New Orleans for New Year

I’ve made about half a dozen visits to New Orleans and every time I leave feeling defeated. JJ says I should use a more positive descriptor like “sated,” but the problem is I want to stay and eat more, drink more, see more, and sleep less – I just can’t. The first time I visited, I awoke after the third night and turned to degenerate SL and said, “I… don’t think I can do another night.” As I recall, his response was something like, “Oh, thank God.” Though we had intended to stay longer, we climbed into the car and made our bleary-eyed way back to Georgia. It is rare that a good time can be so good that I am forced to stop.

My room wasn’t ready on time at the Renaissance New Orleans Pere Marquette French Quarter Area Hotel, so they gave me a $50 voucher for their restaurant, Tacklebox. Their po boy wasn’t great, nor was the shrimp cocktail, nor the cocktail I sampled, but I wasn’t going to pass up cutting into their profit margin.

I trekked into the French Quarter proper. Bourbon Street has changed a bit since my last visit. A lot of the strip clubs are gone, including the one that had the robotic legs on a trapeze swinging in and out of an open window. I’ve seen some great acts in the town, so the lack of sleazy burlesque is a real loss. But the drunkards remain, stumbling down the street with those grenade-style plastic containers, puking against door frames, desperately searching for a place to pee – so that was heartening. At least the town hasn’t gone the way of New York City or Vegas and gentrified beyond my interests. Even so, the crowds on Bourbon Street aren’t my thing any more so I circumnavigated the crush to arrive at Boondock Saint, a little bar a block off Bourbon that had treated me well on a previous visit. The place attracts what few locals still lurk or work in the heart of the French Quarter, in addition to random waves of tourists.

With a bit more time to kill before JJ arrived, I moved on to my favorite dive in town, The Abby, a tiny, dark, dingy, place that reminds me a lot of the back room at The Point circa 1991, complete with scraggly, black-leather-wearing punks and serious, career drinkers. Long before Sister Louisa’s Church opened in Atlanta, drinking at the Abby always felt slightly blasphemous thanks to the stained-glass lighting.

JJ arrived and we took off on a tour of New Orleans’ not-served-in-plastic-novelty-to-go-cup beverages. First up, French 75 for their titular cocktail and a Kapu Kapu, a rum-based drink in a glass tiki mug that ended up being our favorite of the entire weekend. We had planned on snacking there too, but they weren’t serving food in the bar on New Year’s Eve so on we roamed.

Many places we’d wanted to visit were crowded for dinner, so we landed at Manolito, a small, charming, Cuban restaurant. Their “Cajun eggnog” was pretty good, as were their croquettes, but by New Orleans standards the joint is merely passable.

New Years Eve festivities were beginning to spill out into the street. We passed a parade of people following some music – but not the usual second line sort. Instead, a DJ pushed his gear around on a grocery cart, complete with a disco ball, leading a line of revelers dancing toward the river.

In the neighboring Faubourg Marigny district, we found a much more traditional scene.

We returned to The Abby for to-go bottles of cheap champagne and then climbed the levy to watch the fireworks over the river. Neighbors shared their better bubbly as the Mississippi reflected the sparkling explosions. Eventually, we were drawn back into the streets for another, considerably more amateur fireworks display in front of the golden statue of Joan of Arc. We chatted with a few more colorful locals before calling it a night.

Mother’s may not be absolute the best food in New Orleans, but is reliably good and we were staying only a few blocks away – perfect for a Morning After. Breakfast featured a crawfish etouffee omelet and a biscuit drowned in roast beef debris.

It was more than enough fuel for what would turn into one of the longest hikes of the decade. First up, a stop at a bare plinth that once hosted a statue of Robert E. Lee. The mayor of New Orleans pulled down all the Confederate propaganda a while back, but they have yet to put anything in place of that particular traitor, so now the column appears to be a lost lighthouse guiding a few homeless people to lurk on the steps, creating a disheartening metaphor. Though the war was won, you could say the battle rages on. Then on through the Garden District to gawk at glorious Victorian houses, as well as an event space that was once the café atop the Eiffel Tower.

Eventually, we caught a streetcar a few stops to Audubon Park but decided the $45 entry fee for the zoo was a bit steep, especially for our already-tired feet, so we meandered back toward downtown, stopping for a coffee before catching a bus.

The hike reminded me that Atlanta is sorely lacking in culture. And it’s not just playful architecture, with incredible woodwork and colors. Random bollards are decorated with mosaics. The food and drink never cease to amaze me. Even the average barflies seem a bit more creative in their eccentricity in New Orleans. Then there’s the music. Does any town have more working musicians per capita? You gotta trek a long way in New York or San Francisco to find as much music, art, architectural detail, and crazy characters as you’ll find in an average block in the Big Easy.

One siesta later, we were on the hunt for collards and black-eyed peas to ring in the New Year. Alas, we had no luck and ended up having a late dinner of Cajun fare at Coop’s. Excellent food, but the wait is often very long and the room always a bit too loud. I’m not sure it lives up to the hype.

