NOLA Spring 2013 trip diary/inventory
so this is obsessive (pathetic?) of me, OK, but every single time before when i’ve bothered it’s proved useful to me later on (i’ll go back and read it a year or two later and a rush of memories and pleasure i wouldn’t recall without prompting comes on). so! a catalog of what we ate and drank in new orleans, plus some moments here and there (what i can remember anyway).
gonna start with food and come back to this for everything else, got some administrative stuff to tend to!
it is awesome how ideally everything went on this trip in terms of glorious beautiful and comfortable weather (returning to memphis currently is a blow in that regard!), everything going smoothly (no hitches at all), getting to do all the sorts of things we wanted to do, the whole range of possibilities there, meeting Karin and Paul (!), people being kind to us, and how delicious everything we ate and drank was. we lucked out in every way.
/
Cure: egg drink, ?? (it was refreshing, whatever it was...). i hate that i can't remember 'cause i lost the receipts from the first couple days that would tell me. it was something tart and refreshing, a gin sour of some kind. magic tree maybe (homericon mastiha liqueur, suze, royal dock navy strength gin, lime, cucumber, bittermens cucumber bitters)? yes, that sounds right. R got some...goat cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, as i recall.
Casamento’s: abita andygator, half dozen raw oysters, half dozen charbroiled oysters (quite garlicky and good!), fried oyster loaf, seafood platter of trout, shrimp, french fries
Mimi’s in the Marigny: ginger ale, patatas bravas, braised pork with fig
Three Muses: orange blossom sazerac (house infused vanilla-sazerac rye whiskey with a touch of cointreau and housemade orange-fennel seed bitters. was so, so, SO strong, pretty much undrinkably so, alas)
Cafe du Monde (which i kept accidentally calling fin du monde as in the beer, ha): cafe au lait and beignets with a mountainside of powdered sugar natch! once in the beautiful late morning amid the frenzy, once late at night nice and abandoned. the second time, our server was so cheerful given how late it was, and was shivering a bit at the nighttime wind just like us. beignets dunked in CdM coffee (which despite the souvenir canisters you can never replicate at home i don't think, it's like Las Delicias tortilla chips that way) = perfect.
??: gator bites, crawfish beignets (!), coffee (stopped here with Karin in the midst of wandering)
Coop's: diet coke, the sampler platter which included gumbo (had the silkiest oyster in it!), rabbit jambalaya with shrimp, crawfish, and tasso, crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice, fried chicken (for a cheap really fucking well done single survey of nola food, this was damn ideal. it was all really good and not wimpy flavored at all. R loved the red beans and rice which i mock-took personally as it's the one cajun-y thing i pride myself on doing decently, ha. when i went to use the restroom i discovered the back portion of the building is simply open-air, with a tent over the restroom waiting area but otherwise just a fence and you look up to the stars. they smoke the meat there, outdoors like that, in one of those old no-frills huge black bellied smokers which explains why it's so good.)
Perestroika at Pravda: ??, egg and chocolate drink...ditto from Cure about losing the receipts! alas. i loved it though, even if the awesome bartender was hitting on my husband and i was too dumb to even realize it, har. he was warm and entertaining with everybody too, so i know it's not like he seemed great just 'cause he was hitting on Robert. they had a silver tray with their bitters on it (bittermens and fee whiskey barrel aged among them!), including a blue bottle with a homemade label simply saying "Gaz". when i asked he confirmed it was indeed in reference to gary regan. i love that.
Elizabeth's: praline bacon, callas (old fashioned hush puppy/arancini-like cinnamon-y donut holes), poached eggs hollandaise over crab cakes with cheese grits and a biscuit, R's stonerito (french toast with sausage and all manner of things stuffed in it)
Commander's Palace: 25 cent martini (so strong!), turtle soup drizzled with sherry at table, strawberry lacquered quail, shared bread pudding, coffee and macallan neat
Serendipity: arrack punch, snails, lamb walnut honey baklava, bananas foster tribute to hubig's pie fried in lard, french press coffee (one of the best cups of coffee in a trip full of them)
Sazerac at the Roosevelt Hotel: confit cooler (duck sauce and rosemary, really good), gingered beet (beet and ginger, a bit disappointing in that it was rather sweet and neon pink and felt very girly in a sex and the city way, not much vegetal earthiness going on), garden district (earl grey and mint, the best cocktail of the trip which is saying something given i was floored by every single bar we went to save Carousel in terms of fresh syrups and bitters and herbs and garnish--seriously, having bowls of citrus and green herbs in glasses of water is par for the course everywhere we went!--and grrrreat specific liquor and care for ingredient balance, etc.)
Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone: golden cadillac, ramos gin fizz
Camellia Grille (the scenic one near the university area, not the french quarter-y one): coffee, chili cheese fries, manhattan omelet (corned beef and potato), R's strawberry shake, R's hash browns which he flipped out over
Tonique: blanche dubois (gin, strawberry, mint), requested off-the-cuff cocktail styled like a negroni with linie aquavit (so good! rivaled only by that garden district one), nola blonde beer (came in a can, kinda gross), R's pineapple phosphate and some creamy egg drink I don't remember well but that he loved best
Cochon Butcher: diet coke, sweet turnips, duck pastrami sliders, pork belly choucroute, muffaletta (with a sweet fennel thing going on i'm not familiar with in other muffs; i loved it and asked about it even), and a bottle of the sweet potato habanero sauce to take home
Bayona: chocolate hazelnut tart with earl grey tea ice cream and blueberry compote (Karin had a bourbon chocolate panna cotta that was amazing). they kindly let us sit out on the patio (romantically lit, which is to say cozily dim) which was beautiful, and it was the perfect night for it.
Maurepas: parse through pursed (gin sour with parsley), delight (nardini tagliatella which is grappa-like with cassis and pine liqueur, bartender said he was aiming for something like a glass of red wine without any actual wine-based things in it, but with an added vintage cocktail edge, hence the pine liqueur. sorta reminded me of the duboudreau and a lot of my favorite bobby burns-ish drinks), cornmeal fried oysters with cheerwine gastrique (!) over cabbage (ridiculously good, one of the best food items the entire trip), R's goat tacos with green harissa, R's turmeric soda (which he loved, tasted kind of like mango chile paletas or when you eat fresh sliced mango sprinkled with coarse salt and chili powder)
Stanley: coffee, eggs stanley (fried oysters over poached eggs hollandaise). had the most tech-savvy administrative set up i've seen for a restaurant (our waiting time could be checked online and was texted to us, orders were placed and paid for including signatures on iphones)
Twelve Mile Limit: liam neeson (very bobby burns-ish, tasty), last rites, the best frickin' pimento brisket sliders ever (R got an order 'cause he was a little hungry but i wasn't and wanted to wait for proper dinner, then i took a sample bite and was so blown away we had to order seconds and i nosily directly asked what the hell was in them to make them so damn good, um...and they had a bookshelf and board games including munchkin!)
Liuzza's: diet coke, fried green tomato po'boy with shrimp remoulade (this was the meal where R, who ordered the eggplant version, said he finally "got" po'boys in that it's all about the bread and clearly he'd never had the right kind of bread for them before)
Loa at the International Hotel: just between us (dimmi, boomsma genever, cucumber, thyme, dill, sage, celery bitters), candelabra (plymouth gin, braulio amaro, campari, plum-cardamom), here kitty kitty (a creamy drink that comes in a sipping bowl and contains actual catnip! metaxa brandy, cream, creme de violette, absinthe, catnip. some tipsy fratty folks came down celebrating a birthday and the girls ordered the sporty guy this as a prank and he was all wtf), and they comped me a jean lafitte (a sour-style cocktail with absinthe for that pale glow...pisco, oronoco rum, spanish moss, dried lime, fennel) late in the evening because she accidentally punched it in or something and had to make it anyway
Slim Goodies: coffee, crabby wife (really good crab cakes and crawfish etouffee with scrambled eggs and a biscuit…the etouffee was the best of the trip hands down. and R's hashbrowns weren't too shabby either)
Willie Mae's: fried chicken, fried okra, seasoned green beans, unexpected rice. grabbed this to-go right before heading home and stuck it in the cooler with some ice we picked up when we got gas so we wouldn't have to stop on the way home. sure as hell beats mcdonald's off the highway.
