The Boot Bar & Grill sits at 1039 Broadway Street, half a block off the Tulane campus gate, and has been the Uptown New Orleans college bar of record since 1965. It is loud, cheap and open until daylight, and that is the entire pitch.
The bar anchors the Audubon end of Uptown, wedged between the Tulane and Loyola campuses a short walk from the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue. It is family-owned and has run for sixty years on the same formula, which USA Today recognised when readers voted it the number one college bar in America. The crowd is students during the semester and alumni who never quite left.
This is a bar for a drinker who wants a beer, a game and a late night, not a quiet seat. Skip it if you came for a craft cocktail or a calm room, because the draw here is the energy, the screens and the price. On a home football Saturday the place runs at capacity from kickoff, and the patio and bar stay packed long after the final whistle.
The room is a sprawl of bar counter, booths, pool tables and a patio, with televisions angled at every seat for Saints, LSU and Tulane games. It reads as a classic college sports bar rather than a designed space, and the wear is part of the appeal. The kitchen runs late with wings, burgers, quesadillas and the kind of fried plates a long night calls for.
The covered patio is the seat regulars ask for, an open-air stretch that catches the Uptown evening and keeps the crowd moving between the bar, the pool tables and the screens. On a game day the patio and the front bar work as one loud room, while the booths hold the groups that came to eat as much as drink. The layout rewards a crowd that wants to roam rather than hold a single table all night.
Reviewers on Yelp and Tripadvisor circle the same themes. They credit the late kitchen and the all-night hours as the reason the Boot outlasts the rest of Uptown, praise the cheap drink specials that keep a student budget intact, and point newcomers toward weeknights for a calmer room. The recurring caution is the weekend crush, when the line and the volume peak and the bar runs two and three deep.
Order cheap, order cold. Domestic and local drafts, well drinks and frozen daiquiris are the move, and happy-hour specials and drink deals keep a round well under what the same night costs downtown. This is not a bar for a twenty-dollar cocktail, and the regulars on Yelp and Tripadvisor agree the value and the late hours are the reason to come.
The crowd is students-first, filling after dark and surging on game days and during finals-week release nights. Best time to go is a home-game afternoon when every screen matters, or a weeknight after midnight when the kitchen is still open and the prices still hold. The Tuesday-through-Sunday close at six in the morning makes it the last room standing for many Uptown nights.
Who it is for: a game-day crowd, a budget night out, and anyone who wants the bar that does not close. For more screens around town, our guide to the best sports bars in New Orleans ranks the Boot against the Mid-City taverns, and the New Orleans bar guide maps where to drink across the neighbourhoods. Travelling fans can also browse our pillar on the best sports bars worldwide.
Sources: The Boot official site (2026); Yelp The Boot Bar and Grill reviews; Tripadvisor The Boot Bar & Grill; neworleans.com listing; USA Today best college bars