Koerner has been around over 100 years, with the third and fourth generations of the Koerner family now operating the business that was started in 1906. Ann said she first worked with the Koerner company when it was basically a bakery supply firm. After Katrina, the company regrouped and expanded its offerings to include the cutting-edge equipment and ingredients used in creating the types of dishes and drinks one thinks of when you hear the term “molecular gastronomy.”

Tim Koerner explained that the techniques perfected by chefs like Ferran Adrià at Spain’s El Bulli restaurant (which is closing, I’m seeing on internets) presented flavors of classic ingredients and dishes in new formats. Ingredients—pine nuts, asparagus, fruits or beans, for example—could be transformed into foams, gels, spherical “caviar” or instantly frozen into ices that retain the ingredient’s original flavor. Koerner sells all of the obscure equipment and food chemicals any would-be Ferran Addrià could ever want.

The supplies and ingredients to make “caviar,” Tim said, agar-agar and calcium chloride, are known as spherification agents. Mixing a flavored liquid with agar and then dropping the mixture in the calcium chloride bath instantly creates a gel skin on the droplet which burst when put in the mouth, like fish eggs, thus it’s called “caviar.” Here’s a NYT story on Cointreau’s attempts to get bartenders to spherify their orange liqueur and include the resultant eggs into fancy cocktails.

One other way to molecular bliss is through making foams and ices out of concentrated flavors. Koerner sells all the equipment; the insulated bowls and buckets and so forth, needed to handle it. Tim noted that working with liquid nitrogen is preferred to dry ice as it freezes whatever foodstuffs you’re working with much faster, preventing cell walls from bursting and causing freezer burns dry ice can cause.

Purity Vodka held a brunch at the Bombay Club on Friday where they presented their own spin on molecular mixology. It was a great brunch, by the way, and a typically great Tales event, where free booze and food combine with great networking opportunities. I met up with some old friends and made some new ones as well, Jonas from San Francisco and DrinkofTheWeek.com and Emily from NYC and MouthOfTheBorder.com. The Bombay Club put on a great spread with chicken and waffles, eggs Benedict, gumbo, shrimp creole, creme brulee and more.  But I digress from the molecular thingy.

Making Bloody Marys the molecular way with Purity Vodka.

Rather than mix up a batch of Bloody Marys using tomato juice and other ingredients, participants were invited to place ingredients (cubed tomatoes rather than juice, pickled vegetables, other traditional garnishes and even sausage and shrimp) into a whipped cream vessel that was then charged by a canister of nitrous oxide gas. Under pressure, the alcohol and gas would extract all of the ingredients’ flavors into the vodka and after a 30-second shake, the gas is released, the cap unscrewed, and the mixture strained into a waiting glass chilled with a perfectly clear ball of ice.

That seems to be a lot of trouble to go through, but it really worked. A lot of what was presented at Tales of the Cocktail this year were ideas and products (like bitters) that would serve to give an edge to one product or bartender’s offerings over another. Purity Vodka was a good example, going all out with its promotion and showing consumers how to do something different with their product, which, by the way, is a damn fine vodka that I enjoyed cut with just a little water in the vermouth-less martini they also served. And that’s not just the brunch talking. Really good stuff.

This is where Koerner comes back in. Manufacturer iSi (pronounced “ee-see,” I learned, not “eye-ess-eye”) makes the cream-whippers, soda siphons and gas chargers (N2O and CO2) needed to make the Purity-style Bloody Marys and the Ferran Addrià foams and gels. Koerner, of course, sells iSi products. For you cutting edge chefs out there, you Blackened-Out and Appetites wish-they-could-eat-at-El Bulli-and-never-will-because-now-it’s-closed-forever-types, Koerner also carries the equipment needed to sous-vide, smoke-inject and foam your little hearts out.

You can order for delivery from their very extensive website, or if you’re in town, call to order and pick up items at their headquarters, 4820 Jefferson Hwy. Keep in mind they’re geared to commercial supply and while they do sell to the general public, it’s not a retail store and they’re only open Mon-Fri until 4pm, and closed noon-1pm for lunch.

The result is a comprehensive guide to early Louisiana furniture with over 550 pages and 1000 images. I’m not a furniture collector or scholar, but love the book for its comprehensive coverage of our history and culture as reflected in our natively-crafted decorative arts. Chapters on early cabinet makers, woods and hardware not only talk about the “nuts and bolts” of furniture making, but tell the stories of early Louisianians as their country changed from colonial French to Spanish, then to American control, influence and, finally, statehood. And it’s all beautifully illustrated with period maps and images in addition to the photographs of furniture.

