New Orleans: the Adventure Ends

 

Friday, our next to last full day in New Orleans, was an orgy of eating. We started out with jazz brunch at the famous Court of Two Sisters.

Built in 1832, it’s a classic French Quarter building with gorgeous garden courtyard—closed, alas, due to rain overnight that saturated the seating, but we could peer out and see it. The rooms had a feeling of old-fashioned charm and grandeur, somewhat countered by the casually dressed bridal shower group at one nearby table and the even more casually dressed group of young men—frat boys, I’d guess—at another. Come on, guys, you don’t need a jacket and tie, but take off your baseball caps in the nice restaurant! The buffet brunch was outstanding for a buffet, meaning that the food wasn’t uniformly spectacular, but it was all good, some very good indeed (sherry turtle soup! crayfish etouffee! rillettes and grits!) and there was a stunning amount of it.  And how can you not love a place that lets you put pecan sauce on your pecan pie, and where Bellinis come with a refill. My only sorrow, and it was minor, was that the jazz quartet had to move from room to room so we didn’t get live music for the whole long meal.

 

 

I honestly can’t remember what we did after brunch. Hit a few more shops and galleries, I believe, then took an afternoon nap because we were going back to Frenchman Street—and this time we were going to do it right and get there late enough.

Even after the huge, rich brunch, we were ready for dinner by evening and we decided to try a restaurant called Olivier’s, owned by the third generation of the same African-American Creole family.

Alas, I have to say it was a mixed bag. My “barbecue” shrimp appetizer (not grilled, but cooked in its shell in a rich, spicy, butter-based sauce) was stellar—one of the best things we had in New Orleans–and the eggplant napoleon we ordered as our other appetizer was almost as good. Jeff’s duck and Suhayma’s rabbit were incredible. Alas, the shrimp Creole didn’t live up to the one at Coop’s Place and my catfish and jambalaya plate was … lacking. The catfish, while nicely prepared, was just fried fish, and the jambalaya was dry and bland. I’d still recommend the restaurant with the caveat to order carefully. Get the duck or rabbit, and the barbecue shrimp, and you’ll have a delightful dining experience.

And think twice if you have food allergies. Despite telling our waiter repeatedly that I had a severe pork allergy, something contained undisclosed pork. This led to an abrupt ending to the evening.

Luckily, this happened after we’d made our way, stopping at several jazz clubs, up to Frenchman Street. There, we stumbled across a chance to hear Ellis Marsalis (father of Winton) and his band—including a number of young musicians who’d been added to the lineup for the evening. Amazing jazz in an entirely different style than most of what we’d been hearing all week. Unfortunately, partway through the performance, my stomach started feeling odd. Mesmerized by the music, I ignored it until the musicians took their final bows. Then we bolted, our original plan to hit another club where a brass band came on at midnight abandoned. The pork had come back to haunt me. 🙁 We managed to get a cab and get me back to the condo safely—I was determined not to puke on Frenchman Street like a drunk and I’m proud to say I succeeded—but the rest of the night was…well, let’s just skip to morning, shall we?

Our last full day in New Orleans rumbled with thunder. After the drama of the night, we had a quiet morning. (This might have been the morning the guys took a walk to get beignets before the rain started. Beignets are fried dough—really good fried dough, if you get them fresh and hot—but we didn’t find them that amazing.) During breakfast, the heavens opened and we decided to hunker down to wait out the storm. After a time, though, Jeff and I got impatient with waiting and decided to go for a walk in the rain.

We ended up walking to St. Louis Cemetery #2 (which was probably half a mile beyond the more famous St. Louis Cemetery #1, which boasts the supposed tomb of Marie Laveau), through the distinctly non-touristy Tremé neighborhood. The old above-ground cemetery—mostly old, though some of the family tombs are still in use, with recent burials—was fascinating. It covered three blocks of little “houses of the dead,” some well maintained, others fallen in on themselves. Some had been in use over the course of several centuries, though it wasn’t always clear it was the same family. One odd note: Two of the three blocks of cemetery seemed like any other old cemetery I’d ever visited, peaceful with some lingering sadness near the more recent burials. The third section just felt wrong. Creepy and malevolent, like something from a horror film. Jeff picked up on it too, and he’s not usually given to weird flights of fancy (which I am. I’m a writer. It’s my job to imagine crazy things.) We left that area quickly! I’ve always figured that if ghosts exist, they’d haunt places meaningful to them in life, not where their empty bodies were planted, so I don’t know what we were feeling. Maybe that particular section of the cemetery was a focus for malicious activities among the living, either occult or purely mundane, and something nasty had happened there.

In any case, the next area of the cemetery we checked out was peaceful again, pure historical interest without any sense of wrongness.

By the time we strolled back from our cemetery walk (stopping for ice cream en route), the sun was out and the others were ready to head out—to the Cajun Tomato and Music Festival! Set in and around the old French Market (half farmers’ market, half tourist trap), it boasted food stalls focused on tomatoes and other local produce and of course, music. Alas, I didn’t get pictures of the people who had Tomato Festival costumes–not staff, but random locals who apparently didn’t think Mardi Gras lasts long enough. The blues and rock stages were crowded, the music good, but appropriately loud. After a while, we gravitated toward the traditional music stage, where an all-woman Cajun band rocked us.

Several older men—and when I say older, I mean “little old men”—were dancing up a storm, two-stepping and waltzing with any woman in the crowd who was game to try. A couple of them, you could tell, had been ladies’ men in their youths and still had that charisma even in old age. One of them lured a beautiful young girl, a strawberry blond in a white sundress that showed off freckled shoulders, her hair in a loose braid, into dancing and before long, they were doing a full jitterbug, including picking her up and swinging her around! Her hair was flying, she was laughing and clearly enjoying being the center of the crowd’s attention. At another point, she and her mother were both dancing with the guy, who beamed the whole time, as he had every right to do.

And on the other side of the little dance floor, two small girls were imitating the adult dancers, as cute as could be.

And just to make life interesting, at one point a group of nearly naked bicyclists—a few were actually naked except for some body paint and costume bits, which must have chafed—came up Decatur Street.

Alas, the rain finally returned. While it was still just a drizzle, we made it back to Coop’s Place. Perfect timing, just before the deluge began and all the crowd from the festival tried to push their way in to the small bar! Another excellent meal followed, which we hope to recreate. (Periac ended up buying the Coop’s Place cookbook online once we got home.) Since we wanted to pack, we opted to make it an early night, ending with drinks and cards in the condo.

But New Orleans bid us a proper farewell. After we were already in bed, a brass band started playing somewhere outside—from the sound of it, a second line heading up a nearby street. I didn’t feel like dressing and chasing it, but I enjoyed the city saying good bye in its unique New Orleans way.

We had just enough time the next morning to go across the street to the Satin Slipper for breakfast. I broke pattern and got pancakes with peach compote and rosemary—delicious, unusual, and incredibly rich. Suhayma had wonderful shrimp and grits, which she was kind enough to let me taste. I can’t remember what the guys got, probably because they ordered dishes I couldn’t eat, but they also got rave reviews. I only wish we’d tried the place earlier in the trip, since it was right across from the condo and surprisingly reasonably priced. A fitting end to our time in New Orleans, before we hopped the airport shuttle back to a reality distressing lacking in oysters, Gulf shrimp, jazz, and cocktails to go.

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