Dining Out in New Orleans: The Big Cheezy and The Creole Creamery (with Izzy)

One last trip out in this series before I hit the road. It’s all dairy all the time on this run…

Dining partner: Izzy

Occupation: Poet, librarian

You can find her: Scanning the book she recommended to you at the library, curled around a book of poems, blowing your mind with her tattoos.

I always feel a mad rush to see everyone I know and everything I love before I leave town. Maybe part of me doesn’t quite believe I’m coming back. But there’s a feeling of finality that makes me crave comfort food. And for me, that usually means ice cream.

For my friend Izzy, however, that means gooey cheesy things, and a few months back someone came up with the bright idea of building a grilled-cheese-centric sandwich shop called The Big Cheezy right next to the law enforcement corridor at Broad and Tulane.

Because you need this after traffic court.

The Orleans Parish District Court, the traffic court, the central lock-up and the parish prison are all easy walking distance from here, which means working at The Big Cheezy is officially the most politically connected job in New Orleans. Their clientele is a mix of judges, cops, clerical workers from the court system, all on their lunch breaks, all hungry, and all likely to remember your face when you come in to deal with that moving violation and tell the judge, “Your honor, I didn’t know it was illegal to run through that plate glass window with my head out the sunroof.” And the judge will be like, “Don’t you work at Big Cheezy?” And you smile and say, “Yeah, and you always order the Flying Dutchman.”

Bam. Case dismissed.

The Flying Dutchman: Melted gouda and smoked turkey with a side of waffle fries and tomato soup. Enjoy, Your Honor.

It’s a tiny little spot, this one, but it packs in good value. Izzy and I both went for the Flying Dutchman, though the Big Cheezy, with three different cheeses on Hawaiian sweet bread almost had me. The room is small, and adorned with photos of grilled cheese sandwiches in various states of meltiness.

There comes a time when a New Orleans restaurant passes from “local eatery” to “institution.” I’m not sure when it is, but all the places in the latter category have to start somewhere. Big Cheezy is just getting started, but you can’t help but notice that they already have some of the marks of a New Orleans staple: a good, simple menu of things they do extremely well, again and again, and a classic bit of comfort food that they cater to exclusively. If you want a grilled cheese sandwich, where are you going to go except the place that specializes in them.

You do one thing better than anyone else, and people will keep coming back for it.

Which is why, after dinner, we went to the Creole Creamery.

This is a great town for desserts. Pastries. Cannolis. Bananas Foster was invented here. But if nothing will do but ice cream, I usually find myself on Prytania Street for a couple scoops from the Creole Creamery.

Located in an old McKenzie’s Bakery building (and still bearing the neon sign on front), the Creole Creamery offers up a rotating cast of around 30 flavors per day, from Red Velvet Cake to Cafe Au Lait to Mexican Hot Chocolate to Salted Caramel. (You can find a list of every flavor they’ve ever had here)

Or you can just get a sundae shaped like a clown, because why not?

The walls are pink pastel and you turn into a kid instantly when you wait in line. I rarely order more than I can finish, but I usually order more than I should finish. Izzy and I took a seat at the counter on the far end and ate our sundaes and talked about the coming year. We came to new Orleans at almost exactly the same time, we’ve both moved away for a bit, we both came back. We’ve both put a wringer of a year behind us, and the one to come is feeling more and more like a gift. For her, there’s the library, the comfort of her own space, and a deeper understanding of the city. For me, there’s the road, and the certainty that a bit of clarity will come from letting the kid in me out to play.

We have faith in these things, and that’s important. Summers are hard in New Orleans. We take comfort where we can find it.

The Big Cheezy is located at 422 1/2 S. Broad Street, just off Tulane Avenue. They are open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. They have a website here, and a twitter page here and a facebook here.

The Creole Creamery has locations at 4924 Prytania Street (noon to 10 p.m. on Sunday thru Thursday, noon to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday) and 6260 Vicksburg St in Lakeview (2-9 p.m. Monday thru Thursday, 2-10 p.m. on the weekends). They have a website here, a twitter here and a facebook here.

Dining Out in New Orleans: Two Sisters ‘N Da East (with Charlie Halloran)

Heading out to the edge of town for killer soul food with my old friend Charlie Halloran. It’s a reminder that good things don’t go away, they just change location…

Dining Partner: Charlie Halloran

Occupation: Musician

You can find him: Playing trombone at Preservation Hall, playing trombone on Frenchman Street, playing trombone in Europe, collecting hats.

Four years. Has it really been four years since Charlie and I did this? It used to be a regular thing. We’d hop on our bikes and head to Two Sisters over on Derbigny Street, just in back of St. Louis Cemetery #2, order up enough food to feed a small army, and talk about lives. More specifically, we’d talk about women, which were often the focus of our lives.

But for a variety of reasons, we hadn’t done one of our lunch excursions in a while. A long while. I’d spent a couple summers out of town, and Charlie, God bless him, got married to a lovely woman named Mia. But when I started writing this series, I made it a top priority to grab Charlie and get out to visit Two Sisters restaurant like we used to.

There was one problem: Two Sisters is closed.

Or so I thought.

Local institutions have a way of hanging on in this town. If success in evolution is determined by adaptability, few cities have evolved more impressively than New Orleans. The list of obstacles reads like a category of biblical punishments. Fires. Floods. Plagues of yellow fever, cholera and malaria. Mob violence. Corruption. The slow decay of a sub-tropical climate. Institutions in New Orleans are under constant bombardment from entropy, corrupt officials, outright hostility and simple neglect. That the city still stands is a testament to its backbone, and I believe that this backbone is built around meeting places where news is exchanged, food is shared, and friends become family.

The old location of Two Sisters had that kind of vibe. Walking through the doors was like walking into a family picnic where someone offered you a plate. It was the kind of place that made you feel comfortable, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to see it again.

Then, on a trip out to New Orleans East, I saw the sign at the top of this post and jumped out of my seat. I don’t get out to the East a lot, and many people in New Orleans will tell you the same thing. A suburban style community developed in the 1960’s, it sits on the eastern side of the Industrial Canal and to the north of Bayou Bienvenue and the Lower Ninth Ward. Despite being one of the largest sections of the city, it’s always felt remote to me, almost another town. Part of that is probably that I didn’t own a car for so long, which makes getting out here difficult. Still, I have to confess that of all the neighborhoods that make up the city, The East is the one I know the least about. Other than some trips out to Versailles, the Vietnamese community on the far end of Chef Menteur Highway, I’m almost never out here.

