Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar

In the city that invented sitting close to a band, exactly one room still lets you do it with a legal cigar going. It's fifteen minutes from the Quarter, and worth thirty.

Shawn Stallard and Ritchie Shaner opened Dos Jefes on Tchoupitoulas in 1996, two years after their first cigar shop, and named it for the two wooden chief statues watching the room — the "two bosses." Thirty years on it remains what Cigar Aficionado saw at the start: "Dos Jefes isn't an escape from real life. It is real life."

The Music

Live jazz and blues six nights a week, never a cover, sets rolling around 8:30. The calendar is real and current — local names, working musicians, the city's actual soundtrack rather than a tribute to it. Since the 2015 ban, this is the last room in New Orleans where the band and the smoke share indoor air legally.

The Room

Furnished like a den that accreted rather than a lounge that was designed: velveteen recliners, diner booths, an old church pew, and a tropical back patio the regulars treat as a second living room. Nothing matches; everything belongs.

The Bar

Top-shelf whiskey, eighteen rums, wine by the glass, and a glass humidor of some forty marques to pair against them. Order the rum — this is a port city, and the bar remembers.

Why We Picked It

Because live music with a cigar is the New Orleans experience, and this is the only room left that serves it whole. If our No. 1 is the visitor's perfect night, Dos Jefes is the local's — go once as a tourist, return as a regular.