highlights were
spots: Maurepas, Sazerac (balance of flavors in the drinks was exquisite, even when the bartender had to change up one recipe on the fly because they'd run out of mint), Tonique (i loved the one main bartender guy coaching the girl on staff in a chummy after-hours way for her upcoming dinner party about how to properly cook steak in her free time, including the gravity of letting refrigerated meat come up to room temperature before searing and rubbing/marinating for hours beforehand). really want to add Loa for sheer quality going on there (the way all the homemade liquid ingredients are in beautiful mismatched unadorned colored old bottles on their own candlelit shelf is a nice touch; the bartenders must really know their shit to just recognize them all sans label) but they were a little snooty/dismissive to some other patrons in an unfair way and it kind of grossed me out). Cochon Butcher (i nearly cried with joy when i tried the duck pastrami and pork belly dishes, to the point R started laughing at me and thought i was freaking the staff guy out with my enthusiasm), Elizabeth's (i loved how deserted it was when we went, and how nice and down-to-earth the guy there was, reminded me of my favorite Pittsburgh no-bullshit-and-so-delicious hole-in-the-walls), Commander's Palace (it's hard to argue with the best seats in the house on the most beautiful day ever, and despite its generally maintained '50s stuffy artifice the staff were all super nice and friendly, where we didn't feel out of place like we sometimes do at spots with a certain old skool aesthetic pretension), Coop's (like a cajun huey's, only more original/flavorful/slow-thoughtful with the cooking)
specifics: garden district cocktail (earl grey and mint) at Sazerac, duck pastrami sliders and pork belly choucroute at Cochon Butcher (and how nice they were to us too; we first ordered simply 2 muffs but it turned out we'd nabbed the very last one of the day and needed to come up with something else to replace the other one and they were great about it and even shaved off some of the bill and all manner of nice things in response, aaaand it turned out way better with the substitutions anyway, so woo), pimento brisket sliders at Twelve Mile Limit, oyster gumbo at Coop's, the linie aquavit negroni at Tonique, Karin's bourbon chocolate panna cotta at bayona, cornmeal fried oysters at Maurepas, the crawfish etouffee at Slim Goodies, the crab cakes and cheese grits and praline bacon and callas (pretty much everything except the biscuit, which i was way too full to even try) at Elizabeth's
/
some stuff we got to do:
Southern Food and Beverage Museum (not really as it's in transition, but we peered in briefly)
WWII Museum
Ogden Museum of Art
Pharmacy Museum
Cabildo
New Orleans Museum of Art (a whole frickin' room devoted to Joseph Cornell, a Klein!!, a whole mess of our favorite folks)
Faulkner House
Arcadian Books (an early Review of Contemporary Fiction issue on Robert Walser!!, Laurie Colwin woo!, still more of the last stragglers of the Vintage Contemporaries collection)
Librairie (Tad Williams finally thanks to Martin, a Brian Jacques book from my childhood that Mefi has made me nostalgic for the past few years)
Crescent City Books (tons of non-Obscene Bird of Night Jose Donoso!!, a Christina Stead reader with stories not available elsewhere, Cold Comfort Farm finally, Philip Larkin's poems, an obscure-even-for-her Diane Williams collection!!!!, a newer Komunyakaa title, even more Vintage Contemporaries--how many did they put out anyway?!, A Girl of the Limberlost finally, some weird James Tate story collection that on skimming feels like his later poems so ehhh we'll see. And Maida Heatter's old cookie book, hurray)
Skully's (I was the one who spotted the Chris Carter solo album R excitedly picked up, which the cashier geeked out over with R, whee. they also had the P-orridge/Breyer documentary and the Kozelek on tour one, which I hadn't even heard of)
