Cafe Sbisa

The French Quarter gets packed on the weekend, and as a result, most of your dinner options are going to be crowded dining rooms or small back patios filled with too many tables. Rather than deal with all of that, have dinner on the upstairs terrace at Cafe Sbisa. This vintage French-Creole restaurant is one of the few places in the area where you can have cocktails and eat some barbecue shrimp and crab cakes outside, while the crowd below stays comfortably out of earshot. After dinner, grab a drink at the bar inside, which dates back to 1899 and is the last refuge before you reenter the madness.