New Orleans

[Evelyn]

Yes, and still making money hand over fist.

[Wilfrid]

I didn’t see anything different on the menu but the execution was excellent. For many it would be very old school, protein lapped with butter on small plates.

I drank enough liquor before hand to skip the Sazerac, sorry, but have arrived at a Calvados. Pictures will follow.

[Wilfrid]

It is so cheap in this city and I kicked off with Veuve Cliquot. 🤷

[Wilfrid]

54 minutes ago, Evelyn said:

Yes, and still making money hand over fist.

Of course Felix’s, which I preferred to Acme, expanded into adjacent premises some years ago and now has a full service restaurant rather than just a small room with a standup oyster bar. Clearly thriving; good business.

St Liebling claims to have eaten 12 dozen oysters standing at that bar. 144 of the critters. No wonder he ended up with gout in his ears.

[Wilfrid]

Best meal at Galatoire’s I think although all classic. Sweetbreads with capers and butter. Cobia sautéed with Crab Yvonne and more butter.

Top picture was end of service trying not to photograph strangers; it was busier than that.

As last night, I retreated to Pluck Wine Bar for the cheese course. Cana de Oveja and Delices de Bourgogne, really nice.

[Wilfrid]

Tomorrow is the one day without a restaurant reservation so it will be nice to drift around, try some casual food and maybe some music. 

[Mitchell101]

8 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

Tomorrow is the one day without a restaurant reservation so it will be nice to drift around, try some casual food and maybe some music. 

I'd be seeing David Torkanowsky at 2PM at the Jazz Museum on Decatur and Jon Cleary at Chickie Wah Wah at 8PM.  🙂

[Wilfrid]

I did the jazz museum yesterday. I might find something around Marigny this evening. 

It really is the *New Orleans* jazz museum, isn’t it? You wouldn’t know Davis, Coltrane or Mingus existed. But what it does, it does well.
 

 

[Wilfrid]

I spent a lot of time this trip doing the museums, which mostly I haven’t done before. Ogden Museum of Southern Art (big) and the Center for Contemporary Arts across the street. The Cabildo and the Presbytere on Jackson Square (I bought tickets for both and the Jazz Museum together - 20% discount). 

Today was stormy so good opportunity for NOMA (bigger), if not for the sculpture garden.

Highlight was discovering Clementine Hunter, farm laborer, self-taught, using other artists’ leftover oil paint, lived to be 101.

There was a good show of her smaller paintings in a very concealed gallery in the Cabildo. Mainly scenes from plantation life around her, although she experimented with abstraction in the 1960s. I did wonder if Romare Bearden had seen her work, because her naive figures reminded me of him.

Then I found a larger work at NOMA, a site-specific mural for the plantation house.
 

[Wilfrid]

The recommended Killer Po’Boys pork belly, good but to my surprise I fell in love with the slaw, delicious.

[Wilfrid]

I heard some music at Mahogany Jazz Hall and at Bamboula’s, then we had serendipity (and it reminded me of times in Nashville).

Very much a dive bar at the far end of Decatur, Check Point Charlie. I heard a voice coming out. I believe she calls herself Banjo Joan. She and a chain-smoking fiddler blasting rough blues and country originals, as profane as you could wish (lot of buttplugs and how she doesn’t do heroin or cocaine any more).

No crowd, but everyone other than me trans and/or very tattooed and/or high. And behind the bar, a rail-thin bartender who would break from serving drinks to do bare hand cooking of burgers on a tiny grill in the corner, vaping while they steamed.

Worth traveling for.

[Wilfrid]

Google says it’s great for cocktails. This is saner: https://nolaplaces.com/place/check-point-charlie/

[hollywood]

On 11/12/2024 at 8:23 PM, Wilfrid said:

Best meal at Galatoire’s I think although all classic. Sweetbreads with capers and butter. Cobia sautéed with Crab Yvonne and more butter.

Top picture was end of service trying not to photograph strangers; it was busier than that.

As last night, I retreated to Pluck Wine Bar for the cheese course. Cana de Oveja and Delices de Bourgogne, really nice.

 

On 11/12/2024 at 8:23 PM, Wilfrid said:

Best meal at Galatoire’s I think although all classic. Sweetbreads with capers and butter. Cobia sautéed with Crab Yvonne and more butter.

