If some of the dishes (Kung Pao Pastrami, fried rice with salt cod and Chinese sausage, etc.) at Red’s Chinese in New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood seem a bit familiar, it’s because Chef Tobias Womack worked the line at the New York location of Mission Chinese Food. By his own admission, he borrowed a few pages from the Danny Bowien playbook. Or, as Womack once put it in The Times-Picayune, “I’d be a liar if I said that Danny didn’t inspire me to take up this food.”

Still, Red’s is very much its own thing, jimmying up creative plates like cream cheese- and crawfish-stuffed rangoons with spicy honey and a General’s fried chicken made with bourbon soy, chili, cilantro, and smoked peanuts. There’s no sign in front—just a red light and a red door. If the weather isn’t too muggy, ask to sit in the courtyard out back. And definitely order one of the daily frozen daiquiris or booze-blasted snowballs. This is New Orleans, after all.

3048 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans, LA; 504-304-6030.