Napoleon House

Possibly the world's oldest cocktails
Noteworthy for: The bar takes its name from owner Nicholas Girod's offer of refuge to the diminutive dictator in 1821. While the name stuck, a plaster cast bust is as close as Napoleon got.

The Sazerac, purportedly the world's first cocktail, was invented in New Orleans around 1800 and it would have been at bars like Napoleon House, dating from 1797, that gentlemen drinkers came to sample the old-fashioned charms of cognac and Peychaud's bitters - as they do today.
Certainly the place doesn't look as if it's been refurbished in 200 years, but that - as well as the dapper servers in white shirts and bow ties, piped classical music, expertly-made drinks and New Orleans staples like gumbo, jambalaya and sandwiches - is what defines Napoleon House.

Step into this time capsule and let a couple of hours (and a couple hundred years) drift away nicely.