After Hurricane Katrina, my community of family and friends was flung from San Francisco to Austin, Atlanta and everywhere in-between: Memphis, Indianapolis, DC, Houston, rural Louisiana, etc.  But the place I felt most at home, in spite of the fact that none of my family or closest friends were here, was NYC.  Simply because here, I can more easily experience the best aspects of New Orleans culture – food, music, art, architecture, drinking – than in any other city in the world.  New Orleans and New York have a special affinity for one another, and there is virtually no New Orleans specialty that New York cannot provide.  (I’ll argue the opposite as well in another piece.)

So for me, New York is like a giant playground of my favorite NOLA things – fried oysters, jazz, street ignorance, festivals, strong cocktails – interspersed with pockets of genuine NOLA lovers, folks who really do “know what it means” to miss New Orleans and are committed to keeping the love of the place alive in their hearts.  What’s even better is that there is a strong community of folks that works to ensure that NOLA music and culture is consistently brought to New York and exposed to new audiences: the NOLAFunk guys, as well as the venues Sullivan Hall, Highline Ballroom, Terminal 5, a bunch of places in Williamsburg, and more I’m sure that I’m overlooking.  I mean, Trombone Shorty headlined the Red Hot + New Orleans at BAM and it was outstanding.

More fun on a daily basis, however, is rooting out restaurants that dabble in NOLA cuisine.  NOLA’s culinary charms have drawn many an aspiring chef to its bosom, and many of those chefs eventually land in New York.  I stumbled onto this affinity purely coincidentally.  Fried oysters happen to be my favorite seafood dish – I used to eat a 12″ fried oyster po-boy about twice a week in NOLA – and it was in the course of hunting them down in New York that I realized that every place that ended up having a delicious fried oyster had a chef that either was from New Orleans or trained in New Orleans, or spent time living there.  Here’s a roundup of my favorite NOLA/NOLA-influenced (note I said *my* favorite; I’ve never been to Mara’s Homemade or Bourbon Street mostly b/c I think they’re tacky – hello purple, green, and gold exterior – AND I’ve heard mixed reviews from folks whose tastebuds I trust. So they’re not included):

Blue Ribbon

Eric and Bruce Bromberg are music aficionados who are no stranger to NOLA’s charms.  Eric Bromberg attended Tulane while pursuing a music career in NOLA, which is all the validation I need that he *knows* NOLA food.  Then they both went to Cordon Bleu.  I love every recipe they’ve ever touched.

The fable of their humble beginnings goes that they wanted to make a restaurant where they as food- and music- industry folk getting off work late could get great food – not pizza/hamburgers, etc – so their restaurant was one of the first with a kitchen staying open until 4:00 AM.  Ten restaurants later, we know it worked.  I’ve only eaten at four out of the 10, but I’ve never ever been disappointed.

Needless to say, It was like music to my ears when Blue Ribbon Sushi opened a location behind the Time Warner Center.  I no longer had to trek downtown or to Brooklyn for my fried oysters!  I could get them on the way home from work.  Also, their more casual fare at Brooklyn Bowl is delightful. (Hello, Oyster Egg Shooters!)  It also doesn’t hurt that Questlove and/or Q-tip spins there on a monthly basis, and there’s a constant roster of great music, much of it the stuff that can be found on the NOLA music circuit.  My last show there was Robert Randolph, the slide guitar king.

ACME

There’s an ACME on Decatur Street in New Orleans.  This one is as close of an approximation as you can get in NYC.  There’s also a cute little live music venue in the basement, featuring assorted indie acts.  I usually come here when I know I want assorted seafood but I’m not quite sure what to get.  You know the drill.  There were rumors of Acme’s closing earlier this year after a “can’t-refuse” offer was made to the owner, but I believe they’re back in business.

