re: Lost Restaurants of New Orleans

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The Hummingbird Grill would probably be a wildly successful restaurant if it were still open. It was a twenty-four-hour diner—one of the few in New Orleans. And it was unarguably a dive. A little harder to grasp was that it was a hotel restaurant. The Hummingbird Hotel never won any stars for its accommodations.

But the Hummingbird Grill did get stars from critics and fans, of which it had many. They came from a broader a socio-economic spectrum than was seen by any other restaurant. People who would spend their last dollar then had to find a place to sleep that night were at the Hummer’s counter. But so were men and women in formal wear, en route home from an underfed, oversloshed, high-society party.

The late-nighters came not only because the place was open, but because the food was good. More than a few times the Hummingbird Grill was compared favorably with the much more genteel Camellia Grill at the other end of the streetcar line. The menus were quite similar. And the coin deciding which had the better hamburger is still in the air.

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