Charlie, who has lived here for almost a decade, but who has never owned a car in that time, said the same. “I don’t think I’ve ever been over here before.”

Smothered chicken. This is why you get over here.

We pulled up to the restaurant late in the day, well past the lunch rush, but there were still a few customers making their way in. We took a seat by the window and ordered.

“Is this the same place?” asked Charlie.

It is, sort of. This is the second location, opened three years ago. At the moment, it’s the only location, though I’m assured by the owners that the original location on Derbigny will reopen sometime in the next year.

In the meantime, there’s the food. Oh, the food. The location might have switched, but the portions haven’t. I went with smothered chicken with cabbage and rice. You know you’re in a serious restaurant when the portions are so massive that they have the bring the main and the sides on two separate, completely full plates.

Because portion control is for crazy people.

One thing you might not notice in that photo is the empty salad plate off to the left. Yeah, before they bring out that mountain of food, they serve you two kinds of salad: iceberg lettuce and your choice of dressing, and a scoop of potato salad right next to it. The potato salad is a highlight, with a nice punch of black pepper coming through. And the cabbage, flavored with a hamhock, is enough to put you under the table. There’s also a thick slice of homemade cornbread, and then there’s your entree. Charlie went with the fried chicken and got a full plate of red beans and rice as his side.

I have a hard time describing food, and frankly think that a lot of flavor descriptions border on the pornographic. So let’s just say that this food makes you feel cared for.

And, if you eat the whole thing in one sitting, kinda sleepy.

Charlie and his entree. He always looks that confused.

I wrote a post last week about visiting a long-time haunt in my hometown of Sarasota, how that continuity grounded me. Coming out to Two Sisters again gave me the same feeling. I discovered the original location through an NPR story shortly before I moved down to New Orleans, and it became one of my go-to places for the next few years. Clearly that story had an impact, because I can still remember the owner saying that the name of the restaurant was already in place when she bought it, but that she decided to keep the name after being assured it was good luck. Maybe it was the name that was good luck. Maybe it was just the continuity, the sense that things could change completely in this town and still remain the same.

If you’re going to live in this place, you can’t afford to think any other way.

Two Sister ‘N Da East is located at 9901 Chef Menteur Highway in New Orleans East. They are open from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. They have a Facebook page here.

Also, Irma Thomas is a regular. That fact alone should make this place a culinary destination.

Charlie Halloran plays in a number of bands, including Meschiya Lake and the Little Big Horns. Go listen to them.

Dining Out in New Orleans: Barcelona Tapas (with Chris Romaguera) + King James and the Special Men

Heading uptown to visit chef Xavier Laurentino’s latest contribution to the culinary scene. A couple small plates turns into a three hour meal/hangout, followed by the big sounds of a legendary New Orleans band. On my wing this evening, fellow Floridian Chris Romaguera…

Dining partner: Chris Romaguera

Occupation: Writer, sometime bartender

You can find him: In the press box and/or locker room of the New Orleans Pelicans, behind the bar at the Spotted Cat or Three Muses, sleeping through his alarm like a good Miamian should.

 

Monday’s a big night in New Orleans. In a lot of towns, Monday is a night to close things down, count the money from the weekend, and gear up for the upcoming week. But most New Orleans institutions stay open. It’s a chance for all the service industry folks who busted their asses all weekend to unwind and go out (and earn a little scratch from the tourist overflow from the weekend). Mondays tend to be a nice combination of relaxed and busy, and as a result most restaurants and bars choose Tuesday as their one day a week to go dark.

Not that you can’t have a good time on Tuesday, too. But that’s another post.

For me, and for a lot people I know, Monday means a night with King James and the Special Men. This is a collection of top shelf jazz musicians and local blues players, led by the always dangerous “King” James Horn. The band features a wide range of legendary local sidemen and lead players, like John Rodli (guitar), Rob Snow (bass), Chris Davis (drums), Ben Polcer (piano) and Dominick Grillo (saxaphone). Every Monday night, this gang of reprobates gets together and busts out a couple hours of old school New Orleans soul and rock and roll. Every song is either an original or composed by a Louisiana artist. It’s local sound, but a local sound that a lot of people have overlooked for years.

Jimmy Horn, letting you know.

It’s loud. It’s raw. It frequently flies off the rails. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

But before the music comes the food. I picked my friend Chris Romaguera up at his house at 7:00 (actually, it was 7:20, because this is New Orleans) and headed to Barcelona Tapas, which he picked out on the recommendation of his “Spanish friend.”

“I mean, he’s from Spain, and he likes this place, so…”

The place is situated in the overlooked restaurant enclave where the St. Charles streetcar makes its turn onto Carrollton Avenue. The area next to this turn, particularly between Dublin Street and Carrollton, is a terrific place for gastronomes, with such overlooked gems as Hana Sushi and Taj of India sitting quietly, awaiting the adventurous. It’s here that chef Xavier Laurentino moved his restaurant Laurentino’s after the location of his old spot was bulldozed in the name of progress. He brought his staff over in early 2010, renamed the spot Barcelona Tapas, and has been going strong since.

Chris and I took a seat at the bar and told our server, Tessa, that we intended to stay awhile. Spain is one of my favorite countries in the world, and as much as I love the cuisine, I’m an even bigger fan of the pace of eating. Meals stretch out for hours, often visiting multiple locations. The food makes the meal possible, but a true “meal” involves far more than food. It’s the conversations, the recollections, the unexpected connections. It’s about having an experience.

We opened with garlic tomato bread with Serrano ham, and Tessa gave an explanation on how to rehydrate the bread for maximum flavor—by slowly rubbing in the garlic and olive oil, then laying tomato and ham over the top. We paired that with spicy garlic shrimp, then ordered ceviche (a taste of home for both of us). Next up, Manchego cheese (my favorite), followed by a Tortilla Espanola and patatas bravas, then closed with flan and coffee.