The Green Table

I love everything about this place.  The fact that the menu is largely seasonal items plucked fresh from the farmer’s market that day, the fact that they expanded from 6 tables to 12 and finally have a bar.  That they are dedicated to sustainability and social responsibility.  But most importantly, I love the fact that Brett Sims is a ragin’ cajun who has managed to bring a fried oyster po-boy to within walking distance of my office.

The Redhead

Duck gumbo, anyone?  Although I usually go for their outstanding southern fried chicken.  Meg Grace’s pastries also never disappoint; I’ve definitely purse-nabbed some of the cookie treats they sometimes give with the bill.  Her bacon peanut brittle is also quite notable, and there’s an annual Crawfish boil that’s done just right.

Fort Defiance

St. John Frizell – also a Tulane alum – studied the Central Grocery muffuletta and has created quite the tasty approximation.  The red beans and rice and hurricanes are also nothing to scoff at.  I was there the day the Saints won the NFC Championship in 2009.  We all cried and hugged, and ate King Cake from Randazzo’s.

Two Boots Pizza

The Two Boots = NOLA + Italy.  It’s my favorite NYC slice, hands down (Sorry, traditionalists. Crawfish pie!!!)  I usually get the Cleopatra Jones, but all of it, even the veggie pies, are outstanding.

Great Jones Cafe

Great Jones is probably the only place in New York where I’ll eat the two sacred staples of NOLA cooking: red beans and gumbo (only when I don’t feel like making it myself).  I also appreciated their fried oysters and andouille sausage.  It’s also one of the most non-assuming places in the city.  No flash and panache here, just good food and nice people.  You really do feel as though you’ve been transported to a little bayou town when you step inside.

NOLA PLACES I HAVEN’T BEEN, BUT INTEND TO (Shout out to Garden & Gun for a few reminders):

Imperial Woodpecker Snowballs – Yes, Real Snowballs in NYC. ‘Nuff said.
Ninth Ward
Cheeky Sandwiches – they’re only open 8am-6pm (time for a work field trip!)
Tchoup Shop at d.b.a. – I generally avoid DBA in NYC for a number of reasons, but if they reopen this summer I’m doing it.
Creole – I believe I got into an argument with the chef here at the Black Culinarian Alliance dinner at Tavern on the Green three years ago.  We were arguing about the texture of one of his dishes, which was completely wrong in my opinion.  I don’t remember which one, but suffice it to say that I’ve never eaten there either, but I’m still curious.

Does this need an explanation?  I don’t think so.  Here’s to hoping this cart outlasts the temporary summer lunch market at Madison Square Park.

Tacos from the 23rd St. Calexico Cart

One Steak, One Chicken, Extra Pico, All Good

I hate Times Square.  While the bright lights are noteworthy, and can be mesmerizing (I begrudgingly admit), the throngs of slack jawed tourists staring blankly up into the sky or otherwise just looking lost make my blood pressure soar.  They make me want to punch them in the face or yank their cameras and run.  Normally a demure person, Times Square turns me into a hard-charging, elbow-throwing neanderthal, growling and hissing at innocent bystanders.

So I thought of it as a personal challenge when a friend suggested a visit to Taste of Times Square.  Having worked in the area before, I was skeptical of the restaurants that would be presenting.  Times Square isn’t exactly known for it’s culinary delights, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to subject myself to the uncultured masses, lines and other ridiculousness to eat a tiny plate from Hard Rock Cafe or Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.  But a tiny voice said, “You’re so jaded.  Just go!  It’ll be an experience, if nothing else.  You might be pleasantly surprised!”

So I get there and immediately have to stop myself from hyperventilating, freaking out and leaving when I enter the fray.  I squeeze around, starving, and trying to see what’s on people’s plates, what looks good.  The first thing I notice is the mob around the Virgil’s tent.  When I worked in the Bryant Park area, I ordered a fried chicken po-boy from Virgil’s every Friday, so I was no stranger to it’s charms.  However, I dodged the line my friends stood in and went for a dry-ish chicken sandwich from the Stadium Grill at Bowlmor Lanes (sparse on the condiments…  the individual layers were good though).  But not pic-worthy.  I continued walking and became intrigued by the prospect of a raw oyster with creamy Guinness (yes, the beer) sauce on it.  It was disgusting and a bad idea.  I spit it out.

