Pontchartrain Pete

I went on a trip to Houston this weekend for my nephew’s (he’s also my Gawd-child) 11th birthday party. Houston is not my favorite place. Other than my brother’s family, a few friends and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the city just sucks to me. It’s just too big. They’ve been working on the interstate for, maybe, 120 years. Traffic bites, etc., you get the picture.

So we basically played Mario Kart for the Wii all day. His grandparents bought him a telescope, and last night we went out to try to find the moon. The moon, alas, was not to rise until after midnight, so we looked at random stars.

The highlight of the trip was this giant frog painted on the I-10 overpass at Rayne, home of the Frog Festival, where we stopped for lunch on the way home.

Yesterday’s coffee klatch evolved into the ultimate tweet-up: lunch with Nola, Yat Pundit and Ryan (joined by his lovely fiance) at Galatoire’s Restaurant.

Galatoire’s is on Bourbon Street, near the corner at Iberville. Besides fantastic Creole cuisine, it’s famous for quite a few quirks, among them that they don’t take reservations for the first-floor dining room. This quirk complicates the fact that the first-floor dining room is the most popular place in the city for lunch on Fridays.

When the idea first started floating around for some of the NOLA bloggers to do lunch at Galatoire’s, it was generally agreed on that Friday was the only day of the week it could work. I was worried about that; legendary long lines are known to form to get a table there on Fridays. Here is a pre-K NPR story and audio of an interview on the topic of Fridays at Galatoire’s on the occasion of its 100th anniversary in 2005, also the year they won the James Beard award for the most outstanding restaurant in the country.

The Sazerac Cocktail

The restaurant has always had a special place in my family. My mom’s family is from Houma, La., and she had an aunt and uncle who lived in New Orleans. She and her brother and sister would spend summers in the city with them. My great aunt and uncle would dine at Galatoire’s every Sunday for decades, and when their nieces and nephews were in town they went along, too.

At the same time, my father (who would not meet my mother until years later at LSU) lived in mid-city off of Esplanade near the Fairgrounds, where his family rented a house owned by the Galatoire family; the Galatoire’s lived across the street. My father’s sister told me she remembers, as a little girl, Mr. Galatoire coming home on the bus with the restaurant’s receipts in a paper bag; he would hand out dimes to the kids in the neighborhood.

As we were growing up in New Orleans, my great aunt would take us to Galatoire’s for special occasions. When she died, at age 100, the entire family and many friends went to Galatoire’s after the funeral to celebrate her life. We occupied the first floor dining room for six hours. We still eat there about once a year, but never for the famous Friday lunch experience.

On this Friday, we got there fairly early, around 11:30. It was already almost too late, though. Most of the first floor had been seated already. A couple of tourists were outside when I got there and I overheard them complaining about not getting seated. “They don’t take reservations my ass,” said the guy. “You know every one in there has a reservation.” I didn’t say anything to burst his bubble because I turned around and saw Nola had arrived and we needed to pursue a table of our own.

The Grand Gouté: Shrimp Remoulade, Crabmeat Maison, Crawfish Maison and Oysters en Brochette (on separate plate)

They asked us how many, Nola said four, and they immediately said we’d have to wait for the next seating. We asked about upstairs, I wasn’t ready to hang out for an hour and a half watching people eat. They didn’t really answer one way or another. I went up there anyway to see if anyone else had arrived first. There was only one table occupied up there, no one I knew. I was trying to decide whether to call the hostess on the upstairs availability when they asked again, “How many?” This time I said five, remembering Ryan’s fiance was going to join us. Lucky thing she did, low and behold, there was a table for six open on the first floor which they gave us.

Soufflé Potatoes

Charlie, our waiter, took our drink order. Sazeracs straight up for Nola and myself. That’s another great thing about Galatoire’s–they will seat you even if the rest of your party has not yet arrived. Some people are critical of this policy. It’s not unknown for people to hire someone to stand in line and get a table for them, hold it until they arrive and then leave.

At Galatoire’s, once you have secured your table, there is no rush. It’s yours until you choose to leave. In fact, the first thing Charlie asked, after delivering our cocktails once everyone had arrived, was whether we wanted to sit a awhile, or order some appetizers? Being rather peckish, we went ahead and ordered the Grand Gouté and some Soufflé Potatoes.

