Houmas House and Gardens

This was truly the highlight of our trip to Louisiana. Our tour guide, Suzanna was outstanding and very engaging. The house, antiques, and the grounds are fantastic. We loved every minute of it. This is not to be missed

Great gardens, nice tour of the house, nice plantation musuem, didn't eat at the cafe. Mothers Day has a HUGE buffett. Lots of birds, and wildlife. Beautiful 800+ year old Live Oaks.

It's not the most famous plantation, but it's definitely worth a visit. It is a very nice place! A very nice and well-preserved house, but its main attraction is definitely its spacious, beautiful and well-kept gardens! An excellent option for a morning in the surroundings of New Orleans (approximately 1 hour from the city).

I'll start from the beginning....when we pulled up we weren't quite sure where to enter. The museum and Cafe were closed...so we found the entrance to the gift shop--this seems to be the main information station. We checked in for our overnight stay and a very nice young man immediately took us on a golf cart tour of the property (gorgeous and information) then took us to our car, helped us with our luggage, and drove us to our room. Once there he gave us the rundown again of breakfast vouchers, stickers for the tour, who/how to contact anyone of we needed anything, and helped us get our bags into the room. Fyi, there's no microwave or fridge in the room, and you have to ask for ice to be delivered to your room, but the rooms are elegant, comfortable, and there was a feeling of both being pampered and stepping back in time when staying there. We ate dinner at the Carriage House...it was delicious and the portions were very generous. If you're going to get a salad, go for the Houmas House salad with the fresh greens, fruit, nuts, and vinaigrette--yum! (The Caesar was good...but nothing out of the ordinary). I had the eggplant napoleon...yum-- with Huge chunks of crab meat and perfectly prepared slices of eggplant. My daughter's burger was cooked to a perfect medium rare (her favorite and hardly anyone gets it right). Breakfast at the Café was yummy and generous (it was a buffet) ...but it had the typical eggs bacon sausage and biscuits. I enjoyed the dragonfly biscuits and fig jam. We also had lunch at the café. The menu was very similar to the menu at the carriage house. We ordered the same burger--this one was cooked over temperature. But was still delicious. The buffet was yummy...but oh my the bread pudding had us going back for multiple servings. We enjoyed roaming the grounds and the tour...although we wished we had picked a tour that wasn't so packed (a boat load of tourists were in the same tour group so we were slightly crammed in the spaces). Our young tour guide was VERY knowledgeable and good humored. My girls had a great time as well. They felt like princesses the whole trip. We did not go into the museum...although it looked like it was full of neat things. Plan to spend money because everything is pricey...but worth it for such a unique experience.

We visited the plantation as foreigners with a naive expectation that they would cover the main point they someone would visit a plantation for, to learn more about slavery, but were bitterly disappointed. The whole 60min tour mentioned the topic of slavery for 5minutes in total, and the rest of the 55 were praising the current and past owners. It seems like the huge gift shop, restaurant and weddings(!) are a big business while the history is ignored.
To be fair, there is a museum next door (additional 20$) which addresses slavery, but they don’t have tours and is not hugely advertised. I would still expect the main tour to at least address partially the main reason people would come visit.

The house and gardens are nice, but honestly also quite tacky. For us it was definitely the worst 35$ / person we spent on this trip.

Eye opener to the life of plantations. Learnt a lot about how it's different in Luoisiana compared to other places. The plantation was very maintained and the tour was very informative. The guide gave us plenty of time to explore and take pictures. My group also decided to have lunch at their restaurant and it was a really good meal too. Definitely a must visit plantation.

Amazing ribs and grits. Get a drink from Turtle bar and walk around.

We did not tour the house; we only visited the gardens. From the outside the house is very pretty, with gorgeous oak trees on the front. However, some part of the gardens look "fake" (kind of like Disneyland).

Then, we red all the information signs in the gardens and the only reference to slavery was to say that some of the family members were very empathetic and would give themselves the clothes etc. When you know that at some point over 500 enslaved people were on the plantation, it is very shocking! We hope this is addressed during the guided tour, but think it should be in the gardens too.

Also, why is a poor cockatoo kept in a tiny cage to be displayed like a decorative object!?

Best Plantation and gardens that I have ever toured.

Houmas House is a very interesting place that transport you to older times by seeing its mansion and the beautiful oak trees. If you are aware of the plantations’s history you’ll be amazed by the importance of this sugar plantation on the area and the extravagances of its owners until this present day. My only disappointment is that the tour guides do not mention anything about the history of slavery in the plantation, which would surely enrich the experience and understanding of the property.