We were pretty much the only ones in the joint on this Monday night, and that’s a casualty of summer, when everything in New Orleans (including the flow of money) slows to a trickle. Chris and I would have talked for hours anyway (it’s what we do) on every subject from growing up in Florida to the trajectory of Cuban literature and how increased interaction with the USA might affect that. But the bonus for us was that the quiet night gave us a chance to talk extensively with Chef Xavier.

Chris, Tessa, and Chef Xavier explaining what’s what.

This is a seriously interesting man. A former actor and bodyguard in Barcelona, he came to the U.S. to learn English and ended up putting down roots. He’s worked as a contractor, run an auto repair shop, and worked for years at the mid city Spanish staple Lola’s, where he got his first taste of being a chef. He’s almost entirely self-taught, deeply passionate, and funny as hell. He’s built two restaurants with his own hands and makes a point of keeping his recipes as connected to old traditions as possible.

The flan, for example, isn’t cooked on high heat over an hour or so (making it porous), but is instead cooked at extremely low heat for several hours, resulting in a rich texture I’ve rarely seen imitated.

The flan has a few bites out of it, because it’s flan.

It was past closing by the time we kicked loose and started making our way down to the Seventh Ward for the Special Men. The band recently relocated their show from its longstanding home at BJ’s Lounge in the Bywater neighborhood and took up residence at Sidney’s Saloon, a large corner bar on St. Bernard Avenue that has undergone two renovations since Hurricane Katrina. Local trumpeter and bon vivant Kermit Ruffins spruced the place up after the storm and continued to operate it for years, featuring shows at least twice a week. A few months ago, he sold it to the current owners (Robert Clark and Tara Weberg), who did their own renovations. Last month, King James and the Special Men moved their act into the front room here, and are continuing their five year run of Monday night blowout shows.

We hit the venue just in time for the first song (right about 11 p.m., one hour after the “official” start time, because this is New Orleans). As someone who attended the shows at BJ’s semi-religiously for the past five years, it’s still disconcerting to be in a new space, though the added room on the dance floor is really nice. And the fact is, the show isn’t that different. The band still blows the doors off, the crowd still takes about five songs or so to figure out that they’re allowed to dance, there’s still plenty of street drinking between the sets, and everyone still stumbles out a hot sweaty mess by the end of the night. If you like to dance as much as I do, I recommend bringing an extra shirt to change into between sets.

I’ve built my Mondays around this show for years. You exit the bar, totally drenched from dancing your tail off, walk out into the diffused light outside, and you remember what makes this town so special. A normal Monday night here? It’s anything but normal. And it’s better than the best night of the month almost anywhere else.

 

Barcelona Tapas is located at 720 Dublin Street in the Carrollton/Riverbend area. They have a website here and are now open seven days a week, usually from 5:30 to 10.

King James and the Special Men have info here and here and also here. They play every Monday night from 10:30ish in the night until 2 in the morning (or something like that) at Sidney’s Saloon.

Sidney’s Saloon is located at 1200 St. Bernard Avenue in the Seventh Ward. They have a website here, as well as a facebook page.

Layover at Home: An Unexpected 24 Hours in New Orleans

An unexpected layover in New Orleans. Just because I live here doesn’t mean I can’t be a tourist…

6:30 a.m.—Louis Armstrong International Airport

“It’s because you’re flying tomorrow,” said the ticket agent, who was making it clear what I already knew: that this whole situation was my fault. I’d spent a month making my travel plans, and now the first leg of it was falling apart because I couldn’t read a calendar accurately. Somehow I’d made all the necessary preparations for Thursday travel except for one: I’d booked my flight for Friday.

“I see,” I said, which is what I usually say when someone holds up a mirror to my own stupidity. “Is there anything we can do?”

There is a strategy a friend of mine introduced me to for situations like this. It’s called the Polite Brontosaurus, and it’s a great way to deal with bureaucratic red tape. Keep repeating what you would like to see happen and be as polite and cheerful as you can be, but don’t move. Essentially, you are impossible to ignore, but never threatening: a gigantic, friendly plant-eater who doesn’t really feel like being anywhere else. It forces people to deal with you, but generally doesn’t make them dislike you or give them an excuse to have you thrown out by large men in uniform. It’s surprisingly effective.

But frankly, when I know I’ve made a gigantic mistake, I have a hard time asking someone else to correct it. The truth was I hadn’t paid attention to my booking, or to my reminders that the airline sent, and now I found myself here. So when the ticket agent informed me that the only thing I could do would be to pay the difference in fare (537 dollars), along with a change fee (200 dollars), I figured the best thing to do was to bail out and come back in the morning.

A skill I’ve had to learn, and that I think would serve a lot of Americans, is to know when I’m beaten. Especially if I’ve beaten myself.

So now I had 24 extra hours to kill at home, and and in the spirit of my eternally optimistic 95 year-old grandmother, I decided to make the most of it. Twenty-four hours meant that I had a layover. So what if it was in my own town? Couldn’t I play tourist here for a day? Wouldn’t that make for an interesting blog post?

It certainly seemed more interesting than screaming down a phone line at someone because I screwed up.

What would Langston Hughes do in this situation?

8:00 a.m.—Canal Street

Louis Armstrong Airport is in Kenner, well outside the New Orleans city limits. Taxis back to the city run in the neighborhood of 33 dollars, but the bus only costs two bucks and drops you just a block from Canal Street, the city’s central thoroughfare and dividing line between uptown and downtown. That’s a pretty massive price disparity. The kind that would cover a good breakfast and a morning cocktail. And if I didn’t feel like going home yet (and therefore admitting defeat), I should probably find a good place to have breakfast, read, and pretend this was how my day was supposed to go.

Which is fortunate, because one of the most visible signs on Canal Street belongs to one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans: The Palace Cafe.

The Palace Cafe is part of the Brennan family of restaurants, but it’s a more recent addition, having first opened its doors in 1991. Because of its high visibility on a heavily trafficked street, a lot of tourists stop here, and I think a lot of locals miss it for this reason. The French Quarter is the only part of town where a restaurant doesn’t have to be excellent to survive. There’s enough foot traffic and confused tourists that mediocre (and even downright bad) establishments do just fine. So the assumption by some locals that anything too visible to the tourist trade must be lacking something. That’s a shame, because the Palace is one of the best restaurants in town, with an interior that looks like it would be at home as Jay Gatsby’s living room and a terrific menu of New Orleans classics made by people who care about getting the details right. It doesn’t hurt that their Bananas Foster (prepared table side by a waiter in a white jacket) is the best I’ve sampled in New Orleans.