Softshell Crab Meunière

We took our time passing around and eating the appetizers. Eventually we got around to ordering entrees. Softshell Crab Meunière for Nola and Yat Pundit, Trout Meunière Amandine for myself, Trout Meunière with crabmeat for Ryan, and his lady ordered what has to be the ultimate in soup and salad: the crabmeat stuffed avocado with a bowl of turtle soup.

Trout Meunière Amandine

One of the reasons this get-together happened was that Ryan said on the Twitter one day that he had a bad experience the first time he went to Galatoire’s, upstairs as part of a large graduation party. Nola told him no, you really need get the experience of downstairs at lunch. Well, Nola’s mission was a success. I believe Ryan’s opinion of Galatoire’s is now changed.

Brabant Potatoes

Stuffed Avocado with Crabmeat; Turtle Soup

There was a very nice crowd at the restaurant Friday. A lot of regulars were in, judging by the amount of people who the manager greeted by name at the door. One large table was occupied by about 12 people celebrating a birthday. There was more than one birthday because twice during the time we were there the waitstaff dinged on a glass and asked for everyone to sing happy birthday.

Friday hustle & bustle at Galatoire’s

Many in this crowd ended up, like we did, at the Old Absinthe House down the block on Bourbon Street. Nola has written about that adventure, and what it’s like now it’s actually possible to drink absinthe again at the Old Absinthe House.

Well, some folks from the Titterverse broke the cardinal rule of internet socializing and actually met face-to-face yesterday in the real world, or “meat space” as some call it. Nola, Ryan (WarriorEngineer), Ed, (the YatPundit), Charlotte and myself managed a get-together at CC’s on Magazine near Jefferson.

Baby Sun was also along and she seemed to be utterly fascinated by the traffic passing by our sidewalk table. Conversation was light; there was some talk about etiquette on twitter and a re-cap of a twit fight that occurred earlier in the day.

The highlight of the day was a young tattooed blond-headed girl who decided to panhandle our table. She said they gave her coffee, but she really needed some money for food.

It ends up Ryan had brought along some of the shrimp remoulade he wrote about for everyone to taste. Rather than give her money, he gave her the last of the shrimp, which by the way, were mighty tasty. The girl may have been disappointed that she didn’t snag any cash, but she did eat the shrimp right away and pronounced them “really good.”

Is there a lesson in this for us all?

It was a busy day. I started out on a quest to find a combination recuperation/baby’s first birthday gift for Nola & CS–a bottle of Kübler absinthe. Alright, it really wasn’t much of a first birthday gift for Sun; I promise to make it up to her next year. First stop, Martin Wine Cellar in Mandeville. Didn’t have it. I knew Acquistapace’s Covington Supermarket carried it, so that’s where I headed next. I couldn’t locate it their either, but luckily I ran into Adam Acquistapace, who fetched me a bottle. Armed with gift, I headed to Nola’s crawfish boil.

It was raining pretty hard when I got off the Causeway. I thought that, over the sound of the rain and my windshield wipers, I could hear “Oh, the suckage!” being screamed from Nola’s way. But, surprise, the pop-up tent and covered porch were keeping everyone dry and happy, with not one lament from Nola’s mouth at all. Sun, who I had heard was sick, was being pushed happily by her daddy on her new swing, all the Nola/CS friend peeps digging away at mudbugs, beer, potatoes artichokes, etc.

I left to go hunt streetcars; post at StreetCarArt.com coming soon. Then off to NOMA for the Rodrigue exhibit. If you haven’t been to the New Orleans Museum of Art recently, you need to get down there. The Rodrique exhibit is over June 8, but there is still plenty to see. One thing is a newly-acquired collection of 30-some odd pieces, including a painting by Fairfield Porter, probably my favorite non-impressionist painter.