Top picture was end of service trying not to photograph strangers; it was busier than that.

As last night, I retreated to Pluck Wine Bar for the cheese course. Cana de Oveja and Delices de Bourgogne, really nice.

No cafe brulot?

[Mitchell101]

8 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

I heard some music at Mahogany Jazz Hall and at Bamboula’s, then we had serendipity (and it reminded me of times in Nashville).

Very much a dive bar at the far end of Decatur, Check Point Charlie. I heard a voice coming out. I believe she calls herself Banjo Joan. She and a chain-smoking fiddler blasting rough blues and country originals, as profane as you could wish (lot of buttplugs and how she doesn’t do heroin or cocaine any more).

No crowd, but everyone other than me trans and/or very tattooed and/or high. And behind the bar, a rail-thin bartender who would break from serving drinks to do bare hand cooking of burgers on a tiny grill in the corner, vaping while they steamed.

Worth traveling for.

From an Anders Osborne song titled Dark Decatur Love:

Jack Quigley and his only friend
Used to play down at Checkpoint's back then
Front of duck ladies and chicken men
Dark Decatur love
Fast and fading love

We spent hours in that laundromat
Quoting Beastie Boys, Faust and Lestat
That's where all the drugs were at
Dark Decatur love
Sweet and sexy love

[Wilfrid]

That’s the joint. Indeed there’s a laundromat involved.

[Wilfrid]

13 hours ago, hollywood said:

 

No cafe brulot?

Nope. Cheese at Pluck Wine Bar.

[Wilfrid]

Andouille at Antoine’s Hermes Bar.

[Mitchell101]

Don’t you feel you are in a different country when you are there? 
 

loving your posts.

[Mitchell101]

And I’d be all over Herlin Riley’s tribute to Ellis Marsalis tonight at Snug Harbor. 

[Wilfrid]

2 hours ago, Mitchell101 said:

And I’d be all over Herlin Riley’s tribute to Ellis Marsalis tonight at Snug Harbor. 

Herbsaint tonight.

[Wilfrid]

2 hours ago, Mitchell101 said:

Don’t you feel you are in a different country when you are there? 
 

loving your posts.

Thank you. The main feeling I’m having is constant deja vu associated with the realization that I first visited in…1997. 

I was here in August and I was in a bar where a blues singer started improvising a 12 bar about the death of Princess Diana. Weird, I thought. Then I got back to the hotel and turned on the news.
 

[Wilfrid]

Observation. I didn’t expect cheese, but I thought some restaurants would have a coffee program. No, half pint of brown water everywhere. Herbsaint is the last chance. Coffee shops serving espresso, cappuccino etc do exist, but they’re thin on the ground.

The coffee and chicory at Cafe du Monde takes me back to my childhood, but it’s a bit of an effort if you’re not eating the beignets.

[Wilfrid]

And Herbsaint did have an espresso machine. Also, a cheese plate.

It was slammed. Good food, service friendly but with hiccups. Of my four BTG orders, two caused much back and forth and I got the wrong digestif. Changed for the right one, but they both showed up on the check. Also, prices BTG are great but please chill the champagne.

Quail itself wasn’t special but the buttermilk crust was gorgeously crisp and the coleslaw wonderful. Quite a week for coleslaw. Wagyu bavette excellent, chimichurri a bit salty.

I went back to Pluck which is about 20 yards away for cheese but got into a conversation that lasted until after midnight and didn’t really eat it.

[Wilfrid]

I was exhausted yesterday. Can’t be the time difference and the flight was fine,  but then a ridiculous 90 minute ride from JFK thanks to the traffic. A series of late nights probably didn’t help.

[Wilfrid]

On 11/13/2024 at 7:32 PM, Wilfrid said:

…

Highlight was discovering Clementine Hunter, farm laborer, self-taught, using other artists’ leftover oil paint, lived to be 101.

There was a good show of her smaller paintings in a very concealed gallery in the Cabildo. Mainly scenes from plantation life around her, although she experimented with abstraction in the 1960s. I did wonder if Romare Bearden had seen her work, because her naive figures reminded me of him.

Then I found a larger work at NOMA, a site-specific mural for the plantation house.
 

And there are two of her works currently hanging at the American Folk Art Museum on Lincoln Square.