Peaches (an old Getz/Gilberto album cover, framed)
R bought a box of pralines at a tacky gift shop full of light-up (and blow-up!) breast and penis beads
French Market (kinda; we walked...near it and surveyed quickly from afar), Riverwalk area, Aquarium area (did these more touristy things early on like the night we came in and the day after tired and getting our bearings, which was a good order to do things)
ferry to Pt. Algiers
cemetary walking tour (Karin and Paul had the brilliant sneaky idea to make a punch of rum and guava juice and stick it in gatorade/water bottles, so there we were, strolling around with the tour group with punch in hand...i know it isn't really illicit in a town with freaking drive-through 24/7 daiquiri joints egads, but still, still)
districts we explored by car, foot, and mouth (ate in or around, etc.): Marigny, Garden, Bywater (one of my favorite less obvious areas of town), Central Business District, Mid City, Warehouse, Treme
window shopping/antique browsing/giggling in the French Quarter/Bourbon St. vicinity, including the visibly gay area (where we usually parked)
art highlights:
John Francis Murphy, Untitled Landscape (c. 1890)
Knutte Heldner, Swamp Scene (ND)
Claude Monet, Snow at Giverny (1813)
Yves Klein, Venus Bleue (1962)
Frank Stella (made me miss Pittsburgh)
Lee Krasner
Sam Francis, White Line I (1957)
Narcisse Virgilio Diaz de la Pena
Joan Mitchell, Untitled (1960)
Francesco Gaurdi, Esther at the Throne of Ahasuerus (c. 1747)
Naum Gabo, Construction in Space: Suspended (1957)
Fernand Leger, Study for "The Musical Instruments" (1925)
Jaroslav Rossler
Wassily Kandinsky
Amadeo Modigliani (draws you as much as you expect)
Joan Miro (tons)
Georgia O'Keeffe (I loved that it was paid for through the city)
Kay Bell Reynal, Cactus Sandal (1940)
Lee Miller, Untitled (Woman with Hand in Hair) (1931)
Ilse Bing, Study for "Salute to Schiaparelli" (1934)
Joost Schmidt, Bauhaus Composition (c. 1929)
Hans Hoffmann
Marie Dieterle (van Marcke de Lummen), Cattle Scene (c. 1885)
Ida Kohlmeyer, Opposing Forces (1958)
Ida Kohlmeyer, Duo C. (ND)
cliche verre negative method
designs for Mardi Gras costumes on Treme
whole room on Joseph Cornell: Prince Pince (ne Nez) (ND), Radar Astronomy (c. 1952-56), Untitled (Sun Box Series, Blue) (c. 1954), Ezekiel's Vision (February 26, 1965), Untitled (Rosalba, Book with Marble) (c. 1945) (made especially...something because it's the first Cornell I've seen in person since reading this account)
moments:
-when the guy at Commander's asked me if I wanted my martini up, something nobody ever, ever asks these days, and also clarified if I wanted the standard olive and it reminded me to ask for a twist instead...and realizing my dad's auto scripted "a gin martini, up, with a twist" sounds that way for a reason, a reason from the past when it made sense to say all of that. made me miss him.
-R's ninja/root beer joke and Karin's perfect response, "I don't get it. Will I ever get it?" which was better than the joke itself
-listening to bartenders be candid and detailed about their dreams and trajectory, especially at Maurepas (the whole NYC in '02 going to Hungry Mother etc. and realizing he could make that shit at home-->outfitted home bar-->hey wait, I could do this as a job since I'm moving to NOLA anyway to pursue my DJing/music career) and Twelve Mile Limit (her overflowing excitement talking about finally nabbing an art show to exhibit her photography, how her whole demeanor and body language changed instantly, ope and bright)
/
stuff we didn't get to, so we have to-dos next time (yay):
Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane
Degas Museum
African American Museum
Museum of the American Cocktail
Historic New Orleans Collection
swamp tour
plantation or other history tour
levee and lower ninth ward
Crescent City Farmers Market
Kitchen Witch
Dauphine Books
Coffee (orange couches, red velvet mochi, Rick James drinks, more chicken peepin'!)