After looking at the Rodrigues (and there is more to him than just the Blue Dog, and, by the way, I was not a fan of the Blue Dog, but have a new understanding and respect for it now) I headed up to the 3rd floor. I’m glad I did. Besides myself and the security guard, the only other person up there was John Bullard, NOMA’s director. I’d met him before, during the Femme Femme Femme exhibition. He’s a very convivial guy, a necessary trait when most of your job consists of raising funds. I told him I thought it was a great idea to keep the museum open all night, he said it’s been something museums in Dallas and other cities had been experimenting with to some success. They’re talking about doing it once a month, maybe on the last Wednesday of the month, to stay open to midnight. It’s a good idea; hotel, restaurant and hospital workers who otherwise wouldn’t get to see it come in then. It was a busy day for NOMA, too. He said they already had 2000 visitors on Saturday, and expected more Sunday.

After congratulating John on the exhibit, I mosied on down to the 2nd floor (the 3rd, by the way, is home to a small but impressive collection of Asian, African, South American and Native American indigenous art) where I was met full on with a sight inspiring the title of this piece–an exhibit of art from the Historic New Orleans Collection and NOMA called New Orleans: A Sense of Place.

Paintings, books, pieces of decorative art, including silverware from New Orleans smiths, all unmistakably NOLA creations. There are paintings of buildings and the city from the 1800’s and contemporary views, like a stunning, huge, painting of the Quarter, the docks and the Marigny as viewed from the top of the Jax Brewery–unfortunately I didn’t have anything to write with or I’d be telling you who the artist was.

In the middle of the room is a collection of books, old New Orleans classics from the Collection. Books by Lyle Saxon, Grace King, Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn and George Washington Cable are on display. But at the top of the display is Ignatius Reilly peering out from the first-edition cover over the room, scimitar raised high, hunting cap on head, cockatoo perched on shoulder. Wow.

I went back downstairs where the crowd was growing. George Rodrigue and his family were hanging out, and as I walked out the door I ran into the person who started my day, Adam Acquistapace, absinthe dealer. I need to go buy a bottle for myself soon.

O.K. folks, I have received a request (or was it a challenge?) from Yat Pundit to post my quick and dirty version of a classic New Orleans dish, Chicken Bonne Femme (Good Woman’s Chicken?). Tujague’s has probably the best known version of the dish which is prepared with garlic, potatoes, white wine and, of course, chicken. Tom Fitzmorris’s NOMenu.com has a good recipe, and as you can see, it’s fairly involved with several stages of preparation.

But I said “quick and dirty” version, and here it is.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

1. Chop up all your stuff. Green onions, garlic and potatoes; the spuds in half-inch cubes. I throw in some ham or chunks of andouille or smoked sausage as well, so chop that up, too. How much? As much garlic and green onion as you like. I like a lot. And enough potatoes to cover the skillet in one layer.
2. Take a skillet, one that you can put in the oven that’s large enough to hold as much chicken as want to cook. I usually make this for two, and I usually use leg quarters, so I use a skillet big enough for two or three of them.
3. Melt some butter in the bottom of the skillet. Over low heat, put in the garlic and green onions. Let them cook a little, or don’t, it really doesn’t matter. Take it off the heat.
4. Put potato cubes and ham and/or sausage in with the butter/garlic/green onion mixture. Mix well, make sure potatoes are in a single layer on the bottom. You could add whatever herbs or Tobasco or hot sauce you want at this point, too.
5. Sprinkle chicken with Tony’s or whatever seasoning you like. Place the chicken in a single layer ON TOP of the potatoes. The point is that the potatoes are elevating the chicken above the bottom of the pan.
6. Stick in hot oven until done, baste if you feel like it during the cooking. After about 40 minutes check it. When done, the chicken is fully cooked, the potatoes are crispy crunchy on the bottom, and the pan should be full of garlicky buttery chickeny juices. Take everything out and deglaze with wine or chicken stock and make a sauce if you want, but that’s getting beyond the spirit of quick and dirty.

To sum up: Chop, melt, mix, place, cook. One pan. Not classic, but it’s all good.

Update: Yat Pundit has posted his recipe, complete with food porn, at YatCuisine.

For a while I was living in Abita Springs. No internet, and really, no computer in the house anyway. I figured I’d get enough of both at the office during the day. Last fall, I moved out to a house north of Covington. Way north, not quite to Folsom but about 6 miles from town, and about 12 from the office.