I was able to check my bags and my suit coat (I always fly in a suit so I don’t have to pack one) at the front of the restaurant, then took a seat in a small booth with a window facing Canal Street. I told my waiter about my troubles that morning, and it was a kind gesture of him not to laugh at me.

“What would you like to eat?” he asked.

“You call it,” I said.

“Really?”

“Sure, I trust you. Surprise me.”

Which he did. In fact, he read my mind.

Bananas Foster Waffle. For breakfast. You’re welcome, seven year-old Me.

For those who don’t know what Bananas Foster is, it’s basically what would happen if all your good deeds came back to you in the form of a dessert. Butter and brown sugar, caramelized by flame around a thick helping of sliced bananas, then topped with cinnamon and served over vanilla ice cream. Except for breakfast, when it’s served over a waffle.

“How is it?” asked the waiter.

“You know the answer to that,” I said.

“Yeah. I know.”

10:30 a.m.—The Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel

“You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning,” goes the saying in this town. It’s not just an expression, it’s also good, solid science. And it points to a truth about the civilized nature and relaxed attitude toward drinking found in this town. This is a place where no one looks at you twice if you have a drink—not just a Bloody Mary or a Mimosa—at 10:30 in the morning. Is it any wonder the cocktail was invented here?

The original cocktail was created for medicinal purposes. It’s called a Sazerac, and it’s named after the “coffee shop” where it became popular, which was named after the cognac used to make it (before cognac was swapped out for rye whiskey). If anyone ever asks me where to go to get the best one in town, I send them to the Sazerac Bar.

Located on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and named for that splendid invention, the Sazerac Bar is a dimly lit room perfumed with the vibe of days gone by. There’s an immaculate, highly detailed, gigantic trophy sitting behind the bar commemorating a race in the 1890’s when some rich guy’s horse beat another rich guy’s horse. Elegant and classy, but never stuffy or snobby, the Sazerac Bar manages to retain a classic feel without any snooty attitude. There are murals wall to wall, plush seating, and a terrific bartender named Matthew who specializes in two of the city’s most famous cocktails: the classic Sazerac, and another New Orleans original, the Ramos Gin Fizz.

Matthew is not here to make you a Hand Grenade.

I’m not a gin drinker, usually, but this is a special cocktail. An assembly of gin, sugar, cream, orange flower water and a raw egg (among other ingredients) shaken until a meringue-like top floats like a cloud at the top of the glass. It’s a sweet, refreshing drink that could easily become dangerous after the first two or three, as it’s easy to suck them down without even recognizing the alcohol content. The Ramos Gin Fizz became so popular at the Roosevelt Hotel that an assembly line of kids was hired for the sole purpose of shaking the drinks to their appropriate fizziness. Each kid had a certain number of shakes to do before they passed it to the next one in line. The result was a perfect cocktail enjoyed by many New Orleans notables, including the state’s most storied politician, Huey P. Long, who even brought the hotel’s bartender to New York so he could drink them while he was there.

I took a seat in one of the plush chairs, sipped my fizz and read my book, with Matthew swinging by from time to time to check on my progress. In the summer there aren’t many better places to be than this bar. It’s the kind of room a man could get some work done in, even if that work is eventually done in by the hypnotic power of a Ramos Gin Fizz.

7:30 p.m.—Lower Ninth Ward

I’m not an all day drinker, especially when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning to catch a plane I’m not supposed to be on, so I proceeded from the Roosevelt Hotel back to my home in the Lower Ninth for a much needed nap.

Let’s call it a siesta. It is summer, after all.

If there’s one place in America that I really believe the siesta should be instituted, it’s New Orleans. The summers are long and brutal, so retiring during the hottest part of the day makes sense. Also, there’s the food, rich cuisine that lends itself well to after meal naps. And like the Spanish, who gave the world this extraordinary gift, New Orleanians live by night. We go out late. We stay out later. This is much easier to do if you’ve had a good long sleep in the middle of the day.

Sunset on the Mississippi.

If you time it right, the siesta is especially appealing because you can wake up at just in time to catch a sunset. In the Lower Ninth, the river is tantalizingly close, so sunsets become events, with several people sitting on the levee taking in the view until darkness creeps in, or until they are driven away by mosquitos. Fortunately, the mosquitos took the night off, and the air was cool and lovely. Ships wound their way up to or down past the sharp curve in the river that lends the Crescent City its name. Some bound for St. Louis, the Ohio, the Missouri. Others making their way to the Gulf of Mexico and all points beyond. You could sit up there for hours and imagine the entire world is going past you on that thick ribbon of water.

Which, of course, it is.

8:00 p.m.—Frenchman Street

Thursday’s a good night to be on Frenchman Street, which makes it much like any other night. Once the secret alternative to the madness of Bourbon Street, it’s expanded significantly in recent years, adding new clubs for live music, a pair of art markets, and bushels of curious tourists, some with Bourbon Street style plastic drink containers still clutched in their hands. It’s less a local spot than it used to be, but it’s still as good a concentration of live music as you will find anywhere in the country. Three blocks of top-notch live music venues featuring an array of jazz acts of the type most people think are long extinct. As a result, New Orleans remains one of the few cities in America where full-time musicians can make a very good living.

But the new traffic has its disadvantages. Friday and Saturday nights (read: nights, not evenings) during the high seasons become ridiculously packed, pedestrians spilling out in all directions and clubs packed to overflowing. The weekday nights are preferable. The foot traffic is lighter and the music is every bit as good. A favorite spot for almost everyone who comes down is one of the first clubs you hit as you come off Royal Street, the Spotted Cat. And if you’re there on a Thursday night between 6 and 10, you will find Miss Sophie Lee holding down the fort.

Sophie Lee at the Spotted Cat.