The colonial times are interesting, as we forget that Louisiana once encompassed the entirety what is now the United States west of the Appalachians.

"La Louisiane et Pays Voisins" by Jacques Nicolas Bellin, 1763; The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1975.35.

Items of early Louisiana furniture are rare finds. Fire destroyed many a plantation home along the river over the years and most of the city of New Orleans—twice—in 1788 and 1794. Another hazard, flooding, is illustrated by this engraving of a levee breach near Bonnet Carré from 1871.

"The Landing Near Bonnet Carré" by Alfred Rudolph Waud, 1871; The Historic New Orleans Collection, gift of Harold Schilke and Boyd Cruise, 1953.100ii. Note the armoires and tables being rescued on the right.

Some of the stories are tales of intense research and detective work. City directories of the late 18th and early 19th centuries list many names that have the occupation of menuisier or ébéniste; cabinet and furniture makers and inlay specialists; however,  correlating a piece of furniture to a particular maker is often difficult as pieces were rarely signed. Vermin, mold and all the other hazards of a hot and humid climate destroyed paper labels.

To a certain extent, the story of a craftsman dubbed “The Butterfly Man” (for a signature device he used to join side panels) and the extant furniture attributed to him, make his armoire the star of the book.

Creole-style inlaid armoire, attributed to the “Butterfly Man,” 1810–1830, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Patrick, New Orleans; photo by Jim Zietz.

Coming out of the collection from the Houmas House plantation in 2003, this armoire set a record for Louisiana furniture when it sold for $140,000. The detailed account of the experts who examined the armoire’s construction and style of its inlaid decorations in an attempt to identify its maker is one of the book’s engrossing mystery stories (in a geeky, research-y kind of way; not necessarily one for Scooby and the gang).

History buffs will also be interested in the account of Creole and Creole-style furniture found in the Mississippi Upper Valley—in Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, for example—and the appendix listing furniture makers found in early city directories and newspaper advertisements.

Furniture buffs can spend countless hours perusing the catalog that makes up the bulk of the book. Photos and descriptions of every piece of furniture the authors could get their hands on are displayed in sections divided by armoires, chairs, bedsteads, buffets, tables, utilitarian pieces and the furniture of the Upper Valley.

The book is available for pre-ordering online through the Historic New Orleans Collection’s website, and I assume at the Collection’s gift shop at 533 Royal St. when it arrives (which, they say, should be sometime next week (of Dec. 13). Check the website for updated information or call the shop at 598-7147.

The Collection’s Royal St. gallery now has an exhibit of Mignon Faget’s work throughout the years. The research center at 410 Chartres St. features an exhibit of early Louisiana furniture from the Magnolia Mound plantation in Baton Rouge and an exhibit of photographs documenting life in New Orleans’ 7th Ward.

Update: I mentioned artist Rolland Golden’s work in a previous post. Fourteen of the 32 or so works he painted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and exhibited at NOMA were acquired by the Historic New Orleans Collection and New Orleans Museum of Art.

This isn’t new news, but I thought anyone who’s interested should know they are on display at the Collection’s Williams Research Center. It’s free and open to the public, so if you’re wandering around the quarter think about popping in. There’s the furniture, the paintings and the photography to peruse. While you’re there you can take a peek into the reading room upstairs. It’s an impressive space, the former courtroom of the building’s original incarnation as a police precinct and municipal courthouse. The Williams Research Center is open Tue-Sat and the gallery and gift shop on at 533 Royal from Tue-Sun. Both are free.

Now, if I’d known
They’d line up just to see him
I’d trade in all my money
And bought me a museum
From Steve Martin’s blockbuster hit of the 70′s, King Tut, inspired by the exhibition touring America

I remember it being towards the end of King Tut’s NOLA reign, it was either in the fall or winter; I remember it being cold. Maybe that’s why I also remember not having to wait too terribly long in line to get in—or maybe my dad had bought a museum membership that year because members were admitted immediately—unlike many who had waited 8 or more hours for admission at some points during the exhibition.

The museum had been transformed into a tomb-like interior, they had constructed plywood paths taking you from from priceless artifact to priceless artifact, ultimately leading to the pharaoh’s solid-gold death mask. The sight of that mask up on a pedestal in its glass display case still comes to my mind when I hear the word “priceless,”  no matter in what context the word has been uttered.

