Category Archives: restaurants/food

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Study of a Friday morning

Royal Street at Esplanade.
The camera zooms in to a helmeted female, leisurely biking alongside of the parked cars. Weaving figure 8s, she squints up at the sun and nods to a few people on either sidewalk. We see her:
catch sight of the wisteria blooming on Royal in the Princess of Monaco courtyard. She pulls up on the sidewalk under it and stops to admire it.

Early morning wisteria at Cafe Amelie on Royal

After breakfast at Royal Blend, she takes a middle seat inside the Historic New Orleans Collection for the first Master Class of the year at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. At its end, she is overheard saying to an acquaintance that it was more of a panel than a class. No matter. Still useful she says firmly, 2-3 new tidbits of information. She walks politely but quickly ahead of the more mature part of the crowd through the carriageway, into the sunlight and on to the street itself.

Tennessee Williams Literary Festival-Friday Master Class at HNOC

She cuts diagonally down Royal and again diagonally across Toulouse and spies the open door at Kitchen Witch Cook Books. She stops to chat about the Festival with its owners, neighbors and friends of hers. The couple are perennial TWiLFers as well. Lively talk among the 3 for a few minutes, then the female half of the couple kisses the male half goodbye and walks quickly to the corner of Decatur with lunch in hand.The man continues to talk to our heroine (arms folded, scrunched down a bit to be at eye level with her), while the cookbook dogs settle in for a long nap on the floor. On the way out she admires the mix of everything.

Kitchen Witch Cookbooks

A few zigzags across the French Quarter over the next few hours with some writing in a notebook and some chat. At 1 p.m. more or less, she walks to Jackson Square, past table-waiting couples giving their names to a white-shirted waiter and goes directly to the counter inside Stanley’s. She orders quickly and assuredly: small gumbo with potato salad, Italian soda with pomegranate. On either side of her, people watch her settle in. She notices them and engages both sides in conversation: first, on her right-a couple from California, married at the river last Friday. Long time visitors to the city. She thinks to herself it sounds like the woman married the city rather than the man.
Next, at her left is a Colorado couple in for “March Madness” which sounds odd to her ears. All discuss New Orleans, and interestingly both women ask our heroine what “she does”. She answers politely but does not ask them what they do. Instead she asks them what they want to do while here and offers suggestions.

The gumbo with potato salad, and the eggs benedict poboy

The waiter asks her if she likes the gumbo. She wonders why.

Clean plate at Stanley's

Book bag now in the basket, she swings a leg over her bicycle as it begins to roll down Chartres. The camera pans over the entire Square, which is seen with activity and life and music in every corner; at the end of the shot, she and her bicycle are indistinguishable from the rest.
The End. No credits.

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The “at least one useful thing on every block of Bourbon” list

100-Bourbon House
200-Galatoire’s and the site of “Owen Brennan’s Vieux Carre” Restaurant, the original Brennan’s restaurant (moved to Royal in 1956).
300-Jazz Park resting place and bathrooms at the Royal Sonesta Hotel
400-Still looking
500-Chris Owens (both she and the club) and Ramada bathrooms
600- Pat O’s Courtyard, Michael (waiter at Sammy’s), Court of 2 Sisters Thruway, Congresswoman Lindy Boggs’ home til 2005.
700-Marie Laveau’s Voodoo Shop, Fritzel’s
800-Washing Well, Bourbon Pub, Oz
900-Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop (piano bar), Lafitte’s In Exile, Clover Grill
1000-Postal Emporium/Frame Shop
1100-The Nelly Deli
1200 -2 lovely magnolias over sidewalk
1300-Kingsway Studio, owned by Daniel Lanois in the 1990s as a recording studio for groups such as Emmylou Harris, the Neville Brothers, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel, R.E.M., Robbie Robertson, Sheryl Crow, Iggy Pop, Luscious Jackson, Cowboy Mouth, Joe Henry, and Michelle Shocked. Before that, it was the home of Germaine Wells, the original big-hatted French Quarter Easter Parade doyenne and operator of her family’s restaurant Arnaud’s.