It was fun to see giant shrimp or anthropomorphic bowling pins in bibs dancing around to some pretty impressive blues music throughout the festival, but the best food by far was above 46th St.  Toloache was serving up Tacos al Pastor spiked with pineapples and cilantro, Brasserie 1605 was serving up lobster potstickers with asian slaw, and there were two amazing desserts, a strawberry shortcake with some sort of fruit-mousse, and the killer, bananas foster cheesecake, which I was too full to actually eat.  I think the cheesecake was from Ruby Foos.  The shortcake was forgettable.  But again, I could barely keep straight which restaurant was serving what between the music and the hungry throngs pushing each other around.

At 7:00pm, with one hour left, we realized that we were far too sober to be pushing through a bunch of sweaty tourists, so we made a detour to the $5 happy hour at Brazil Brazil on 46th.  The caipirinhas needed extra sugar, but for $5 we didn’t complain.  Two quick rounds, then we made our way back for the last of the festival.  I had another plate of lobster potstickers (forgot to take pics, I was so busy gorging).  The best part of the festival, though, was the lady hawking plastic ziplock bags for people to “take home” some of the food.  We actually saw folks with entire bags of wings, ribs, etc.  It would’ve never occured to me in a million years to bring ziplock bags to an event of this nature, much less sell them.  But it’s that hustler ingenuity, the enterprising spirit of New York and it’s endless opportunities.  It manifests itself in every nook and cranny of the city, from the darkest corners of a block to the penthouse suites of the same, all in pursuit of that nameless dream.

Reason #1 why I absolutely LOVE New York City.

On my last day in town, I wanted a muffuletta.  While Central Grocery is a historical staple, I’d always found it a bit too oily for my tastes, and the line was always too long.  I had my sights set on a newer place that was making a big splash for itself in the city: Cochon Butcher.

The fine dining restaurant, Cochon, was nominated for a Best New Restaurant James Beard award in 2007, the same year David Link, the co-owner of Cochon and the popular Herbsaint, was named Best Chef: South.  Stephen Stryjewski, the other co-owner of Cochon, was bestowed the very same honor this year in 2011.  This butcher shop was their casual brain child – part butcher counter, part restaurant, part supply shop for amateur gourmet – the epitome of everything that modern “fast food” could be in my opinion.  My flight was at 3pm, and I had just enough time to bring back a muffuletta (and a few Hubig’s Fried Pies) to cram in before I returned to New York.

Needless to say, it didn’t disappoint.  It was the epitome of what I would classify as a nouveau-Creole muffuletta; herby, soft bread perfectly balanced with the finest cuts of meat, a distinctive olive tapenade that may have contained pearl onions and other spices…  simple with depth, exactly what would be expected from a Beard-nominee. And in spite of the fact that I was so entirely full that I didn’t think I could fit another bite of food into my stomach, I ate the whole thing.

My stomach was a wreck on the way home, due simply to the fact that I’d eaten entirely too much.  By volume.  I wasn’t hungry at all when I ate that muffelatta.  On the contrary I was quite full.  So I already knew that what I was doing could only be classified under the biblical sin of gluttony.

I sat shifting back and forth in my seat trying to find some comfort, to no avail.  So I made the utter mistake of consuming yet more – a ginger ale “to settle my stomach”.  Less than 30 minutes later, I was fumbling awkwardly in my seat pocket for the bag of terror, which I proceeded to fill to the horror of my rowmate.  I didn’t feel sick before or after.  Only sublimely embarrassed that I’d actually partaken in a romanesque purge.