Sophie covers both sides of the entertainment spectrum, being both a musician and a venue owner. She’s one of the driving forces behind a lovely little spot called Three Muses, which has been one of the most popular spots on Frenchman Street since it opened. She’s given quite a few musicians in town their first break, both as regular performers in her club and as musicians in her band. To my mind, she’s one of the essential caretakers of the city’s music, the kind of person who doesn’t get a lot of publicity, but who has a major role in keeping the music alive.

Among the bands Sophie regularly features at Three Muses is one of the finest traditional jazz bands in town, the Shotgun Jazz Band. Led by the husband and wife team of John and Marla Dixon, Shotgun puts on damn fine shows featuring a wide repertoire that ranges from Louis Armstrong to Buddy Holly to Willie Nelson. They play most Thursday nights at the Maison, a massive room with two stages on the river side of Frenchman Street. The Maison is one of the few clubs on Frenchman that has the advantage of being able to pack in an all-ages crowd. For the first few years after the storm, kids could come into clubs before 10 p.m. as long as they were accompanied by an adult. Now, that only extends to clubs that serve food. As a result, Maison has become my go to place whenever I have guests toting along young folks.

It’s a crapshoot what kind of a crowd you’re going to get on Frenchman Street, and it can vary from night to night, from set to set, even from song to song. On this particular night, the crowd seemed to be milling about and unfocused, essentially reducing the band to background noise. I think it’s a damn shame when this happens, and mostly I feel bad for the people in the club who are doing anything (talking, looking at their phones, ordering drinks) except listening to music as good as anything they’re going to hear all year. Sometimes they recognize this and snap out of it and realize something real is happening right in front of them. It’s like watching a spell break when this happens, and on crowded, loud, unfocused nights I often watch the crowd and wait for it. It doesn’t always happens, but when it does you know the city has captured those peoples’ hearts, and you know they’ll come back here again.

9:30 p.m.—Yuki Izakaya

With my flight due to take off early the next morning, I decided to close out my night with some dinner at one of my favorite local hangouts, Yuki Izakaya.

In a town of unusual spots, Yuki remains one of the most unique. In the heart of the crowded clubs of Frenchman Street, it thrives by being unlike anything else on the main drag. A Japanese after-work style bar (no sushi, people) with a dark interior, an army of lucky cats perched on the shelves, and some kind of Japanese art house film projected (silently) on the upper wall at all times, it’s culture shock in miniature. There’s usually live music and always good food. It’s one of the most reliable, and most overlooked late-night dining spots in the city.

The menu features a wide array of small plate appetizers from edamame to tuna sashimi, and a few delicious noodle broths. There’s also a solid assortment of excellent sakes, served cold, the way God intended. I went with a nigori sake, which is unfiltered and has a creamy, ivory coloration and a sweet, fruity taste. For dinner, potatoes pancake style with a sweet glaze and a bowl of udon noodles with a vegetable tempura cake and an egg dropped in the center.

Typical New Orleans cuisine.

I managed to get a good night’s sleep after this. And I managed to be on time for my flight in the morning. Getting on the plane, I saw the same ticket agent who’d seemed so annoyed with me the day before. She didn’t bat an eye at me as she took my ticket. Maybe she didn’t recognize me. That wouldn’t surprise me. I’m sure I didn’t look half as stressed as I did the day before.

Palace Cafe is located at 605 Canal Street. More information here.

The Sazerac Bar is located inside the Roosevelt Hotel at 130 Roosevelt Way. More information here.

The Spotted Cat is located at 623 Frenchman Street. More info here and here.

Three Muses is located at 536 Frenchman Street. More info here and here.

Maison is located at 508 Frenchman Street. More info here.

Yuki Izakaya is located at 525 Frenchman Street. Find out more about them here.

Dining Out in New Orleans: Tan Dinh (with Robin Rapuzzi)

Crossing the Mississippi for the first time in this series, I hauled percussionist “Washboard” Robin Rapuzzi over to Gretna to sample the West Bank Vietnamese staple Tan Dinh. Let the massive portions commence…

Dining Partner: Robin Rapuzzi

Occupation: Musician

You can find him: Playing washboard on the street, playing washboard in the clubs, drumming on a mostly full kit, impersonating Charlie Chaplin.

For reasons obvious and subtle, the cuisine of New Orleans is bound tightly to the cuisine of France. Creole cuisine, in particular, follows the French haute style of rich, blood thickening sauces and insane attention to detail. The French brought their food traditions with them, and God bless them for it. God knows what Louisiana cooking would look like if the English ever planted a flag here. Probably something like this…

photo: foodrepublic.com

No. Thanks, England. We’re good.

So we here in Louisiana owe the French a strong debt of gratitude for kick-starting our culinary traditions. And while the cuisine of New Orleans and the rest of the state has become something of its own since then, there is no question that the French got those traditions started. And like much of the culinary world, the traditions here have always developed with one eye looking over at France.

For the Vietnamese, it’s another story.

There can be no doubt that the culinary traditions of Vietnam picked up some influence from the country that took over their government for the better part of a century. The most obvious influences being the introduction of the baguette, which leads to the Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich, and coffee, a beloved part of Vietnamese daily life.

But unlike the cuisine of Louisiana, Vietnamese cuisine never depended on its colonizers to develop. The Vietnamese were doing just fine putting together a wide array of tasty meals with little or no help from the French, thank you very much. From inexpensive provincial cuisine enjoyed by the masses to delicately assembled dishes designed daily for a series of imperial families, the cuisine of Vietnam has become recognized worldwide for its intricacy and balance, which harkens back to traditional beliefs in elemental influence. Sweet and sour, salty and bitter are balanced in much the same way as air and water, fire and earth. It’s like the molecular constructions new chefs are looking to today, only its thousands of years old.

And it makes for impressively large menus.

I wrote briefly about the Vietnamese community in an earlier post, but one parallel I’d like to draw between Louisiana cuisine and the cuisine of Vietnam is the wide availability of fresh, tasty ingredients. Both communities are blessed with a great climate and lots of access to the bounty of the sea. The restaurant scene in New Orleans (much like the restaurant scene in France) is dominated by local dishes and local flavors, from the high class Creole cuisine of the old Quarter restaurants to the soul food joints that dot every neighborhood from Lakeview to the Lower Nine. But if you ask any resident what cuisine they fall back on when they depart from the local fare, it’s safe to assume that the answer, more often than not, will be Vietnamese.

