For a hot Jazz Fest, here are Ian McNulty’s 8 top food picks for cool, lighter dishes

Regular Jazz Fest revelers know how to prepare for a hot, sunny Jazz Fest. Bring a hat, reapply the sunscreen, guzzle water and maybe seek out some cool and/or lighter dishes from the Jazz Fest menu (or just dive back into the gumbo anyway, a year-long ). Here’s my top picks list more refreshing snacks and meals 2025:

Shrimp bun (vermicelli noodle bowl), Heritage Square: Cool rice noodles are the basis of this traditional Vietnamese dish from Ba Mien restaurant, with lettuce, carrots and fried shallots for a variable crunch, while the fish sauce and optional squirts of Sriracha really boost the flavor. I like it with grilled shrimp, and there are beef and tofu options too.

Street corn, Food Area 1: This Louisiana spin on Mexican elotes from Troy Brocato and family gets a dose of crab boil mayo and “cracklin’ dust.” You can also get roasted corn topped only with seasoned butter. But unless you’re off pork, you want the full deal.

And let’s face it, “cracklin’ dust” sounds like the name of a band that should be playing the Fais Do-Do Stage.

Fried oyster spinach salad, Food Area 1: Vucinovich’s Restaurant, a neighborhood fixture in New Orleans East, plays it both ways — a light salad with thinly sliced red onion and a restrained hand with the creamy dressing that also happens to be the delivery system for cornmeal crusted fried oysters. They are, at least, lightly fried.

Shrimp pikliz, Food Area 2: Fight fire with fire, or perhaps a hot day with a cool though spicy dish. Fritai, the Haitian restaurant in Treme, is back for its second year at the fest with this traditional dish, a cool slaw that starts with cabbage and sparks with Scotch bonnet chile pepper spice, studded with sweet shrimp and with plantain chips to scoop it all up.

Crabstick and cucumber salad, Food Area 2: This is a sushi bar salad without the sushi. It combines cool creamy-tasting crabstick with marinated, thin-sliced cucumber, plus the cool crunch of green onions and the tiny pop of tobiko, the familiar fish roe.

Shrimp ceviche, Cultural Exchange Pavilion: The collaboration between Ella and Tempero’s Market Kitchen this year celebrates Mexican flavors, and this dish treats plump Louisiana shrimp to the bracing marinade of ceviche, with a blast of lime, served on tostadas fried on the spot. 

Get a frozen blood orange paloma at the adjacent Cultural Exchange Bar to wash it down. 

Louisiana crawfish salad roll, Food Area 1: This is a bayou country answer to the New England lobster roll, served by Papa Ninety Catering with a heap of crawfish tails in a creamy, lightly-spicy dressing on a roll with a dense chew.

Mango freeze, Food Area 1 and Fais Do-Do Stage: The iconic sweet treat of Jazz Fest, it’s a sorbet with robust mango flavor but only mellow sweetness. Pro tip: This pairs beautifully with the sparking wine sold at nearby beverage tents; pour some over the mango freeze or add a spoonful to your bubbly.