldest hotel is from 705. (But, considering that Charlemagne was born in 742, that's not too shabby.)

Some random ones from Scotland (I'm sure there are plenty more):

Drovers Inn, Inverarnan (1705) http://www.droversinn.co.uk/

The Sheep Heid, Edinburgh (allegedly 1360, but a bit vague) https://www.thesheepheidedinburgh.co.uk/

There are older restaurants, but for example, Cafe Procope in Paris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Café_Procope) was opened in 1686, and is still in operation. It was worth it for me to eat at a place where (for example) Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin ate.

'Rules' [0] in Covent Garden, London. 1798. Great place!

[0] http://rules.co.uk/

There are many in Japan. I even remember an article on HN about one.

A quick search on Google showed this link:http://theculturetrip.com/asia/japan/articles/the-10-oldest-... The first listing was "Established in 1659".

Wikipedia's list of oldest companies says that Stiftskeller St. Peter, an inn within the monastery walls of St. Peter's Archabbey, Salzburg, Austria, is the oldest restaurant (dating to at least 803), but hotel Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan has presumably been selling food since its founding in 705.

It's difficult to define exactly the boundaries between tavern, tea house, and restaurant, but I'd be curious what the oldest business serving prepared meals but not offering accommodation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

It seems like the Nürnberger Bratwursthäusle may have been serving grilled sausage without offering accommodation since 1313.

Very cool. I wonder if they have anything from year one still in use.

3.5 stars at Yelp, 3.6 at Google reviews

Looking up the place's menu on their website and watching pictures of their dishes on Yelp, I have the feeling this place wouldn't be doing very well if it didn't have its illustrious history.

Well, it is what it is -- haute Creole cuisine, its lineage derived from traditional, heavily-sauced French cooking. It's definitely not tailored to modern palates (I certainly don't disagree with you!), but they execute extremely well, unlike many of the illustrious places with poor kitchens that grace the French Quarter.