My son and I had dinner last night at Deanies Seafood in the French Quarter with my sister, her husband, their daughter and two of their friends. If you like seafood and you're visiting New Orleans I recommend Deanies. That food is great and the prices are very reasonable. My sister and her husband split the half-seafood platter ($24) and couldn't finish it. I had "Crawfish Four Ways" ($15) and it was good.

Anyway, took my first walk down Bourbon Street at night in several years. (I don't go very often because I've done it so many times in the past. It sort of like living in the mountains and deciding to go on vacation. Do you vacation in the mountains or do you go to the beach.) What I found was a small Cigar Factory shop. The Cigar Factory, where they hand roll cigars on premise, itself is located on Decatur about 4 or 5 blocks from Bourbon Street. This little hole-in-the wall shop carried a nice selection of their own cigars plus some other good premiums and the mark-up wasn't too bad.

However, we also noticed that each block had a little shop that advertised "imported cigars". Most of these had the cigars sitting in a glass cabinet with no sign of humidification and the doors were kept open. Not only that but in the one place I went into, the prices for some of the better selections was almost double what a B&M would charge. So, if you're on Bourbon Street and you want a cigar, its "Buyer Beware."

I brought enough to share. I had a RyJ Viejo "E", my son and brother-in-law had Punch Pitas. We didn't go into any of the food establishments on Bourbon Street but none of the other establishments we went into gave us a problem about smoking cigars.
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The Cigar Factory is probably your best bet actually ON Bourbon St. I personally like their mild and their medium, but don't like their maduro at all.

If you walk Canal St. at the end of Bourbon, you can cross canal and go towards the river and find Don Leoncio's. They also make their own cigars, including the Pinar Del Rio line which are actually on page 2 of Famous's catalog this month. Nice lounge, cool people, and they also sell some other brands that they personally like.

If you go up to Decatur St. and towards the French Market, you can find Havana Dreams. The guy with the beard, Castro, is usually there and he's a cool cat. He'll make you some suggestions of what he's been smoking lately. He'll also give you his opinion of where's the best place to find stuff they don't have.

If you have an iPhone, go down there and open google maps. Search for Cigar and watch all the red push pins drop... then use the blue GPS locator dot to walk around and search all the small shops. You'll find some cool stuff along the way that you didn't expect. Of course, YMMV, and I'd suggest doing this during the day for best results.
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I discovered Havana Dreams about a month ago. They have some interesting cigars. I've also shopped at the main Cigar Factory. Haven't been to Don Leonicio's yet but then I try not to go into New Orleans anymore than I have to.

The point of my original post (lost in the verbiage) was that I wasn't too impressed with all the little hole-in-the-wall places on Boubon Street.
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