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not MY mama’s…

Sadly, I cannot recommend the peanut butter and bacon burger at Yo Mama’s. If they got a better bun, less peanut butter and more finesse on getting people’s cooking time right or even getting it close, I could change my mind. But why would they care about one or two or even four local people’s point of view.
They are, in tourist terms, in the catbird seat.
Bartenders are excellent. Tequila list looks good too. Bondage stuff is weird.

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Verti Marte Opening Day January 29, 2011

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Best Burgers In Town?

Sooo, one of the great things to do in New Orleans in the winter is to hunt for burgers. One of the best kept secrets in New Orleans is that we have great burgers. Why that is, I really don’t know. Maybe because we know how to season food. Or because we don’t eat them all of the time, so we make it a treat when we do.

My particular favorite is Port of Call on Esplanade, but I have no intention of waiting for a table, so I go there when the lines are gone. But that freshly ground burger with a baked potato on the side and a good beer at the bar is absolutely heaven on an early cold evening or a Monday lunch. The staff is seriously good at what they do without a lot of cheer but who cares. The decor is “seafarin” in a 70s way.

After that, I like the burger at the Nelly Deli (officially known as the Quartermaster) on Bourbon and Ursuline. It’s huge and incredible tasty. This is takeout only, so order and buy a drink while you’re waiting to pick up.

The peanut butter and bacon burger at Yo Mama’s is good, very good, but I think missing something. Maybe its just the name of the place that makes me less enthusiastic. Anyway, I just had a bite of someone else’s and I would get it if I had a burger hankerin and Po’C had lines and if I didn’t want to sit outside.

But now, we have another good choice: There is a new downtown location for an old Uptown favorite, Camellia Grill. Another place that people stand in line to eat when there are over 2000 restaurants in this city. With around 10-15 of them within walking distance of that Camellia Grill. Odd people.

Anyway, the corner of Toulouse and Chartres is now the new Camellia Grill. The deal with Camellia Grill is it is this cool hamburger joint kind of place with white-jacketed waiters working the continuous counter. I know this about burgers but go back for an omelet too. And get a freeze- my favorite is the mocha freeze. Has the best waiters. Funny and on top of it. Lovely place too. But I went there when the original owner had it and I never felt it was the same after that (why? just because people in New Orleans like to talk about the old days that they barely remember).

But people love it so much that when they did not reopen after the Federal flood, they left post it notes all over the front door until it was literally covered anywhere a human could reach. As expected, some enterprising guy who owns loads of other restaurants took his banker there, showed them the stickies and got the money to buy it and reopen it.

So now they have two, why just three years after reopening the first. Sigh. Is it possible it’s good? why yes, very possible. So possible that I will go there myself and see. Just for you. But I will say that the location that they chose was excellent in my mind. Everybody walks down Chartres from all directions from Canal because it is the entrance street from the big hotels- from the Rampart side because you can see Jax Brewery down the street so you start walking to it- from the Jax Brewery side because once you get there, you realize there is little reason to stay in it- from the cathedral/Square side because you are in a daze from all of the street life and you just start walking. And with the worst seafood fried place right there on Toulouse-Ralph and Kacoo’s (why has it remained, why why why?) maybe they will smell the grease from seafood hell and turn around for a nice burger. And they did a nice job with the renovation.

In any case, do me a favor and look at any menu with 2 questions: Do they use the word Cajun to describe everything? When you walked in did anyone call you baby? if the answers are no/yes in that order, then sit down, order it “dressed” and enjoy.

And I hope you can hear the echoes of CG legendary waiter Harry’s call in the new place:

“It’s chilly in Gentilly, rainin’ hard in St. Bernard, raisin’ hell in Slidell, two below in Tupelo, little slippy in Mississippi, and all wet in Chalmette.”