Suis Generis
Satsuma Cafe
Tout de Suite Cafe
Hansen's SnoBliz
Dooky Chase (creole lunch buffet)
Jacques-Imo's
Felix's/Drago's/Charlie's Seafood
Booty's
Bennachin
Parkway Bakery or Mahoney's or Central Grocery (sandwiches)
Verti Marte late at night
Galatoire's, Antoine's, etc. (for cheesy-as-all-get-out "but still, you have to do it at least once" time warp type thing)
ditto for the Besh empire (August, Luke, Domenica, etc.) at some point
Arnaud's French 75 Bar
Bar Uncommon
Herbsaint
Bouligny Tavern
Bacchanal
gonna start with food and come back to this for everything else, got some administrative stuff to tend to!
it is awesome how ideally everything went on this trip in terms of glorious beautiful and comfortable weather (returning to memphis currently is a blow in that regard!), everything going smoothly (no hitches at all), getting to do all the sorts of things we wanted to do, the whole range of possibilities there, meeting Karin and Paul (!), people being kind to us, and how delicious everything we ate and drank was. we lucked out in every way.
/
Cure: egg drink, ?? (it was refreshing, whatever it was...). i hate that i can't remember 'cause i lost the receipts from the first couple days that would tell me. it was something tart and refreshing, a gin sour of some kind. magic tree maybe (homericon mastiha liqueur, suze, royal dock navy strength gin, lime, cucumber, bittermens cucumber bitters)? yes, that sounds right. R got some...goat cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon, as i recall.
Casamento’s: abita andygator, half dozen raw oysters, half dozen charbroiled oysters (quite garlicky and good!), fried oyster loaf, seafood platter of trout, shrimp, french fries
Mimi’s in the Marigny: ginger ale, patatas bravas, braised pork with fig
Three Muses: orange blossom sazerac (house infused vanilla-sazerac rye whiskey with a touch of cointreau and housemade orange-fennel seed bitters. was so, so, SO strong, pretty much undrinkably so, alas)
Cafe du Monde (which i kept accidentally calling fin du monde as in the beer, ha): cafe au lait and beignets with a mountainside of powdered sugar natch! once in the beautiful late morning amid the frenzy, once late at night nice and abandoned. the second time, our server was so cheerful given how late it was, and was shivering a bit at the nighttime wind just like us. beignets dunked in CdM coffee (which despite the souvenir canisters you can never replicate at home i don't think, it's like Las Delicias tortilla chips that way) = perfect.
??: gator bites, crawfish beignets (!), coffee (stopped here with Karin in the midst of wandering)
Coop's: diet coke, the sampler platter which included gumbo (had the silkiest oyster in it!), rabbit jambalaya with shrimp, crawfish, and tasso, crawfish etouffee, red beans and rice, fried chicken (for a cheap really fucking well done single survey of nola food, this was damn ideal. it was all really good and not wimpy flavored at all. R loved the red beans and rice which i mock-took personally as it's the one cajun-y thing i pride myself on doing decently, ha. when i went to use the restroom i discovered the back portion of the building is simply open-air, with a tent over the restroom waiting area but otherwise just a fence and you look up to the stars. they smoke the meat there, outdoors like that, in one of those old no-frills huge black bellied smokers which explains why it's so good.)
Perestroika at Pravda: ??, egg and chocolate drink...ditto from Cure about losing the receipts! alas. i loved it though, even if the awesome bartender was hitting on my husband and i was too dumb to even realize it, har. he was warm and entertaining with everybody too, so i know it's not like he seemed great just 'cause he was hitting on Robert. they had a silver tray with their bitters on it (bittermens and fee whiskey barrel aged among them!), including a blue bottle with a homemade label simply saying "Gaz". when i asked he confirmed it was indeed in reference to gary regan. i love that.
Elizabeth's: praline bacon, callas (old fashioned hush puppy/arancini-like cinnamon-y donut holes), poached eggs hollandaise over crab cakes with cheese grits and a biscuit, R's stonerito (french toast with sausage and all manner of things stuffed in it)
Commander's Palace: 25 cent martini (so strong!), turtle soup drizzled with sherry at table, strawberry lacquered quail, shared bread pudding, coffee and macallan neat
Serendipity: arrack punch, snails, lamb walnut honey baklava, bananas foster tribute to hubig's pie fried in lard, french press coffee (one of the best cups of coffee in a trip full of them)
Sazerac at the Roosevelt Hotel: confit cooler (duck sauce and rosemary, really good), gingered beet (beet and ginger, a bit disappointing in that it was rather sweet and neon pink and felt very girly in a sex and the city way, not much vegetal earthiness going on), garden district (earl grey and mint, the best cocktail of the trip which is saying something given i was floored by every single bar we went to save Carousel in terms of fresh syrups and bitters and herbs and garnish--seriously, having bowls of citrus and green herbs in glasses of water is par for the course everywhere we went!--and grrrreat specific liquor and care for ingredient balance, etc.)
Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone: golden cadillac, ramos gin fizz
Camellia Grille (the scenic one near the university area, not the french quarter-y one): coffee, chili cheese fries, manhattan omelet (corned beef and potato), R's strawberry shake, R's hash browns which he flipped out over
Tonique: blanche dubois (gin, strawberry, mint), requested off-the-cuff cocktail styled like a negroni with linie aquavit (so good! rivaled only by that garden district one), nola blonde beer (came in a can, kinda gross), R's pineapple phosphate and some creamy egg drink I don't remember well but that he loved best
Cochon Butcher: diet coke, sweet turnips, duck pastrami sliders, pork belly choucroute, muffaletta (with a sweet fennel thing going on i'm not familiar with in other muffs; i loved it and asked about it even), and a bottle of the sweet potato habanero sauce to take home
Bayona: chocolate hazelnut tart with earl grey tea ice cream and blueberry compote (Karin had a bourbon chocolate panna cotta that was amazing). they kindly let us sit out on the patio (romantically lit, which is to say cozily dim) which was beautiful, and it was the perfect night for it.
Maurepas: parse through pursed (gin sour with parsley), delight (nardini tagliatella which is grappa-like with cassis and pine liqueur, bartender said he was aiming for something like a glass of red wine without any actual wine-based things in it, but with an added vintage cocktail edge, hence the pine liqueur. sorta reminded me of the duboudreau and a lot of my favorite bobby burns-ish drinks), cornmeal fried oysters with cheerwine gastrique (!) over cabbage (ridiculously good, one of the best food items the entire trip), R's goat tacos with green harissa, R's turmeric soda (which he loved, tasted kind of like mango chile paletas or when you eat fresh sliced mango sprinkled with coarse salt and chili powder)
Stanley: coffee, eggs stanley (fried oysters over poached eggs hollandaise). had the most tech-savvy administrative set up i've seen for a restaurant (our waiting time could be checked online and was texted to us, orders were placed and paid for including signatures on iphones)
Twelve Mile Limit: liam neeson (very bobby burns-ish, tasty), last rites, the best frickin' pimento brisket sliders ever (R got an order 'cause he was a little hungry but i wasn't and wanted to wait for proper dinner, then i took a sample bite and was so blown away we had to order seconds and i nosily directly asked what the hell was in them to make them so damn good, um...and they had a bookshelf and board games including munchkin!)
Liuzza's: diet coke, fried green tomato po'boy with shrimp remoulade (this was the meal where R, who ordered the eggplant version, said he finally "got" po'boys in that it's all about the bread and clearly he'd never had the right kind of bread for them before)
Loa at the International Hotel: just between us (dimmi, boomsma genever, cucumber, thyme, dill, sage, celery bitters), candelabra (plymouth gin, braulio amaro, campari, plum-cardamom), here kitty kitty (a creamy drink that comes in a sipping bowl and contains actual catnip! metaxa brandy, cream, creme de violette, absinthe, catnip. some tipsy fratty folks came down celebrating a birthday and the girls ordered the sporty guy this as a prank and he was all wtf), and they comped me a jean lafitte (a sour-style cocktail with absinthe for that pale glow...pisco, oronoco rum, spanish moss, dried lime, fennel) late in the evening because she accidentally punched it in or something and had to make it anyway
Slim Goodies: coffee, crabby wife (really good crab cakes and crawfish etouffee with scrambled eggs and a biscuit…the etouffee was the best of the trip hands down. and R's hashbrowns weren't too shabby either)
Willie Mae's: fried chicken, fried okra, seasoned green beans, unexpected rice. grabbed this to-go right before heading home and stuck it in the cooler with some ice we picked up when we got gas so we wouldn't have to stop on the way home. sure as hell beats mcdonald's off the highway.