Now, when I die
Now don’t think I’m a nut
Don’t want no fancy funeral
Just one like ole King Tut
(Steve Martin)

I’m telling you all this not just because of the impact it made on me (I rattle on like Grandpa Simpson every time I’m in front of NOMA—”King Tut came here and they painted this whole drive blue. Blue, I tells ya!!!”—to anyone within earshot) but because it marked the first big blockbuster exhibition brought to NOMA after John Bullard became director in 1973. He’s now Director Emeritus, having passed on the reigns to Director Susan Taylor, a passionate art lover and veteran museum administrator.

I had a chance to talk to Mr. Bullard as NOMA was gearing up for its latest exhibition, Great Collectors/Great Donors (links to Doug McCash’s nola.com article for more details), the first of many to celebrate the museum’s centennial in 2011. He told me the story behind King Tut’s arrival in New Orleans in 1977.

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was looking for some extra PR for his country during the time of the Camp David peace negotiations between Egypt and Israel. The exhibit was presented as a gift to the American people in honor of the U.S. Bicentennial. A New Orleans businessman had heard about Egypt’s plans, and the lobbying for New Orleans began.

Mr. Bullard recalled, “Verna Landrieu was head of the local bicentennial commission, so she got Moon [Mayor Moon Landrieu] to go to Washington, D.C. to see the Egyptian ambassador and we had our congressional delegation going to see him as well. They did want a specific geographic distribution—Washington, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles—and then they wanted somewhere in the south. I was somewhat skeptical this would happen; surely it would go to Houston or Dallas or Atlanta, where they had a bigger resident population.

“We made a good case, we talked about the two great delta cities in the world, and the Mississippi and the Nile, and they selected us. That was before we expanded in 1990 so the museum was not quite half the size it is now. We didn’t sell tickets in advance, so we had bleachers for people to wait in, and sometimes it was an 8-hour wait.”

The exhibit’s impact was enormous, and had far-reaching economic consequences for the city. “In a normal year before Tut, we would have had maybe a 100,000 visitors,” said Mr. Bullard. “In the four months of Tut we had 900,000 visitors—it was a transforming experience for the museum. It made the politicians and businessmen realize that a big exhibition could generate as much money as a Super Bowl, over a longer period of time, and with upscale visitors.”

Many big exhibits were to come. During his tenure, NOMA’s permanent collection expanded from just under 5,000 items to over 35,000 today. The latest exhibit, and the first to celebrate the museum’s 100th year, is called Great Collectors/Great Donors.  It is a history of the museum as seen through the works of art donated by patrons since NOMA opened as the Isaac Delgado Museum of Art. The name change to New Orleans Museum of Art came in 1971.

Mr. Bullard gives a thorough run-through of those great donors in the museum’s publication Arts Quarterly. (Click to download a pdf). It’s a fascinating tale that reaffirms our city’s interest and support for the arts.

John Bullard talks about the upcoming NOMA centennial and the Great Collectors/Great Donors exhibit. In the background, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is either contemplating the occasion or planning on whose ass to kick next at City Hall.

Mr. Bullard walks us through Great Collectors/Great Donors. Looking on are two delightful ladies, Margarita Bergen (left) and Wendy Rodrigue. Margarita writes for NewOrleans.com and is in attendance at every event I have ever covered. Wendy is a NOMA board member and is married to George Rodrigue, whose work warranted its own mega-exhibition at NOMA back in 2008 (here is a post on the Blue Dog exhibit, and a little story about an encounter I had with Mr. Bullard then). She writes the blog Musings of an Artist's Wife, a must-read for any Blue Dog fan and a great place to see George's art, with the added bonuses of George's reminiscences about and Wendy's insight into the images he's produced over his career.

Mr. Bullard with what he said may be the rarest item in the museum, a Hawaiian god collected during Capt. Cook's ill-fated third visit to the islands.

The exhibit runs until January 23 and is a great chance to see all the best works that are in NOMA’s permanent collection. It’s a visual telling of how NOMA grew by donation to donation over the last 100 years. Many of the items are often on loan to other museums, so go while you have the chance! Check NOMA100.com and  NOMA.org for events, times and admissions policies. It’s free from noon to 8pm on Wednesdays and always free for members, so that’s a great reason to join. Centennial exhibits and activities continue through 2011.

Tom would have say whether all of that still stands today, since although Antoine’s is going strong, Maylie’s has been closed for years now (the also-defunct Smith & Wollensky last occupied Maylie’s site) and the Bud’s Broiler on City Park Avenue has been closed since Katrina.