Once you make that choice, there are a wide range of options, and increasingly more options within the city limits. For years, if you wanted food Vietnamese food in New Orleans, people would tell you to hop in your car and head to either Versailles (the large Vietnamese community in New Orleans East) or across the river to the towns of the West Bank. And there are still those who will tell you that if you want the real stuff, and not some newfangled “fusion” of a cuisine that needs no improvement, this is still where you need to go.

Among the old school Vietnamese joints, Tan Dinh is about as good as it gets. Located in a strip mall on Lafayette Street, just off the Westbank Expressway, this spot has been serving up a ridiculously large array of Vietnamese classics for over two decades. Robin and I hit the place on the tail end of the lunch rush and were seated next to gigantic painting of Halong Bay. We ordered up two Vietnamese coffees, which are slow-drip French coffees coffees with sweetened condensed milk. They bring the cup with the syrupy goodness on the bottom and the percolator settled on the top. You sit there and wait for all the liquid to drain into the cup, then stir everything together and pour it over a glass of ice. It’s delicious.

And if you’re impatient waiting for that coffee to do its thing, you can order up an appetizer. On the recommendation of our waiter, Trung, we went for the spicy lemongrass chicken wings.

Stop drooling.

Great appetizers and coffee are a fine start to things, but I came to this place for one reason above all. I came for the pho.

For the uninitiated, pho is about as perfect a bowl of soup as has been invented by man. A rich, flavorful broth is poured over rice noodles, vegetables, and your choice of meats. Bean sprouts, mint leaves, sliced jalepeno and chili sauce are often included on the side for the customer to add as they see fit. The result is world class comfort food that also happens to be pretty damn good for you.

Note the chili sauce in the center. You need this.

I went with beef flank and brisket as my meat options and got to work. I add plenty of pepper and chili sauce to mine because I like to be a disgusting sweaty mess by the time I finish my pho. It’s a sign of character.

As you might imagine, this is not the easiest food in the world to eat. The best way to attack it is with a spoon in one hand and chopsticks in the other. Scoop up a bunch of noodles with the spoon, spear them with the sticks before they slither off, slurp up the noodles, then follow up with the spoon so you get a nice helping of broth and veggies to round things out. And when all the meat and noodles are gone, you still have a nice healthy bowl of rich peppery broth, guaranteed to keep your sinuses in tip-top condition for a week.

I know I haven’t written a lot about my dining partner in this post, but that’s only because the food was so good I forgot he was there. Robin’s a pretty quiet guy when he’s eating. In fact, he’s a pretty quiet guy almost all the time that he’s not on stage. When he is on stage (or playing the street), however, he makes quite a racket (see here). Robin plays in a number of bands around town, but he’s best known for his washboard antics with the legendary New Orleans street band Tuba Skinny, who have released four albums and toured across Europe, Australia, and Mexico. (They even have a Wikipedia page, which is the true mark of artistic success in today’s society.)

Robin had to call uncle before finishing his plate of barbecued pork ribs (Vietnamese style, of course), which I understood, as he is not a large man. We packed up the rest and assured our waiter we would be back soon, then held the door for the next group of people coming in. Tan Dinh is a popular spot, and just because the lunch rush is over doesn’t mean things slow down.

Tan Dinh is located at 1705 Lafayette Street in Gretna, just off the West Bank Expressway. More information can be found here.

The family that owns Tan Dinh has recently opened a new restaurant on Maple Street in Carrollton called Ba Chi Canteen. They can be found here and here.

Tuba Skinny’s new album, Owl Call Blues, was named Best Traditional Jazz Album by Offbeat Magazine. You can order it here. You can find more about the band on their Facebook page here.

Dining Out in New Orleans: St. Clair Pizza and good beer (with Jason Briggs)

Another food truck, although this might qualify as a food bus. St. Clair Pizza offers wood fired pizzas on four wheels. I took my accountant to see if this was all on the level.

Dining partner: Jason Briggs

Occupation: Accountant

You can find him: Watching basketball, sampling local beer, auditing you.

 

 

When you spend a lot of time around artists, someone with a real job starts to seem like a narwhal. I mean, you’ve heard they’re out there, but when you actually see one it’s like, why did a dolphin screw a unicorn?

Meet said narwhal (the unicorn part is from his mother’s side). Jason’s an accountant, formerly with the IRS. You might not pick up on that, though. The only giveaway is the haircut, a nice safe Mad Men look that distracts from the tattoos, warped sense of humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of beer that makes the man a kick at parties.

Jason hadn’t been to Courtyard Brewery yet, and as it seems to be slotting in as a regular hang for me, I suggested we get together to discuss my financial situation over beer and whatever food happened to be on the premises. The food for this afternoon came courtesy of the St. Clair Pizza truck, a modified 50’s Chevrolet bus with a 1965 nose that now houses a wood fire pizza oven, and two guys named Frankie and Aaron who know how to use it. Good thing, too. The fire department actually had to give these guys approval for the oven before they were able to start serving on the street.

I learned that Frankie comes from Toronto and graduated from Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza in San Francisco (I swear this is a real thing). Aaron is a North Carolinian and, like any true North Carolinian, is so deranged when it comes to the subject of basketball that he designed a pizza called “Duke Sucks” back in March, and offered a two dollar discount to anyone who said those exact words at the window.

I went with the St. Pear pizza, which featured sliced pear, mozzarella, balsamic vinegar, honey and basil, which Jason assured me I can write off as a medical expense. I paired it (see what I did there?) with a beer suggested by Scott, owner of Courtyard Brewery. The beer is called Kentucky Breakfast Stout and comes from Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and RateBeer called it on of the 100 best beers in the world.

The beer has to be good if it’s going with this pizza.

But because it’s so damn good (and also rare, and also potent at 11.2% alcohol), the bartender poured me half a glass. Under most circumstances, this is cause for me to throw blunt instruments at the bartender. After all, Scott and the bartenders had given me a pretty hard sell on this beer. So when I get 8 ounces of beer in front of me like it’s a goddamned prize I’m reasonably upset.