highlights were
spots: Maurepas, Sazerac (balance of flavors in the drinks was exquisite, even when the bartender had to change up one recipe on the fly because they'd run out of mint), Tonique (i loved the one main bartender guy coaching the girl on staff in a chummy after-hours way for her upcoming dinner party about how to properly cook steak in her free time, including the gravity of letting refrigerated meat come up to room temperature before searing and rubbing/marinating for hours beforehand). really want to add Loa for sheer quality going on there (the way all the homemade liquid ingredients are in beautiful mismatched unadorned colored old bottles on their own candlelit shelf is a nice touch; the bartenders must really know their shit to just recognize them all sans label) but they were a little snooty/dismissive to some other patrons in an unfair way and it kind of grossed me out). Cochon Butcher (i nearly cried with joy when i tried the duck pastrami and pork belly dishes, to the point R started laughing at me and thought i was freaking the staff guy out with my enthusiasm), Elizabeth's (i loved how deserted it was when we went, and how nice and down-to-earth the guy there was, reminded me of my favorite Pittsburgh no-bullshit-and-so-delicious hole-in-the-walls), Commander's Palace (it's hard to argue with the best seats in the house on the most beautiful day ever, and despite its generally maintained '50s stuffy artifice the staff were all super nice and friendly, where we didn't feel out of place like we sometimes do at spots with a certain old skool aesthetic pretension), Coop's (like a cajun huey's, only more original/flavorful/slow-thoughtful with the cooking)
specifics: garden district cocktail (earl grey and mint) at Sazerac, duck pastrami sliders and pork belly choucroute at Cochon Butcher (and how nice they were to us too; we first ordered simply 2 muffs but it turned out we'd nabbed the very last one of the day and needed to come up with something else to replace the other one and they were great about it and even shaved off some of the bill and all manner of nice things in response, aaaand it turned out way better with the substitutions anyway, so woo), pimento brisket sliders at Twelve Mile Limit, oyster gumbo at Coop's, the linie aquavit negroni at Tonique, Karin's bourbon chocolate panna cotta at bayona, cornmeal fried oysters at Maurepas, the crawfish etouffee at Slim Goodies, the crab cakes and cheese grits and praline bacon and callas (pretty much everything except the biscuit, which i was way too full to even try) at Elizabeth's
/
some stuff we got to do:
Southern Food and Beverage Museum (not really as it's in transition, but we peered in briefly)
WWII Museum
Ogden Museum of Art
Pharmacy Museum
Cabildo
New Orleans Museum of Art (a whole frickin' room devoted to Joseph Cornell, a Klein!!, a whole mess of our favorite folks)
Faulkner House
Arcadian Books (an early Review of Contemporary Fiction issue on Robert Walser!!, Laurie Colwin woo!, still more of the last stragglers of the Vintage Contemporaries collection)
Librairie (Tad Williams finally thanks to Martin, a Brian Jacques book from my childhood that Mefi has made me nostalgic for the past few years)
Crescent City Books (tons of non-Obscene Bird of Night Jose Donoso!!, a Christina Stead reader with stories not available elsewhere, Cold Comfort Farm finally, Philip Larkin's poems, an obscure-even-for-her Diane Williams collection!!!!, a newer Komunyakaa title, even more Vintage Contemporaries--how many did they put out anyway?!, A Girl of the Limberlost finally, some weird James Tate story collection that on skimming feels like his later poems so ehhh we'll see. And Maida Heatter's old cookie book, hurray)
Skully's (I was the one who spotted the Chris Carter solo album R excitedly picked up, which the cashier geeked out over with R, whee. they also had the P-orridge/Breyer documentary and the Kozelek on tour one, which I hadn't even heard of)
Peaches (an old Getz/Gilberto album cover, framed)
R bought a box of pralines at a tacky gift shop full of light-up (and blow-up!) breast and penis beads
