My roommate, Ashley, was lucky enough to spend a week in New Orleans for the first weekend of Jazz Fest. I’m a fan of Southern food myself, having lived in Memphis until I was 13, but cajun and creole food (and yes, they’re different)? That’s not quite the same menu as fried chicken, grits, and collard greens.
I knew I was a fan of beignets and etoufee, and now am convinced I need to spend longer than a layover in this culture rich and foodie fun city. Check out Ashley’s story of gumbo, turtle, crawfish, and good ol’ Southern breakfast!
A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to head down to New Orleans to spend an entire week enjoying jazz fest. One thing I was not prepared for when I arrived down in New Orleans was the food. I had heard about the crawfish and the alligator but I figured that my eating habits wouldn’t change that drastically while down there. Boy, was I wrong.
About a few days into the trip my friend Heather and I started referring to our stomachs as “The Situation.” The Situation was that they were a little…larger. Full of fried shrimp, fried, raw and chargrilled oysters, crawfish po’boys, alligator and bread pudding. A whole assortment of foods that my stomach and I were not used to, yet loved. Could not get enough of.
The love affair with Cajun food began the first night. I was staying with my friend Andy and he surprised me by pulling out the big guns. He was making us Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo and teaching me how to make it at the same time. I learned about why his right arm is stronger than his left (sure it’s from stirring the roux….suuuuuure) and I chopped an entire red onion without crying (which is a huge feat in and of itself–I ALWAYS cry with red onions for some reason). I watched the roux change colors and watched it stew. The finished product the next day was SO good and I was glad I had two bowls when, after getting drunk, we forgot to put the Gumbo away in the fridge and it turned moldy overnight. (A crime!)
The gumbo was the only homemade dish we had, the rest of the days and nights filled with one restaurant stop after another. I breakfasted at Surrey’s on Magazine Street in the Garden District with friends Chris and Ana and had the most amazing Crabmeat Omelette, while Ana had a fantastic Crawfish Omelette, Chris the Migra with Chorizo. Yes, we all swapped plates at one point so we could enjoy everything on the table. We joked about licking our plates clean (especially Ana’s because her’s was just SO good that we all would fight over the excess on the plate, if it had come down to that) but our waitress, clearly catching wind of our plan, intercepted our plates before they could reach our tongues.
Thursday night we went out for dinner at this out of the way local joint off of Canal street which I forget the name of. Madina’s or something of the sort. This was the night of epic drinking but it started with turtle soup, which I was unsure how I felt about eating since I had a pet turtle when I was little called Bubbles. But I had to try it. When they served us though, they told us it was fake turtle, actually veal, and I was disappointed. This was information they could have, I don’t know, shared with us BEFORE we ordered it? I only ordered it because of how strange it was! I’ve had veal before. Apparently turtle meat skyrocketed after Katrina and the only places that sell them did not include this restaurant. Nevertheless it was delicious. The second course was a whole lot of…fried. Fried oysters and fried shrimp. I could barely get through half of them without feeling like I was about to blow up. So good, but wow.
Somehow I drank enough to make me forget just how much fried crap I’d ingested and had some greasy disgusting pizza on Bourbon Street in my drunken haze later that night. Maybe all this grease helped me not be hung over the next morning? Maybe.
The food at Jazz fest was unexpected. I was not prepared for the amazingness that was crawfish bread, a cheesy concoction stuffed inside bread with these little crawfish which were quickly becoming my favorite item to eat. It was SO good. Between acts I picked up a crawfish po’boy for my dinner and immediately regretted that decision. While amazingly delicious (and oh, it was), it did not sit well with my stomach and I ended up in pain for some of the night until Andy pumped me full of pepto. I did bear through the pain though and ended up standing in line at Acme’s to try their oysters. People had been mentioning these char-grilled oysters that have Parmesan cheese and herbs on top of them and I had to try them. YUM. So amazing. I was on the fence about oysters until this trip. I ate so many, I am now a huge fan!
Saturday morning we headed to Slim Goodies for breakfast, Andy’s supposed favorite breakfast joint. He recommended the Tex Mex plate, which included eggs, avocados, beans, cheese, salsa and other stuff. I was sold at the avocados! So naturally all four of us at our table got that option and we all devoured it. Somehow, I still had room for food–or at least beignets from Cafe du Monde. Oh holy powdered sugar. SO GOOD.
And yet, I still had room in The Situation. That afternoon, the second day of Jazz Fest, I continued eating. I tried Crawfish Monica, a pasta dish with some kind of red cream sauce with crawfish. Again, amazing. What is with this town and it’s fantastic dishes?! Everything I tried was worthy of the fake reactions you get out of the Food Network stars (what? There is no way those reactions are real), only these reactions coming from me were 100% REAL. I had a bite of meat pie that was great and got a bowl of white chocolate bread pudding, quite possibly my favorite dessert that warranted two trips to that stand over two days.
Saturday night we all were pretty tired but a few of us ended up at Mona’s on Frenchman Street for some Turkish food, a small break from the fried shellfish–but still greasy. It was good but certainly not really worthy of too big a mention in the grand scheme of New Orleans foodgasms.
Sunday morning before heading to Jazzfest Andy, Margaret, Mollie, her brother John and I headed to our reservation at The Court of Two Sisters down in the quarter. It was a beautiful old restaurant with an outdoor garden seating area with a live jazz band. It was a buffet and while it wasn’t the BEST food, it was still good. I had three plates of food–one was fruit, the other Eggs Benedict with an assortment of carbs (including something that involved sweet potatoes, an ultimate fave of mine), and the third was a plate full of dessert. Clearly couldn’t go without that! To top it all off I had a delicious Bloody Mary, a drink I had been craving since Friday when Heather mentioned that she had just had one before coming into the festival.
Since Sunday was my last day at Jazz Fest and I was determined to eat as much as possible. I mean, these food stands were not going to follow me to Boulder (and boy, I was glad for that!) so I had to make good use of them. I had some catfish dish that was really good, grabbed more crawfish bread, some crawfish pie and yet another white chocolate bread pudding. I also tried a bit of some bread stuffed with oysters and some banana bread pudding–both were very good. I was so full from that by the time the Allman Brothers ended and we headed back to Andy’s, I couldn’t even think about eating anything more.
Monday, my last day in New Orleans, was epic and not just for the music. It started with Heather and Jake at Mother’s on Poydras Street where we ordered the Soft Shell Crab Po’boy (shown above) and the Crawfish Etouffee Omelette with a side of Debris and biscuits to share. FOODGASM. The po’boy was amazing, the omelette to die for. Debris is the parts of roast beef that have fallen off into the gravy and was pretty damn tasty. We piled that on top of the biscuit and devoured everything on our plates.
The Situation was clearly growing larger, for both of us.
For dinner that evening we decided Felix’s for oysters was a must. Andy, Heather, Jake and I managed to put away four dozen oysters (our reasoning? The oil spill, extremely tragic and heartbreaking, was going to kill all those poor oysters and we had to eat as many as we possibly could). FOUR DOZEN. Three dozen of those were raw, one dozen char-grilled. We had to mix things up a bit though and we also got fried pickles, sweet potato fries and blackened alligator. The alligator was SO good. That was the one thing I was determined to eat while in NOLA and it was looking like it wouldn’t happen but when we saw it on the menu we had to order it. I was impressed! It was chewy but really tasty!
New Orleans was an epic trip full of amazing music, amazing food and some excellent company. I am completely in love with it and can’t wait for my next trip down. I just need to give my stomach a break!
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This post makes me want to go back to New Orleans SO BADLY. Gah. Yay for their food and an amazing trip!
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