“Are you kidding me?” I said.

“Just try it,” said Scott.

I took a sip and put it down.

“All right,” I said. “You win.”

Apparently, this beer is aged in bourbon barrels inside of caves for a year. Yes, bourbon barrels in caves. Aside from the vampire party/fallout survivor aspects of this process, the beer is excellent. Like a cup of coffee and maple syrup without too much sweetness and without giving you the shakes. And even though I’ll admit to it being one of the better beers I’ve ever tasted, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to someone pouring me a half a glass of beer and smiling. It’s like when you order top shelf liquor for a mixed drink so you can feel like Jay-Z for a second. It’s fine, you enjoy the moment, but if you do it too often you realize you are not Jay-Z because, unlike him, you are broke as hell.

And you do not want to go broke drinking with your accountant.

It should also be mentioned that this is the Courtyard Brewery’s jukebox. You grab a 45 off the wall, put the needle on the record, and you’re all set. I don’t know of another place in town that has this.

The St. Clair Pizza bus can be tracked either here or here. You really need to see that wood-fired oven.

Dining Out in New Orleans: Boswell’s and the Great Food Truck Run (with Lindsay Davis)

Taking a look at food trucks around the city today, along with the mid-city Jamaican staple Boswell’s. A four-meal run that ended under a freeway. Let’s do this.

Dining partner: Lindsay Davis

Occupation: Store manager

You can find her: Selling you lingerie, designing a burlesque costume, planning trips to Asia.

 

 

 

 

The food truck revolution hasn’t had quite the liftoff in New Orleans that it’s had in other American cities. Perhaps that’s because of the sheer number of restaurants, many of them of high quality. Or perhaps because of the tradition of dining at home and inviting the neighborhood. But for a city with such  legendary food culture, food trucks are only just starting to take off. One owner told me there were just five in the city over a year ago. Now, there are close to thirty.

The point is they’re out there, and they need to be sampled. So for my first multi-restaurant raid, I hijacked Lindsay Davis, a nice girl from Ponchatoula (home of the world famous Strawberry Festival) who’s gone a bit wrong in the Big Easy. She still carries some of that country sweetness with her, but she also works in a lingerie store, moonlights as a burlesque dancer, and has the jarring habit of referring to her pet cats as “the whores.”

5:10 p.m.—Boswell’s Jamaican Grill

This is called camouflage.

Boswell’s was an institution on South Broad Street until Katrina wiped out the original location. The new version opened up on Tulane Avenue in the summer of 2008 and has held down the fort in a hard to spot building next to an auto-glass shop ever since.

The original intention was a food truck run, but when I mentioned a curried goat stew I’d seen on one of Anthony Bourdain’s programs Lindsay started drooling. We found Boswell’s (it took two passes) and took a seat at the bar, where several men were halfheartedly watching the news.

We ordered a plate of curried goat with peas and rice, mac and cheese, fried plantains and a bottle of Ting (Jamaican grapefruit soda). It came out looking like this:

“That’s love right there,” said the next man at the bar. And it is. The goat falls right off the bone and the mac and cheese places high in the running for the best I’ve had in the city. But the goat is the highlight. Perfectly spiced and so tender it practically melts at the touch of your tongue. How did I go all these years in this city and never find this place?

We were taking our final bites a man at the bar gawked at our empty plate. “You go through all that already?”

Yes sir. Yes we did.

6:05 p.m.—King Creole Food Truck

Parked in front of the apartments at the Esplanade at City Park was the King Creole truck, which I learn is owned by a North Carolinian with a penchant for New Orleans cooking. The menu for the day included several local standards, from dirty rice to a muffaletta. We went with the crawfish pootine, determined to get our last few tastes of the little bastards before they go out of season, then took a seat next to Bayou St. John, where ducks rapidly advanced on our position.

This might sound adorable, but in actuality it was fairly horrifying. I’ve seen ducks that expect breadcrumbs before, but this was another level of aggression. They came from both sides of where I was sitting, and they moved fast. They even started calling in geese for reinforcement, and if you know anything about geese you know that they are ill-tempered feathery time-bombs that hiss when you get close to them and would like to peck your eyes out as soon as they’d steal your food. They rank up there with blue jays, seagulls and swans as the true dicks of the bird kingdom.

I’m not going to say I ran back to the food truck, but I beat a hasty retreat from the waterfowl. One of the braver ducks was nearly on my lap by the time I started eating. I had to shoo it away with a picture of the Duck Dynasty family.

We polished off the crawfish fairly quickly and I kept an eye on the ducks the whole way back to the car, lest they swarm suddenly in a Hitchcockian orgy and tear us to pootine.

7:00 p.m.—Courtyard Brewery/Taceaux Loceaux Food Truck

I wrote about Courtyard Brewery in my last post. It’s a taproom on Erato Street just under the freeway that serves a variety of beer and solves the old “no kitchen” problem by providing a nice big lot for food trucks to park in. Tonight’s food truck was Taceaux Locaeux, an older (by New Orleans standards) truck that hit the streets here five years ago. Still, when I was asked for a name to go with my order and I said, “Governor Huey P. Long,” the kid taking my order had no idea who I was talking about. Ah well.

Taken with some tasty beer, we went with tacos named Messin With Texas (brisket) and Carnital Knowledge (pork), along with avocado fries, which are french fried avocado slices, which does not sound at all like something French people would do.

The Messin With Texas tacos are pretty phenomenal. Brisket isn’t the easiest thing in the world to make, and can come out tough and rubbery if you’re not careful. Not a problem with the Taceaux Loceaux folks. The brisket is tender and juicy, and several people nodded approvingly when we placed our order. This truck has a pretty loyal following, which means that, just in case you order more than you can handle, anything you can’t eat can always go to a worthy cause.

This is Ninja, aforementioned worthy cause.

8:12 p.m.—La Cocinita Food Truck

La Cocinita is the only food truck in New Orleans I’d tried prior to this insane run, and I have a soft spot for it because their sister operation is in Chicago, another town near and dear to my heart. I’ve snacked on quite a few of their tacos, and the fact that I could still make room for tacos of chorizo, pork and chicken with a variety of exciting sauces after gorging myself at three prior locations should be all the testimony I need to give for the quality of their food.