French Market (kinda; we walked...near it and surveyed quickly from afar), Riverwalk area, Aquarium area (did these more touristy things early on like the night we came in and the day after tired and getting our bearings, which was a good order to do things)
ferry to Pt. Algiers
cemetary walking tour (Karin and Paul had the brilliant sneaky idea to make a punch of rum and guava juice and stick it in gatorade/water bottles, so there we were, strolling around with the tour group with punch in hand...i know it isn't really illicit in a town with freaking drive-through 24/7 daiquiri joints egads, but still, still)
districts we explored by car, foot, and mouth (ate in or around, etc.): Marigny, Garden, Bywater (one of my favorite less obvious areas of town), Central Business District, Mid City, Warehouse, Treme
window shopping/antique browsing/giggling in the French Quarter/Bourbon St. vicinity, including the visibly gay area (where we usually parked)
art highlights:
John Francis Murphy, Untitled Landscape (c. 1890)
Knutte Heldner, Swamp Scene (ND)
Claude Monet, Snow at Giverny (1813)
Yves Klein, Venus Bleue (1962)
Frank Stella (made me miss Pittsburgh)
Lee Krasner
Sam Francis, White Line I (1957)
Narcisse Virgilio Diaz de la Pena
Joan Mitchell, Untitled (1960)
Francesco Gaurdi, Esther at the Throne of Ahasuerus (c. 1747)
Naum Gabo, Construction in Space: Suspended (1957)
Fernand Leger, Study for "The Musical Instruments" (1925)
Jaroslav Rossler
Wassily Kandinsky
Amadeo Modigliani (draws you as much as you expect)
Joan Miro (tons)
Georgia O'Keeffe (I loved that it was paid for through the city)
Kay Bell Reynal, Cactus Sandal (1940)
Lee Miller, Untitled (Woman with Hand in Hair) (1931)
Ilse Bing, Study for "Salute to Schiaparelli" (1934)
Joost Schmidt, Bauhaus Composition (c. 1929)
Hans Hoffmann
Marie Dieterle (van Marcke de Lummen), Cattle Scene (c. 1885)
Ida Kohlmeyer, Opposing Forces (1958)
Ida Kohlmeyer, Duo C. (ND)
cliche verre negative method
designs for Mardi Gras costumes on Treme
whole room on Joseph Cornell: Prince Pince (ne Nez) (ND), Radar Astronomy (c. 1952-56), Untitled (Sun Box Series, Blue) (c. 1954), Ezekiel's Vision (February 26, 1965), Untitled (Rosalba, Book with Marble) (c. 1945) (made especially...something because it's the first Cornell I've seen in person since reading this account)
moments:
-when the guy at Commander's asked me if I wanted my martini up, something nobody ever, ever asks these days, and also clarified if I wanted the standard olive and it reminded me to ask for a twist instead...and realizing my dad's auto scripted "a gin martini, up, with a twist" sounds that way for a reason, a reason from the past when it made sense to say all of that. made me miss him.
-R's ninja/root beer joke and Karin's perfect response, "I don't get it. Will I ever get it?" which was better than the joke itself
-listening to bartenders be candid and detailed about their dreams and trajectory, especially at Maurepas (the whole NYC in '02 going to Hungry Mother etc. and realizing he could make that shit at home-->outfitted home bar-->hey wait, I could do this as a job since I'm moving to NOLA anyway to pursue my DJing/music career) and Twelve Mile Limit (her overflowing excitement talking about finally nabbing an art show to exhibit her photography, how her whole demeanor and body language changed instantly, ope and bright)
/
stuff we didn't get to, so we have to-dos next time (yay):
Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane
Degas Museum
African American Museum
Museum of the American Cocktail
Historic New Orleans Collection
swamp tour
plantation or other history tour
levee and lower ninth ward
Crescent City Farmers Market
Kitchen Witch
Dauphine Books
Coffee (orange couches, red velvet mochi, Rick James drinks, more chicken peepin'!)
Suis Generis
Satsuma Cafe
Tout de Suite Cafe
Hansen's SnoBliz
Dooky Chase (creole lunch buffet)
Jacques-Imo's
Felix's/Drago's/Charlie's Seafood
Booty's
Bennachin
Parkway Bakery or Mahoney's or Central Grocery (sandwiches)
Verti Marte late at night
Galatoire's, Antoine's, etc. (for cheesy-as-all-get-out "but still, you have to do it at least once" time warp type thing)
ditto for the Besh empire (August, Luke, Domenica, etc.) at some point
Arnaud's French 75 Bar
Bar Uncommon
Herbsaint
Bouligny Tavern
Bacchanal