Savor Scout › Food guides › Gumbo
How to find good gumbo
Gumbo is Louisiana in a bowl: a dark roux, the holy trinity of onion, celery and pepper, stock, and seafood or chicken and sausage, served over rice. Its colour tells you most of what you need to know.
What separates a good one from a bad one
- A dark roux — Brown to chocolate-coloured, cooked slowly. It gives the deep, nutty flavour.
- Andouille or real smoked sausage — Smoky and spicy.
- Seafood not overcooked — Shrimp, crab and oysters added near the end.
- Okra or filé — Traditional thickeners, depending on style.
- Rice on the side or in the bowl — Separate grains.
What to order
- Chicken and andouille gumbo — The Cajun classic.
- Seafood gumbo — Creole, with tomato in some versions.
- Gumbo z'herbes — Green gumbo, around Easter.
- Potato salad in the gumbo — A Louisiana tradition.
- French bread — On the side.
Where to find Gumbo
Gumbo is mostly found at Cajun and Creole restaurants, so that is where to look. Open listings put 3,169 of them across the US, and these are the cities and campuses with the most.
Cities with the most
New Orleans, LA 213 Houston, TX 94 Baton Rouge, LA 60 Lafayette, LA 50 Dallas, TX 29 Austin, TX 26 Los Angeles, CA 24 Chicago, IL 24
Campuses with the most within a mile
UL Lafayette 12 Delgado Community College 8 Tulane University 7 TSU 6 HCC 6 City Colleges of Chicago-Harold Washington College 6
A few to start with
- Public Service — New Orleans, LA
311 Baronne St, New Orleans - Ragin Cajun — Houston, TX
930 Main St, Houston - Cork's Cajun Fried Fish and Shrimp — Baton Rouge, LA
5131 Government St, Baton Rouge - Pat's Downtown — Lafayette, LA
107 E Main St, Lafayette - NOLA Brasserie — Dallas, TX
1201 Main St, Dallas - Roux Restaurant — Austin, TX
214 E 6th St, Austin
Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.
How Savor Scout looks for it
The search reads for dark roux, andouille, Louisiana and Creole or Cajun, and favours Louisiana kitchens over seafood chains.
Looking in a particular city?
Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Houston, TX
- Philadelphia, PA
- Phoenix, AZ
- San Antonio, TX
- San Diego, CA
- Dallas, TX
- San Jose, CA
- Austin, TX
- Indianapolis, IN
- Jacksonville, FL
- San Francisco, CA
- Columbus, OH
- Charlotte, NC
- Fort Worth, TX
- Detroit, MI
- El Paso, TX
- Memphis, TN
- Seattle, WA
- Denver, CO
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Nashville, TN
- Baltimore, MD
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Louisville, KY
- Portland, OR
- Las Vegas, NV
- Milwaukee, WI
- Albuquerque, NM
- Tucson, AZ
- Fresno, CA
- Sacramento, CA
- Long Beach, CA
- Kansas City, MO
- Mesa, AZ
- Virginia Beach, VA
- Atlanta, GA
- Colorado Springs, CO
- Omaha, NE
- Raleigh, NC
- Miami, FL
- Oakland, CA
- Minneapolis, MN
- Tulsa, OK
- Cleveland, OH
- Wichita, KS
- Arlington, TX
- New Orleans, LA
- Bakersfield, CA
- Tampa, FL
- Honolulu, HI
- Aurora, CO
- Anaheim, CA
- Santa Ana, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Riverside, CA
- Corpus Christi, TX