A fitting departure for a whirlwind baptism, a forceful re-christening of my stomach into the ways of my old world.  Yet an awakening…  into a new awareness of health and balance.  A knowing, that I still craved another bite in spite of my puke mouth and that I wanted to enjoy eating these things forever, so I had to beat back my primal urges and create balance.  You can’t possibly eat rich and gaudy deliciousness for every meal.  It’s unsustainable.  Hence, my neverending quest for…

Sustainable gluttony.

Having your cake, eating it too, and walking it off afterward so you can fit into the skinny jeans.

Follow my quest.

(Start at the beginning? Intro, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5)

Saturday I had the pleasure of entertaining a dear friend who’d never visited New Orleans before.  Doing double duty, I offered to let her tag along as I visited my old homes and haunts that I’d avoided for so many years after the storm.  There was also a restaurant that I wanted to visit that is way out past the burbs, that has a peculiar local appeal.

I grew up in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, an area that stretched from Fauburg Marigny all the way past the Industrial Canal (near the first levee breach) and beyond toward Chalmette (commonly referred to as the “asscrack” of the city due to the proliferation of gun-toting KKK recruits and white welfare queens in that area…  I digress).  My grandparents lived on the corner Louisa Street and Derbigny Avenue, square in the middle of the 9th Ward, off of Franklin Avenue and in what was once a middle class enclave for up-and-coming black professionals in the mid-20th century.  They were proud homeowners who had a constant stream of extended family and neighbors coming in and out of the kitchen.  During the 80s (*Disclaimer: when I was born) when things got “really bad” due to crack and subsequent crime hitting the streets of New Orleans, they remained in spite of most younger families moving to a more modern suburb, New Orleans East, also known (and disputed) as the “Upper 9th Ward” as it was northeast of my grandparents’ neighborhood and Chalmette.

My mother continued in the family tradition, building her own home from the ground up as well, albeit in New Orleans East: near Eastover, the ill-fated Jazzland theme park, and other normal suburban families and attractions.  Plenty of strip malls, bowling alleys, chain restaurants, etc.  While I was happy to grow up in a charming home, I was always terribly bored by the monotony, and as soon as I was able to began hanging out “downtown”, a place that my grandmother avoided purposefully and my mother visited only at my urging.  “That’s for *those* people” they’d say, meaning white people and tourists.  But I could think of no better thing than to explore the city as a tourist in my hometown!

As soon as I could, I moved onto Tulane‘s charming campus dormitories, and shortly thereafter to a drafty old home on Carrollton Avenue, where the streetcar still runs.  Later, after a short stint in Los Angeles, I moved further down Carrollton Avenue to Palmyra Street in Mid-City, near Canal Street and nearby a lost culinary legend of greasy goodness…  Manuel’s Hot Tamales.  But more on that later.  I said all of this to say that I wanted to go to two places during my driving tour: New Orleans East and Mid-City.

The first thing that people ask me when I tell them I’m from NOLA these days is, “How is it?”  And no one is ever quite prepared for my response, which is always the same:  “The touristy areas, they’re fine, back to normal…  But the more residential areas, not so much.”  Yes, five and a half years later, there are still some blocks you can drive down that have no residents returned, spray paint still on the doors marking where emergency rescuers found residents in need of help, or help that came too late.  There has been very little concerted effort to reorganize the city, or rather, too many conflicting stakeholders wrangling for the city’s future bureaucratically, while exhausted residents burn through their hard earned savings.  So I wanted to see who, of my neighbors, had returned and if my old favorite spots were still there.  We’d sold my family home (after 6 feet of water flooded it) to a developer who’d renovated it quite nicely, so although I missed my home, that wasn’t the main attraction.

It was We Never Close.

On a desolate strip of Chef Menteur Highway aka Highway 90… past truck stops and strip clubs and hooker, I mean hourly motels… past malls of auto parts and dollar trinkets and churches and skating rinks, was a joyous place in a former McDonald’s (didn’t really bother to change much except the sign) called We Never Close.  That is the open and shut to it.  They serve pretty much anything you can think of deep fried and slathered on a french bread loaf w/mayo.  We opted for a soft shell crab po-boy and a hot sausage po-boy.

