The beautiful and magical city of New Orleans - filled with so much rich history. Its people, its food, its music, its literature, its legends.
It’s the place where Tennessee Williams penned “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Williams called New Orleans his “spiritual home” and owned a home here from 1962 until his death in 1983.
Yet - Tennessee Williams is far from the city’s only literary legend. Consider John Kennedy O’Toole, author of the picaresque comic fugue novel A Confederacy of Dunces — which indeed has a loyal cult following. As huge fans of the novel, we were blown away as we trudged back to our hotel at the end of another rainy and thunderous afternoon to stumble upon the statue of the book’s protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly. The statue is located at 819 Canal St, beneath the clock where the old DH Holmes department store used to be (the department store is now a hotel).
A plaque commemorates a few lines from the book:
“In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly’s supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.”
And you can take a million pictures of the statue. Few people know who it is or why you would be snapping away.
New Orleans is also of course the birthplace of jazz. We took in one of the famous Preservation Hall jazz band shows. And a bluesy, jazzy soundtrack seemed to be playing wherever we went. American jazz standards like “Tiger Rag”, “Down by the Riverside” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” or in NOLA, simply referred to as “Saints”, are classics.
For $20 the Preservation Hall band will play “Saints” on request. I think at every show somebody puts up the $20 to hear “Saints” in New Orleans. It’s a must!
And last but not least, we caught sight of one more famous site before leaving town. The ominous shadow of the Jesus statue on the back of the St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. Voodoo, magic, spirits, characters - both real and imaginative…. New Orleans. We will be back.
Just one more word — well, actually, two more photos, on the foods in the amazing city of New Orleans.
Just three of New Orleans basic food groups: beignets, crayfish and oysters, with a side Bloody Mary from the Organic Banana.
Not shown — but also consumed on this trip: Oyster’s Rockefeller at Felix’s (because Acme across the street is way too crowded and we heard Felix’s was just as good), a mufalata, jambalaya, gumbo, chickory coffee and an amazing shrimp and grits breakfast at Surrey’s Cafe and Juice Bar in the Garden District, which was voted best breakfast in the city in 2012 — hey, that was just last year!
We were sticking to off-the-beaten path food recommendations and got our first round of beignets at Cafe Beignet.
After our big feed at the French Market of the crayfish and oysters, we wandered up the street and stumbled into the more famous Cafe Du Monde. Cafe Beignet is decidely more mellow, but you’ll want to experience the out and out charm of Du Monde, too. I mean really - it’s not like you’re going to get beignets of this caliber back home!
Some may argue that no visit to New Orleans is complete without eating crayfish and listening to live jazz. Well, we did that.
But others would argue that no visit to the Crescent City is complete without taking in its Roman Catholic cemeteries. Namely, the Saint Louis Cemeteries. We saw numbers One and Two. The video is of Saint Louis Cemetery Number One, the oldest and most famous.
While it’s commonly said that the above ground tombs and burial process are due to the city’s proximity to the Mississippi and propensity to flood, these burial traditions are due more to the city’s French and Spanish roots (according to Wikipedia anyway).
If you’ve seen the great road trip movie Easy Rider, then you’ll recognize St. Louis Cemetery Number One as the location of the famous “acid freak scene.”
Famous people buried here include: Homer Plessy, of the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that changed the course of civil rights legislation, Etienne de Boré, New Orleans’ first mayor, and Ernest “Dutch” Morial, the city’s first black mayor. But the most-visited grave belongs to Marie Laveau, a reputed voodoo priestess sometimes called the “witch queen of New Orleans.” Even though it’s not entirely clear if she’s buried here, Laveau receives daily offerings from those seeking her favor. Gifts include cigarettes, coins, candles, Mardi Gras beads, and alcohol, and the truly determined scratch three “X”s on the side. (The cemetery does not encourage this practice.)
Is your mouth watering yet? A half order of the Chicken a la Grande at Mosca’s in Avondale, Louisiana.
Ever since I read Calvin Trillin’s piece in the New Yorker on this authentic New Orleans road house, Mosca’s, I’d been planning to go.
Finally, with four nights in New Orleans on the itinerary, I was willing to give up half of one to drive about 20 miles out to Avondale and Mosca’s for the Chicken a la Grande.
Mosca’s was everything Mr. Trillin said it would be. And though we were the only non-locals in the joint, we were treated no differently than anyone else. It was if we had been here last Tuesday and would be back on the following.
Mosca’s is a vanishing breed on the American restaurant landscape. The food is good, the drinks are strong and the servers are capable. That might not seem like a lot - but it is way more than you get in some of the fanciest, trendiest places everyone is hollering about on Yelp!
Oh - and Mosca’s is on Yelp!, btw.
And the Chicken a la Grande recipe is online, too.
But as Calvin Trillin writes,
“The dishes aren’t complicated. For instance, Chicken a la Grande—which, John Mosca informed me, was named after a horse trainer named Charles Grande—has in it, in addition to the chicken, only salt and pepper, rosemary, oregano, white wine, and, of course, ten cloves (or is it heads?) of garlic. Still, James Edmunds, who takes great pride in being able to reverse-engineer dishes from the restaurants he likes, has never been able to replicate Chicken a la Grande. ‘I’ve made any number of tasty chicken dishes in the attempt,’ he told me. ‘But no Chicken a la Grande.’ Since the recipe calls for the chicken to be cooked in a skillet, James suspects that his failure has something to do with his not being able to match the heat of a restaurant burner—plus the fact that, as he puts it, ‘they know how to do something that I don’t know how to do.’”
New Orleans, the ultimate playground for adults. The Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone is Exhibit A. Sitting at the bar is like riding on a merry-go-round. You turn round and round, taking in a constant 360-degree view. The bartender is stationary. But he needs to be able to hop over the bar to replenish supplies or change shifts.
We drank Vieux Carres on a thunder-and-lightning stoked afternoon. The Ramos Fizz was the other popular drink.
Bourbon Street live! And this was on a Monday night, months past Mardi Gras time.
Look, Ma! We made it to New Orleans. We stayed at the Dauphine Orleans, a perfect place in the French Quarter, just around the corner from Bourbon Street, but off-the-beaten path enough that you can escape into your own little oasis - complete with bar and pool. What more do you need?
Davidson County Cast Iron: Pimento Cheese - A Never Ending Journey
Well, I have no idea where Davidson County is, but as we drove up and around the Gulf, through Fairport, Alabama, we stopped and had a pimiento cheese sandwich. I read about this stuff years ago in a cooking magazine and made my own (hey - I’m not from the South, but it sounded good). Just found this recipe that is close to the version I make. I usually spread it on Triscuits, so having a whole sandwich laden with pimiento cheese was a huge guilty pleasure to tide me over ‘til we got to New Orleans!
These days there’s always a jar of pimento cheese in my fridge. I thought this shot of my latest batch in a Ball jar was pretty cool.
Ingredients:
- 8oz sharp cheddar cheese (I prefer Cabot) shredded
- 8oz jack cheese (monterey, colby, pepper) shredded
- 1 7oz jar chopped pimentos,…