Waddling and approaching Defcon 4 on the food coma chart, we bellied up the food truck for our final stop of the night. I chose the tacos, as Lindsay was finding it difficult to continue forming words. She’s a small person, and by this point, had eaten about as much as a full squadron of marines. “We’re done after this,” I told her. She nodded. I think she’d forgotten how to speak.

La Cocinita gets points not only for their tacos, but for the mere fact that they serve arepas, a treat common in Colombia and Venezuela. The chorizo is magnificent, and if not for my desire to keep the variety up, I would have just ordered three chorizo tacos and a couple arepas with the same filling and called it a night.

We took a seat curbside and polished off our last meal with the cars roaring by on the freeway overhead and the moon peeking down from between the streetlights. With the last bites taken, I went back to the truck and snagged a Mexican Coke to serve as dessert.

“We did good tonight,” I told Lindsay.

“I can’t move,” she said.

“We should do this again,” I said.

She gave me a dirty look at this point. I almost suggested going to one more spot. But I think if I hadshe would have punched me in the face.

Mercy.

Boswell’s Jamaican Grill is located at 3521 Tulane Ave. It can be tricky to see from the street so keep your eyes out. They are open Monday thru Saturday. More info here.

The King Creole food truck has a website here.

Taceaux Loceaux food truck can be tracked here and here.

La Cocinita food truck has a website and can also be tracked here and here.

Dining Out in New Orleans: Courtyard Brewery and Saigon Slim’s Food Truck (with Tyler Thomson)

Gonna be writing about food trucks for a while, as well as the Courtyard Brewery, which has become a haven for them. Today’s entry is Saigon Slim’s, serving a variety of Vietnamese favorites.

 

Dining partner: Tyler “Twerk” Thomson

Occupation: Musician

You can find him: Playing bass for the Shotgun Jazz Band and various other groups, cursing out the Toronto Blue Jays, rolling his ankle in a pickup basketball game.

 

June has a strange energy for folks in the New Orleans service industry. On the one hand, we finally get a chance to breathe, as the Memorial Day weekend crush signals the last massive wave of visitors to the city until summer loosens its grip. On the other hand, there’s that summer. Fierce, broiling, bumping up the crime stats citywide and turning your blood to soup. The last day of May is an odd combination of relief and foreboding. We can breathe now, but we’re going to be far less employed for a few months, and we’re gonna be hot.

For the first time in two months, Tyler and I had the same day off. Tyler’s a recent transplant to the city who, like me, expects to be here a long time. He’s also a fellow New Orleans Pelicans season ticket holder, so we made a date to eat, drink, and discuss the hiring of Alvin Gentry as the new coach of our guys.

We made the trek over to Courtyard Brewery where the Saigon Slim’s food truck was parked. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite hangouts in the city. It’s a sheltered courtyard on Erato Street next to the freeway that serves a rotating menu of beers from the taps on the back wall of their modest warehouse space.

The courtyard comes in very handy, as it allows the taproom to dodge the “no kitchen” problem by giving space to the food trucks that are popping up around the city in ever increasing numbers. Today’s pairing was appropriate, as both the Courtyard and Saigon Slim’s started operating this past fall.

New Orleans has a lot of great Vietnamese food. Vietnamese families came here in huge numbers in the 1970’s, fleeing the war that engulfed their homes. There was work in the fishing and shrimping industries on the Texas and Louisiana gulf coasts, and with New Orleans’ large Catholic population and climate providing a bit of familiarity, many immigrants came to the city and started setting up businesses. I’ll write in the future about the old school Vietnamese places around the city (of which there are many), but Saigon Slim’s represents something else—the profound influence of Vietnamese flavors and preparation on more traditional New Orleans fare.

Take the Banh Mi. Or as it has become known in New Orleans, the “Vietnamese Po Boy.” The ingredients look familiar. A French roll (less flaky than the ones typically used for po boys), a large quantity of some type of meat, dressing of vegetables and sauce. Take that formula and spin it. Ingredients like lettuce and tomato are replaced by carrots, cilantro, mint and cucumber. Slim’s has a couple options as far their Banh Mi, and one of them—Pig Shrimpin—might claim the title for Best Named Sandwich in New Orleans.

Pig Shrimpin’ Banh Mi and spring rolls. For discerning gentlemen of leisure.

Tyler and I both opted for the Pig Shrimpin—savory pork, shrimp, peanut sauce, carrots, mint, cilantro, stuffed until falling apart. Add in an order of spring rolls, a couple beers from the tap room, and then for the full New Orleans summertime effect, add a monsoon.

The rain hit fast, seconds after we collected our sandwiches. We snagged a table with a few other people and started talking as the rain picked up. The folks closest to the warehouse door had to keep sliding their chairs back to get further away from the storm’s fingers. Tyler and I settled in next to the record player, and with the permission of the bartender Alexis I started DJ’ing from collection of LP’s on the wall. Our table partners included a pair of cyclists who’d just finished a 50 mile bike ride and a couple from California in the middle of a cross-country drive to Maryland.

Summer monsoon outside the brewery doors.

Ideally, a good meal helps generate the situation, enhances it to a degree that drinks or the accident of space might not do on their own. A little roasted pork, a few shrimp, good beer and Sly and the Family Stone playing in the background—these things make me a happy man. And, I suspect, better company.

Getting trapped by the rain had an additional benefit, as Tyler made the rain soaked trek (all ten feet of it) to the food truck to grab a sample of Slim’s Bananas Foster spring rolls. For those of you who don’t know what Bananas Foster is, it’s basically what happens when everything good you’ve ever done in your life comes back and thanks you in the form of a dessert. It’s not a dish that needs anything like improvement, but Slim’s seems more interested in altering the delivery mechanism than the dessert itself. The bananas and the sugar and the cinnamon are all there, only in easy to grab fried roll form. The heat of the spring roll causes the ice cream to melt faster than, perhaps, it would otherwise, but that’s not a complaint. I don’t complain about anything when dessert is served, especially when I got somebody else to go out in the rain to get it for me.

Thanks, Twerk.

Courtyard Brewery is located at 1020 Erato Street. More information here.

Saigon Slim’s food truck can be tracked here and also here.