So my wife had a conference for food science in New Orleans, so I took the opportunity to tag along for a short vacation. Kyle might get some ideas from my recent trip there when he is there this summer.

I had never been there before, so was interested in what the French Quarter would be like, and also the food, which will be the focus if this first post.

Disclaimer here that aside from the occasional meal of fish, I am not a big seafood eater (so shellfish is really not my thing) so my food choices will be influenced by this. What I do consider myself is a doughnut fan, so that is where I'll start here:



This is famous Café du Monde, which serves nothing but Beignets and coffee really, and it was packed most of the time I was in NO. Menu is on the serviette (a.k.a. napkin for you Americans) dispenser:



Here is my order:



I had read on line that one order was enough for 2 people, but honestly I am not a big eater and I had no issues eating 3 of these. Careful they are hot when they first come out, and they were quite good for fried nuggets of dough. The coffee was no great shakes by any means - very watered down and the milk made that worse.

Wore the Speedy this whole trip, so a shot with the left over powdered sugar - if you are not diabetic before you eat these, you probably would be if you ate all that sugar:



For dinner one night we had a sampler of more traditional dishes, so this is the Jambalaya with chicken and sausage, which was very good:



There are 3 main types of Gumbo, and this was also chicken and sausage, but it tastes completely different than the Jambalaya:



And this is pecan pie - they are particular about the way you say pecan, so be warned:



One day for lunch I had to try the original Muffuletta sandwich at Central Grocery, the store where this was invented - here you see a "1/2 cut in 1/2" as a whole one would be way too much for me on my own:



Crusty bread, somewhat dry, with various cold cuts with cheese and an olive/pickle topping that added a lot of flavor, and also a lot of salt:



They have a small (and I mean small) seating area that was jammed at lunch, and even though I sat as close as I could to the counter people were bumping into me every few seconds. One afternoon we tried to pick one of these up around 4:30 pm, and they had run out, so don't wait too late in the day because once they are gone, they are gone...

Another evening we went to a place where Jacqui had the fish with a crawfish sauce on top - I tried the fish and one of the crawfish - it was okay but not something I would want a lot of:



She enjoyed her fish, and I had the red beans and rice with sausage - it was simply awesome, and probably the best meal I had there. It sounds very simple, but the beans have so much flavour it's really good:



One day I made my way from the French Quarter over to the Warehouse district to go to the WWII museum there, and on the way back stopped at a small café and had some fried green tomatoes for lunch, and they were quite good:



For beer we tried a few, but the Abita Amber was our favourite - these were consumed on the tour bus as we took a city tour one day - drinking pretty much everywhere is accepted there.



One of the main drinks they have there are Daiquiris, and we saw several "drive through" Daiquiri shops on our tours - if you get one and are driving, don't put the straw into the cup or you will get a ticket!

Our last night there we had made reservations for one of Emeril Lagasse's restaurants, so we ate at NOLA. Once again my wife had fish, and she found it quite good although the sauce was made with bacon and it was a tad overpowering for her - would have been fine for me likely:



I could not pass up the buttermilk fired chicken, which was great. The sugar snap peas were done to perfection, and the chicken was very tasty - probably the best fried chicken I have ever had:



I finished the night with a drink - not sure if anyone else here is into Absinthe...



This one wasn't bad, but I have had better:



So that was the food for this trip.

More on the rest of the trip later...

Cheers, Al

 

Is anyone else hungry?
Thanks for sharing, Al. Looks like it was a great trip.

 

Hmm, with that Absinthe, it's a good thing you took pics, or you wouldn't have remembered any of it!! What a great gastronomic tour-have never been to NO as yet, but do plan to go there one day.

Good of you to include a watch or two...

 

Looks like a great place for a foodie tour, hope to get there one day

 

I should never read threads like this before eating my own dinner. It would take me several weeks to recover from a food trip like this, but it would be worth it.

 

good work, al.

looks like you went, "all-in".

last time i was in n'awlins, I stayed in some converted old firehouse. anyone know it?

 

yes, that stuff is dangerous. they say death is in the dosage and with absinthe one must respect the old adage.

i've witnessed heavy drinkers take a big 'ole swill of that stuff on an empty stomach and then wind up sleeping in a closet for 10 hours.

 

The Absinthe I had at NOLA was the Kübler brand - 53% alcohol by volume. So in Absinthe terms, not a particularly strong one. The Lucid brand I normally drink at home is 62%.

Of course Absinthe is not really meant to be consumed straight from the bottle, but using a carafe set-up like I show above with cold water slowly dripped over a sugar cube on a slotted Absinthe spoon. This creates the louche, which is the cloudy drink that you actually drink.

As always, consume responsibly and you won't have any problems drinking Absinthe.

Cheers, Al

 

kerrist...... bacon flavoured fish sauce....

WTF?????

 

Awesome.

 

Everything is better with bacon. That is a cold hard scientific fact.

 

So, you must be a Canadian?! or maybe Canadian heritage?! Mmmmm...bacon!!

 

I am fasting today, reading this make today's really a challenge

 

Unfortunately for you I'm pretty sure cajun food is practially the definition of حَرَام‎

Sorry.

 

I'm not canadian, but bacon... I don't know. It's like heroin to me.

I have a lot of Scot ancestry but I hate most of the traditional dishes. I don't believe haggis is even legal in the US.

 

you didn't have a Hurricane?
http://www.patobriens.com/patobriens/

 

So for those bacon lovers, one of the big things in NO is the candy, specifically pralines. I ventured into one of the many stores selling this and didn't get pralines, but bought some brittle with pecans and bacon - it's wonderful...bacon does make everything taste better.

I will post more on the tours we took, but just a minute to talk about some not so good stuff in NO just to let Kyle know what to expect, in particular if he is taking children with him.

Pretty much every day we woke up there and turned on the TV to check the weather, there was a shooting, stabbing, sexual assault, or armed robbery in the French Quarter where we stayed or not far away. There are certainly areas that I would not go to at night, and in some places I wandered to I was certainly very aware of my surroundings even in the daytime. 2 days after I rode the St. Charles Ave. streetcar to the warehouse district, a woman (tourist) was hit by a "stray bullet" getting off that same streetcar. I was walking down one street in the French Quarter in the middle of the day one day, and nearly walked into an arrest in progress. Not to be paranoid, but just this week I think there was a mass shooting on Bourbon street with 9 people hit, and one has died. Thankfully this was after we left.

There are a lot of homeless people on the streets, and I saw many instances of people begging, eating out of garbage cans, etc. right in the main tourist areas like down at the French Market (by the way, this is a good place to get tee shirts). None of them were aggressive, but they were everywhere. Bourbon street itself is pretty seedy, much more so than the other streets in the FQ. We didn't spend a lot of time on Bourbon street to be honest.

I have been to some dicey places in my life, so I am not a noob to travel and have even been mugged once in South America. For a first world city, it was a bit surprising in NO to be honest.

Having said all that, everyone who served us in any way was always very polite and helpful - it's rare to go to a place and not encounter at least one person who is rude, but everyone we met there was great.

Cheers, Al

 

I did, but no photo taken. Not really into fruity drinks that much, but it was okay.

Cheers, Al

 

Yeah, I'll pass the sausage & the bacon....... The chicken looks very promising.