Jessie's Smokin' NOLA

Name: Jessie's Smokin' NOLA
Telephone: (720) 600-1191
Price range: $$
Rating: 4.7

Restaurants

4.7(1073 reviews)

The take

Parker's New Orleans BBQ and Cajun anchor, the restaurant with the deepest gumbo and the longest weekend line in Mainstreet. Loud, generous, and the reason the category exists in DougCo.

Why it's here

Jessie's Smokin' NOLA opened on Mainstreet Parker around 2017 and has been the top-reviewed Parker restaurant effectively since. The premise is simple: Louisiana-style BBQ and Cajun done with a real hand, not a costume.

The BBQ program runs brisket, ribs, andouille, pulled pork, all hickory-smoked on site. The Cajun menu adds jambalaya, gumbo, étouffée, red beans and rice, seafood boils in season. The crawfish boil runs February through May, the peel-and-eat shrimp year-round. The Cajun is the reason to come, the BBQ is a strong second. The gumbo is the dish we order every visit, dark-roux, generous with the andouille, served with rice and crackers that the kitchen insists on.

The dining room is loud. Music (blues, funk, some zydeco), tight tables, a bar that fills by 6 p.m. Weekend dinners hit an hour wait, no reservations, put your name in and go walk Mainstreet. The kitchen is faster at lunch and on weekday evenings.

Beer list leans Louisiana and Colorado, cocktails emphasize hurricanes and classic NOLA drinks. Desserts are bread pudding and beignets, both correct. Kid friendly, genuinely, the menu has a proper shrimp or chicken plate kids will eat.

Know before you go

Go for

•The gumbo, specifically, not negotiable
•A crawfish boil weekend February through May, call ahead
•Saturday 1 to 3 p.m. late lunch when the dinner line hasn't started
•Family-table weeknight dinner, the menu covers kids honestly

Timing

Weekday lunch (11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) is the calm window. Saturday 4 p.m. walk-in, you'll wait 20 minutes, half the weekend wait. Prime time (6 to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday) you'll wait an hour. Sunday afternoon is slower and the kitchen has more patience for table customization.

Pro tip

If you've never had crawfish, order the two-pound side as a supplement to the gumbo. The kitchen will show the first-timers how to peel them. This is the rare DougCo restaurant where asking for the staff's preferred dish is a useful move, they'll direct you to whatever's best that week.

Skip / heads up

Not a quiet conversation venue on weekend nights, the music and the crowd make it hard to hear across a four-top. Also: the kitchen runs out of specialty items (crawfish, specific cuts of brisket) on busy Saturdays by 8 p.m. If you want the blackboard special, go earlier.

By Mara Holloway