Now that I’ve explained how to safely eat a beignet, I can move on to describing other foods of New Orleans. This will not include the overrated po’ boy, which while ubiquitous is really nothing more than some sloppy meat stuffed into a French baguette. But this does include animal crackers, which, while not unique to the South, are currently served on Jet Blue flights to New Orleans.
OYSTER: New Orleans boasts of its oyster offerings, and Acme Oyster House is said to have the best in town. Sarah and I sat at the restaurant’s bar, each with a pint of IPA from the excellent New Orleans Lager & Ale Brewing Company (NOLA) because it was explained that a beer brings out the best in oysters, which I wasn’t going to argue about. Pictured here are the raw oysters that we ordered alongside chargrilled oysters, which are filled with garlic and parmesan. The oysters were big and gooey, unlike the smaller and sweeter oysters more common in the northeast, so I preferred them chargrilled. Other local twists on oysters are Oysters Rockefeller (grilled with a rich herb sauce) and Oysters Bienville (stuffed with bacon and shrimp), which we didn’t find.
BOUDIN: The trendy neighborhood of Marigny has a number of hip cafes and restaurants including Elizabeth’s (pictured below left), which The New York Times hailed back in 2007 for its praline bacon. The biscuits were perfectly flakey. The grits were appropriately bland. Best of all was the boudin balls in creole mustard sauce, which came in the pictured empty dish in the middle of our table.
ALLIGATOR: During a brief stop in Baton Rouge, we tried alligator at The Chimes restaurant in the LSU area (pictured below right in the smaller dish). Alligator, like everything that isn’t chicken, kind of tasted like chicken. That big dish of food is the seafood platter, filled with stuffed shrimp, fried shrimp, fried oysters, fried catfish, fried stuffed crab, and hush puppies (deep-fried cornmeal).
WAFFLE: The North and South have a lot of historical and cultural differences, and let’s not forget to add the ongoing battle of pancakes vs waffles. While northern states can always get their breakfast fix at the International House of Pancakes (IHOP), the southern states are partial to the cranny-filled circular waffles from the Waffle House. And while I am partial to pancakes, I’d eat a sweet waffle from Waffle House over a flabby IHOP pancake any day.
Plus, we were memorably served on the restaurant’s 58th anniversary by a nice young man named Rabbit.
“Is Rabbit your nickname?” I asked.
“That’s the name my granddaddy gave me,” Rabbit said.
“Your mother didn’t get to name you?” I asked.
“He held me in his arms and said that I looked like a little rabbit, and so that’s my name.”
“Well Rabbit, do you sell any souvenir Waffle House mugs here?”
“Not here, but I won’t notice if the two mugs on your table go missing,” he chuckled.
BREAD PUDDING: Perhaps the best meal in New Orleans was at Commander’s Palace, a 150-year-old upscale restaurant in the Garden District. Again, we had a memorable waiter: Peter Turre, who turned out to be the former drummer for Ray Charles (which we only learned at the end of our meal, after my third 25-cent martini had removed all inhibitions about asking questions, and after all other lunch patrons had left and freed Turre to chat with us more). Turre said he broke his hand years ago and can no longer drum, although his brother Steve Turre is also a musician who still plays trombone with the SNL Band. For appetizers: turtle soup and shrimp tasso henican (shrimp stuffed with ham atop okra). For entrees: pulled pork empanada for me, and grilled red fish for Sarah. Best of all was the dessert of hot bread pudding soufflé.
PIG EAR: The variety of food in New Orleans stands in stark contrast to Mississippi’s culinary wasteland. The state has enough problems without me poking fun at it—lowest education levels and highest poverty rates in the nation—but the photo below of Jackson’s Big Apple Inn, which The New York Times’ recently named a notable restaurant because of its pig ear sandwiches, kind of says it all.
