Eating New Orleans

I just got back from New Orleans, where my goal (aside from conferencing it up with about 20,000 librarians) was to eat all the food. New Orleans is a city known for its unique food culture, and I wanted to experience every last bit of it. I even bought a book, Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen, to help me learn everything I could about the cuisine of the city before I arrived. Then things kind of went wonky.

I wasn’t officially in New Orleans to eat, you see. New Orleans was the site of one of the biggest conferences in the United States, the American Library Association’s annual conference, and I had work to do. The conference was held at the convention center, as well as a few other hotels in and around the Central Business District and the French Quarter. This meant that a vast majority of my stay was centered in this very touristy area, and I didn’t have enough time outside of conference activities to scout out the good stuff. All the great restaurants around the convention sites were slammed during the lunch and dinner hours (did I mention 20,000 librarians?), and in the end, well…let’s just say I got overwhelmed, I was exhausted, and I’m sad to say I ate more mediocre food than I wanted to.

I could sit here and recount some of those lackluster meals, but it’s kind of depressing. Suffice to say, by Monday morning I’d been in the convention center area for four days, I hadn’t had a transcendent food experience yet, and I was ready to see something besides the French Quarter. I decided to jump on the St. Charles street car, take a walking tour of the Garden District, and find lunch on Magazine Street.

Little did I know, Monday was slated to be a hot and stormy day. And by hot, I mean really, really hot, especially for a humidity-averse California girl like myself. And I was already kind of dehydrated and not feeling great (I might have been a teeny bit hungover, maybe, a little). I got off the street car around 9:30 am near the visitors center, got myself an iced coffee and a walking tour map, and started on my trek. About 30 minutes into it, I was melting. I felt awful. The house I’d hoped to tour was inexplicably closed, and it had started to rain. I kept walking around, as the heat and dehydration made me feel more and more confused, frustrated, and indecisive. I got down to Magazine Street, and road work was filling the already hot air with the scent of tar and dirt. I started wandering up and down the street, trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t want more coffee as I was already feeling kind of jittery. I didn’t want to stop in at a coffee shop for a pastry or a saran-wrapped sandwich because I had my heart set on a classic New Orleans lunch, but nothing was open for lunch yet. I ducked into a few stores, more for the air conditioning than out of any desire to shop. I thought I was about to have a breakdown, and I was about to turn around and head back to the tourist enclave of the French Quarter and my hotel, when I walked past a restaurant that had just opened up, Joey K’s. I hadn’t read anything about Joey K’s, but I knew if I didn’t get some food I might pass out, so I walked in.

Perhaps it was the exhaustion and sense of defeat talking, but that lunch turned out to be a damned good one, and it wasn’t just about the food. I walked in and let the screen door fall shut behind me. The dining room was full of oil-cloth covered tables, and wooden chairs like the kind my Grandma had around her kitchen table. The wood floors were worn, and the room was full of soft light from the big windows. I think ceiling fans circled above, or maybe I just imagined them there, because they certainly wouldn’t have been out of place.

The menu was full of simple, Southern diner foods: fried chicken, hamburger steak, catfish, red beans and rice, corned beef, pork chops, and chicken fried steak. Every meal came with a piece of tender, sweet cornbread. I ordered a salad and out came a small bowl of crisp iceberg lettuce with a quarter of a tomato and some Italian dressing (it was perfect). My red beans and rice with smoked sausage was lightly seasoned, and the beans were cooked just right: stewed and soupy, but each bean still intact and creamy.

The restaurant was nearly empty when I came in (it was only 11 am, after all) but it filled up quickly with people who were clearly regulars. The place had a slow easiness to it. A group of well-heeled gentlemen took up a few tables in the corner to converse and laugh and savor some red beans and rice (a dish traditionally served on Monday in New Orleans). The waitress showed one older couple her burgeoning skills with the yo-yo, and a pair of working men taking their lunch break looked on, offering their own helpful hints now and then.

The place might not have served the most elegant food, or even the very best meal I had while I visited New Orleans (that honor is reserved for Cochon, and I know I’m not the only one who feels that way). But it was the most memorable meal I had in New Orleans, because it was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. Despite being a complete outsider, I felt completely welcome. Joey K’s saved me from having a breakdown AND a meltdown simultaneously right there on Magazine Street, and for that, the place will always hold a warm place in my heart.

There were a few other foodie highlights of the trip: the beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde really are worth it (and they were the only food-related thing I took a picture of). I had a pretty amazing lima bean hummus at BarUncommon and I’m tempted to write the restaurant and ask for the recipe. Cochon was mind-blowingly good. And the Pimm’s Cup at the Napoleon House is completely worth it. But many of the other meals I had were only so-so. At least that gives me an excellent excuse to go back. And next time, I’ll make sure to spend enough time traversing the city and seeking out the very best it has to offer.