It was a nice place. Very pleasant. And there was internet. So I broke down, and at Christmas, gathered all my resources and located a nice laptop. I shopped around–a lot. I finally found one, for the geek among us, one with a dual-core AMD Turion64 processor, 15-inch screen, 2 gigs of RAM, a decent, though built-in video card (ATI X1250), a slot-loading dual-layer DVD drive/burner, a built-in camera and to seal the deal, an HDMI output port.

It’s a Gateway, and Best Buy had them advertised on sale. I headed on down, and there was one left, the display model. After some haggling with the geeks, it was mine for $649.00. I was very happy; I was expecting around $900 or so.

I’m telling you all this because I really don’t have a whole lot to write about and haven’t posted in a week. The big news is that I’ve moved again. To Mandeville proper, and only 5 miles from the office. Today Charter came in installed teh internets. I bought a wireless router, a D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme-N Gigabit Edition sucker that’s really cooking.

WEP enabled, no prying eyes or suckers like me (I glommed onto a neighbors connection last night, fool had the admin password still enabled). Think I’ll do some downloading tonight.

I was an early adopter to the Greekfest New Orleans, arriving when the gates opened at 5:00. I was concerned about the weather; it had been raining on the Causeway and there was a bit of a drizzle as I stopped at the bank and got gas. Speaking of gas, I mean, really, it wasn’t too long ago it cost $12 to fill up; now it’s $40. So 40 is the new 12? How cool is that? Thanks, George!

Anyway, it was kind of a Tweet-up event. Bonerama Freak Stacey and her friend Sophia from Iowa were going to meet up with me; after some coordinating phone calls they arrived, but not before I had some preparatory shots of ouzo. I also arrived early enough to stake out a prime spot on the little levee on Bayou St. John that was above the rain-saturated field between the food booths and the stage.

Got baklava? If not, then head on out to the Greek Fest New Orleans and do what the sign says:

Lots of pastries are available, along with the usual suspects: gyros, lamb, souvlaki, calamari, coffee, and this creation:

Yes, baklava sundaes. They were next door to the “Nectar of the Gods” booth, which sold, among other things, ouzo daiquiris.

We watched the Hellenic Dancers perform. Lots of Opas!

The top of the levee was perfect for catching the breeze off the storm clouds, which stayed away completely once the gates were opened.

The band was getting bored with no one dancing, thus the Hendrix impression on the bouzouki.

That’s Stacey about to enjoy a gyro.

Loukoumades. Think puffier, crispier beignets sprinkled with cinnamon and warm honey poured over them.

After dark, the termites started swarming. Pretty creepy, and then they were gone. Those white streaks are the termites flying. Not too easy to photograph but I gave it a shot.

The crowd really picked up after dark. The dance floor set out in the grass in front of the band was packed with families joining hands and dancing in circles.

Saturday brings a work day for me. Stacey and Sophia are heading to the Bayou Boogaloo, another celebration and new tradition in the making on Bayou St. John. If you’re out and about today, I’d recommend the Boogaloo for the afternoon capped off by a night of Mediterranean music, dancing and booze at the Greek Fest.

Obscene Publications Act of 1959? No. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990? No. Open Platform Architecture? No. The Ontario Power Authority? No. A Greek exclamation used to express joy, approval or encouragement? Yes! That one!

It’s time once again for Greece on the Bayou as they’re calling it—or its official title, the Greek Festival New Orleans. Held on historic Bayou St. John near the lakefront at the Hellenic Cultural Center and Holy Trinity Cathedral (here are some nice photos of the Byzantine cathedral at NewOrleansChurches.com), it’s the festival’s 35th anniversary.

There are many cultural offerings on tap, but since this is the Greek Festival New Orleans, it’s really all about the food. Last year the whole gang, Nola and CS, SoMo, her husband and hellspawn lovely children and myself, all went on Friday evening. You can read all about last year from Nola here, and my post here.

This year Nola and CS will be out of town on a pilgrimage for something called “Frito Burgers” in Dallas. I hope to enjoy a repeat of last year’s delectable Mediterranean offerings. I wonder who’s going to have the better time? Here are some of the photos Nola snapped last year. As the Greeks say, kali orexi!