On the way back, we tried to take the Lakeshore Drive back to mid-city which is a delightful drive, but unfortunately the Lakefront was still closed to the public.  Yes, five years later.

The other important stop in Mid-City, after seeing the locked gate to my old apartment, was Pandora’s for snowballs.  Not snow-cones, people.  One of those might crack your tooth.  A snowball is a syrupy concoction made of the most finely shaven ice you’ve ever had – think a Colorado powdery ski slope after a nice blizzard – topped in things like blood orange or wild blueberry flavored syrup, with condensed milk, whipped cream, cherries, gummy bears, pretty much anything you can think of.  The perfect remedy for a ridiculously hot and humid day as it was that day.

I slurped away and quietly questioned my decision to leave such a comforting place.

Later that night, I’d wanted to check out another old haunt, Port of Call, a legendary burger and pizza shack that was the demise of my short-lived vegetarianism.  But a local buddy of mine insisted that I try a new place called Yo-Mama’s.  Impressive, but they didn’t have the amazing loaded baked potatoes or Huma Humas that are Port of Call’s staple.  Yes, it’s much cleaner and probably more likely to pass an inspection than Port of Call, but if you’re worried about cleanliness…  I just don’t know what to tell you.  I will say that I barely finished this burger and was almost satisfied.  Can’t find the pic, but…  my pics aren’t that great anyway! So, imagine…  The Yelp photo is pretty impressive.

 

Catching up?  Here are the first installments for you…  Reunion – Day 1 / Reunion – Day 2 / Reunion – Day 3

San Diego is a quaint, not-so-little place.  Forever in the shadow of its bigger and more glamorous neighbor, Los Angeles, it constantly seeks to prove itself as more fun, more laid back, and just as worthy of a settlement for young adults and families as ever.  And it largely succeeds.  For those Californians that are not internet or entertainment industry-obsessed, San Diego is the perfect place to have a military, bioscience or technology career in a diverse seaside surfing town with globally influenced food, superb weather, and an active nightlife.

My first stop in San Diego this trip was Santana’s, the fast-mexican drive through with the drool-worthy carne asada fries.  Any time of day or night back in NYC, I crave this monstrosity at the mere mention of nachos or fries.  As such, I made it a priority.  You’ll see why here:

Photo: Carne Asada Fries

A pile of deliciousness

I can never usually finish.  But I certainly tried!

After a disappointing stay at the Bristol Hotel last year, I decided to upgrade and stay at Se San Diego.  Although it’s definitely not New York service (hurried snob that I am), I had a pleasant stay in a well appointed room and was totally worth it for the easy access to chef Anthony Calamari’s wonderful creations!

At my one big dinner at Suite and Tender, I went for the olive tapennade and the caprese salad w/white balsamic vinaigrette…  and ended up choosing the short ribs w/pecorino chive red potatoes and the steak au poivre with bacon-honey brussel sprouts over the mustard brined roast chicken (next time!).

A good dinner is like a good tumble in the sack…  it’ll put you right to sleep!  Needless to say, I slept like a baby.

I had the great pleasure of visiting San Diego the week of St. Patrick’s day this year, and thoroughly enjoyed the Gaslamp District’s festive attack of the holiday.  They do the same thing during Mardi Gras each year: close off the restaurant/bar streets, get a massive DJ act, and let the college kids go nuts.  What I didn’t do, however, is take any photos.  Because you’ve seen Spring Break before.  I was just trying to cut through the crowd and get back to my hotel unsplattered by green-tinted beer or puke.  But I did escape to a gayborhood bar to enjoy a few green-tinted cocktails and the slider sampler at Lei Lounge before retiring.

I’m a bit sad that I couldn’t get down to La Jolla to visit Nine-Ten during this trip…  As the food there was absolutely delightful!  One more reason to return…

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