NEW ORLEANS, La.On our first night in New Orleans, my father, brother and I were in the French Quarter on a street lined with storefronts offering suits of armour and antique guns in the windows. (Vancouverites whove never been to the French District can imagine it like this: all the charm of 200-year-old Spanish colonial buildings offset by the tackiness of the Gastown tourist strip and the seediness of the Granville Street Entertainment District). Two women were screaming behind us: You have just missed a show. We turned to see one of them yanking down her tank top and breaking out in delirious giggles.
I began to worry that New Orleans was a city I should have visited a decade ago, when the dive bars on Bourbon Street and live music might have held more appeal. This trip would be different. For one thing, my father is unable to walk any great distance; we required cab rides to get even half a mile from our 119-room hotel, International House, in the Central Business District. Our trip would need to be more planned-out than I might have wished.
My dad had wanted to visit mainly because of the seafood and, in New Orleans, the oysters didnt disappoint. At $13 a dozen at Felixs, an establishment in the French Quarter with no-frills decor, they were better than happy hour prices in Vancouver, my brother enthused. We had oysters cooked Rockefeller-style (i.e. fried in parsley, herbs and butter) the night before, but preferred them raw. These appetizers were followed by fried catfish, soft-shelled crab and an oyster po boy.
On a culinary tour led by former high school teacher Judy Majoie, we learned that New Orleans cuisine comes from both Creole (descendants of the citys original French and Spanish settlers, who later mixed with African-American and Native populations) and Cajun (Acadians expelled from Canada in 1755). Creole cooking is classical; Cajun food is more rustic, one pot-style. Both have their own versions of gumbo. The soupier Creole version features a base made from tomato (an ingredient which isnt found in the more bare-bones Cajun cooking); the stew-like Cajun version is made from a roux made from flour and lard (and not the traditional butter).
But New Orleans rich eating and drinking history, combined with its sizeable tourism industry, can also create an environment where cultural history is commodified, says mixologist Kirk Estiponal and co-owner of Bellocq, in the business district. The citys watering holes birthplace of the sazerac, the worlds oldest cocktail leveraged that drinking pedigree and started offering cocktails that are, in Estiponals words, made from Kool-Aid packs.
By contrast, the cocktails in Bellocq are adventurous but cognizant of tippling history. On my visit, I had a Bonal Gentiane Quinine cobbler. Cobblers are a type of cocktail first mixed in the 1830s when manufactured ice and straws were innovations. In this refreshing rendition, the aperitif is mixed with grapefruit zest in a metal goblet packed with crushed ice.
In Cochon, a casual fine dining establishment in the Warehouse district, the place is packed with locals and tourists aiming for a taste of one of Americas twenty most important restaurants (as named by Bon Appetit). Chef and co-owner Stephen Steyjewski says he wanted to do food that people do in their homes in western Louisiana.
While overly familiar dishes like jambalaya are avoided, the meat-happy eatery offers their takes on the B-sides of this down-home cuisine: boudin, a cajun sausage stuffed with rice, is fried in a crisp ball while fried alligator is given a tangy twist with a chili garlic aioli. As much as we wanted to eat our way through Nola, we slowed down after our first couple of days. On one feeding break, we ended up by accident one night at Yuki, an izakaya restaurant that projects Astro Boy cartoons on Frenchmen Street the neighbourhood where locals go for
music.
The izakaya pub was hosting Kanako Fuwas Moshi Moshi, which played both Okinawa gypsy songs and English-language classics like When the Saints Go Marching In (the latter sung tunefully but perhaps phonetically, with scant inflection in any of the lyrics).
In between songs, Fuwa explained that she was a music therapist who had come to New Orleans from Japan: I literally threw a dart at a map. Her charming performance revealed to us that this city, which packages its rich traditions so tidily for tourists, was still capable of surprising fun.