Roast lamb, calamari, gyros and pastries, oh my! Not shown—Greek coffee, honey yogurt, olives, Ouzo, wine… There’s a lot there, plus music and dancing all weekend. Go already!

After a busy week which saw all my work assignments completed, I was free wander to about with a clear conscience. I had an idea a couple of weeks ago to some day soon have a day Uptown. Lunch at Parasol’s, followed by a Hansen’s Sno Bliz for desert. Nola and Katie and their other halves CS and TF, along with the ever-present and usually well behaved baby Sun, joined in today’s Sunday excursion.

First thing was a little glitch on the way in: I thought I might end up being late because the drawbridge on the Causeway opened up just in time for me to be first in line when the barricade came down. A neat sailboat, whose mast was too tall to go under the bridge, was the reason for the delay. Camera ready and nothing better to do, I snapped this.

Parasol’s is an Uptown masterpiece of a dive in the heart of the Irish Channel at Constance and Third. It is home to the biggest block party in the city come March 17 each year. When it’s not St. Patrick’s day, the bar is just the kind of ginmill where you would expect to see alcoholics drinking shots at 10 o’clock in the morning, and if you go there then, you will.

In 1952, Marlon Brando was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (he lost to Humphrey Bogart). The Korean War was raging; President Truman seized the country’s steel mills to block a strike by union workers, giving rise to a seminal constitutional case proscribing the limits of the inherent power of the executive branch that seems to have been lost in time today, the point being that Parasol’s also opened that year; it doesn’t seem to have changed much since then.

But tucked away up a couple of steps behind the bar is a marvel of a kitchen, serving some of the best poboys in town. And that’s saying a lot.

We ordered poboys and fries. Roast beef, erster and shwimps–I’m not trying to be Yat–that’s what they’re called on the menu.

Here’s the food.

That pile of stuff behind the sandwich is an obscenity of a creation known as “gravy fries.” Their immediate destruction was commenced forthwith. TF also ordered a slightly-less obscene creation, cheese fries. A completely filthy version needs to be on the menu–gravy cheese fries. Think about it.

It was agreed. Best roast beef poboys ever. Best erster poboy ever. Next stop, Hansen’s.

Hansen’s has a great story. They’ve been in the sno-ball business since 1934 and at the Tchoupitoulas Street location since 1944. What they serve is called a sno-bliz; it’s different from any other sno-ball around. The ice is much fluffier, due to the special machine Earnest Hansen invented and no one has ever duplicated.

Hansen’s is famous for its yellow line, indicating where customers need to line up inside the shop. It should extend out the shop and down the sidewalk, because that’s where the line usually ends up.

That’s Ashley Hansen behind the counter. She’s run the place pretty much singlehandedly since her grandparents passed away after Katrina. She’s got a great story, here’s a Gambit piece from 2006 that tells all about Ashley and the family business.

Nola and I waited about 20 minutes in line. Neither of us had experienced Hansen’s before. I decided to go the traditional route, nectar cream; Nola decided on the chocolate cream. That sounded good to me, too, so when I got up front, I asked if anyone ever did nectar and chocolate together. Ashely gave me a big grin and said, “Ooo, that’s good.” And it was.

Nola channeled Richard Collins and called hers “a platonic dish;” saying the fluffy ice melted effortlessy on the tongue.

A very good day. With its own commemorative cup!

I wasn’t going to write anymore about our trip to San Francisco. I still need to cover the trip to Alcatraz, though, and working on the StreetcarArt.com project got me thinking about something I had seen while in the city by the bay, as it’s called.

You see, there was also a public art project in San Francisco, called Hearts in San Francisco. It’s been over since 2005, when most of the hearts were removed from around town and placed with their owners. There are a couple left, like the one above in Union Square. It was just today, going through the pictures, that I actually read the plaque.

Yep, that’s Tony Bennett’s, Mr. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,”‘ heart that he painted and presented to the city to kick off the project.

There’s more on “A Streetcar Named Inspire” at StreetcarArt.com. The first streetcars are being placed, including Dennis Procopio’s “Hands Across the Water” at 909 Poydras.