Just down the street at the Abby, we found some of the characters we’d met the night before and got some harrowing tales of surviving the post-Katrina week in the Superdome. (The biggest takeaway – don’t assume the city, state or federal government can provide even basic supplies like fucking drinking water during an emergency, much less do so in an efficient manner.)

In the morning, we worked off a few of the billion calories we’d absorbed with another cross-town trek to Horn’s, a little breakfast/lunch joint in a house in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. The Crabby Wife features a delicious crab cake topped by a fried egg and smothered in maybe the best crawfish etouffee I’ve had, and possibly the best breakfast overall.

We visited the Jazz Museum and saw some fantastic exhibits on Professor Longhair, Louis Prima, and the history of drums in New Orleans. However, even if two of their rooms hadn’t been closed for renovation, they wouldn’t have space for a good, in-depth history of the genre. The museum is housed in a small portion of the old mint and features a room with a few odds and ends of the former equipment for manufacturing or counting money, but you could skip that exhibit entirely and not miss anything. Overall, worth the time and the price of admission but I came away wanting to re-watch the Ken Burns documentary series.

Despite random bursts of rain, the line for Café du Monde stretched a block long. We skipped it and ducked into Tujague’s, the second oldest restaurant in town and, therefore, one of the oldest in the country. As we got cocktails, a culinary tour assembled in the bar area, so we eavesdropped and learned the sad news that the establishment is moving. Tujague’s doesn’t own the building – how they have managed to rent the place since 1856 is beyond me – and the latest landlord has priced them out. The restaurant has found a bigger place only a few blocks away but to lose this gorgeous, historic space is a tragedy. The bar alone is a time capsule. We got a brisket sandwich, on the recommendation of the tour guide, and moaned happily with every bite. Not just tender, but flavorful and complex.

After a nap, we followed Tujague’s with the nation’s oldest family run restaurant, Antoine’s, for drinks and snacks in their Hermes Bar. JJ had a fantastic brandy Sazerac. I opted for another New Orleans classic, the Vieux Carré. For a snack, we went with gougères, fancy cheese sticks, drizzled with a garlic sauce that would repel even the hardiest vampire. Delicious.

Back to French 75, we sampled more of their interesting cocktails and paired them with fried oysters wrapped in bacon, and black-eyed pea and tasso “savory beignets” – much more like croquettes than donuts, and perfect.

As we meandered about, a row of people with the high-tech modern-day equivalent of sandwich boards walked past, each carrying a flat screen on their backs and a projector on their chests. They stopped at a corner and broadcast a beer ad on the walls around them. I was reminded of a bit from Futurama about the prevalence of advertising on every medium and surface.

We hiked along the levee, watching the Natchez paddle boat return to dock from a nightly jazz cruise. The next morning, we’d meet some people that had taken the trip. They’d enjoyed it, but they were package tour types from Australia who’d also done an air-boat ride in the swamps and were on their way to a cruise.

Beachbum Berry’s Latitude 29 is decorated in classic tiki style, but it his research into the original tiki drinks that makes it a worthwhile stop. They’ve got some great cocktails and the location isn’t in the heart of the Quarter so it wasn’t crowded at all (in fact, I’d worry about their survival were they not franchising their menu at places like Bonton here in Atlanta.) We took another walk around the neighborhood before calling it a night.

In the morning we were hankering for beignets of the sweet variety, but the rain finally made good after days of teasing. Rather than swim to Café du Monde, we stopped at a tiny place – maybe called Beignets – and had some decent eggs and taters as a side to pillowy, fried dough covered in powdered sugar.

We caught a break in the rain and got across town to the Backstreet Cultural Museum, a small house and former funeral parlor that now houses a room full of costumes from various Indian social clubs. The history of this particular cultural appropriation is interesting, to be sure, but the costumes themselves are stunning. The detailed bead work, the colors, the absurdity – it’s New Orleans in clothing form. They have a second room dedicated to jazz, but it doesn’t compare to the costumery. I took a ton of photos but you really should see the stuff in person. The curator and his daughter are swell folks too.

The bartender at Latitude 29 had given us a lot of pointers so we trekked over to his lunch recommendation, Shank Charcuterie, in the Faubourg Marigny district. The sole operator is “the Soup Nazi of meats,” we were warned. He butchers various animals for you to take home and cook yourself, while also preparing one of the most limited menus you will find anywhere. There were about six things on the chalkboard when we arrived, all of them were meat-based if not entirely consisting of flesh. After polling a table of customers, we opted for meatballs in a cream gravy with capers, and half a grilled chicken. I had thought, “How good can a simple grilled chicken be?” but watching him baste the thing in butter and garlic after every flip had my mouth watering before it even arrived. A patron next to us got a burger that made us jealous. If Shank is still in business on our next visit, we’ll be back. In a town simmering with amazing food, this rises to the top.

We had intended to get one last round before leaving town, but this was the point at which I admitted defeat. Hauling my full belly around in the pouring rain killed my desire for more, so we got our bags and headed for the airport.

A week later, I already had to remind myself why I hadn’t moved there permanently. I’d like to put off death by cardiac arrest, diabetes, and/or cirrhosis for a few more years. Perhaps in my retirement I’ll join the ranks of los vagabundos…