The original location of the Bud’s Broiler chain, the City Park restaurant first opened in 1952. I’m not a great repository for the rest of Bud’s history, but they do have a website, www.budsbroiler.com, that has the history and menu, etc.

It re-opened yesterday, April 20, to much fanfare and long lines. The new owners have been working hard on getting the location up and running for a few months now. All their work paid off, it’s clean, freshly painted and cranking out burgers cooked over real charcoal as fast as people can order them.

Well-wishers included the old-line New Orleans white-tablecloth restaurant Tujaque’s, who sent these flowers:

I got a No. 4 with some cheese fries. (Sorry, I always forget to take pictures until I’ve already started eating).

I’m guessing these were the original bathroom doors, they crack me up.

What’s your menu item number? Do you have any Bud’s trivia to add? Did you go opening day? What are your memories of Bud’s on City Park?

TALES OF THE COCKTAIL OPENING RECEPTION TO BE HELD AT THE NEWLY RESTORED ROOSEVELT HOTEL
TOAST OF THE EVENING TO OCCUR AT THE ORIGINAL SAZERAC BAR

NEW ORLEANS, LA—December 1, 2008 – Tales of the Cocktail, a cocktail and culinary festival celebrating the history and culture of dining and the cocktail in New Orleans, has chosen The Roosevelt New Orleans as the site of the July 8, 2009, opening-night reception for its seventh anniversary event.

Tales of the Cocktail runs through July 12, 2009.

The historic downtown New Orleans property, a Waldorf=Astoria Collection property shuttered since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, opened in 1893 as the Grunewald. In 1923, it was rebranded The Roosevelt in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt and retained its distinctive moniker until the hotel changed hands in 1965 and was renamed The Fairmont. The grand hotel will reopen in late spring 2009, reborn as a Waldorf=Astoria Collection® hotel.

The summer’s most spirited event, Tales of the Cocktail explores the history and contemporary life of the cocktail at various locations in the New Orleans French Quarter. The event welcomes celebrities, mixologists, chefs, authors and cocktail experts as presenters and special guests from around the globe for seminars, dinners and galas.  Top spirits names such as Dale DeGroff, Tony Abou-Ganim, Robert Hess and Kevin Brauch once again will take part in educating industry and consumers alike about the cocktail.

In more than a century of operation, The Roosevelt served as the backdrop for many historic events and often made history in its own right. Key among plans to restore the property to its previous grandeur and appeal will be the reopening of the hotel’s famed Blue Room and legendary Sazerac Bar. In the golden era of supper clubs from the 1930s to the 1960s, the Blue Room played host to some of the best-known names in entertainment and big bands – including Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong and Sonny and Cher – as well as to elaborate floor shows. The Sazerac Bar, a Roosevelt landmark for decades, again will serve its signature Sazerac cocktail and Ramos Gin Fizz – both invented in New Orleans and made popular worldwide by The Roosevelt – among other delights.

“Hosting our opening night in conjunction with the newly restored Roosevelt is an honor,” said Tales of the Cocktail founder Ann Tuennerman. “Tales of the Cocktail celebrates the history of the cocktail, and what better way to introduce visitors to our city than with the city’s official cocktail, The Sazerac, at the original Sazerac Bar,”

The New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds to benefit hospitality industry members, produces Tales of the Cocktail annually. Its mission is to preserve the rich history of the restaurants and bars of New Orleans and the unique culture of dining and drinking famous to the city, while educating locals, visitors and the hospitality industry about this culinary heritage.

Tales of the Cocktail, a culinary and cocktail festival, allows the connoisseur or amateur to fully experience (taste, see and learn about) cocktail culture in New Orleans and around the world. The event’s annual components are Spirited Dinners, a Seminar Series, Cocktail Hour, Cocktail Luncheons, walking tours of the French Quarter, and classic and contemporary cocktail parties — all presented by the country’s hottest chefs, authors, bartenders and cocktail experts.

For more information on Tales of the Cocktail, visit the Web site at www.TalesoftheCocktail.com and register to receive email updates, or call 504-948-0511.

We had lots of wind, not so much rain. It gusted up to, I’d say, 50 mph, enough to start peeling the copper roof off of my cousin’s outdoor kitchen area. I did the manly thing, (I’m camped out with my Aunt, a cousin, and her 3 teacher friends) and got a ladder, hammer and nails and secured the roof before it tore off and went into a window.

Today, I drove around to check on our office and my home in Mandeville (both with no damage, but no power). Traffic on Hwy. 190, the main drag into Covington, was sparse. Most of the red lights were without power; some blinking yellow. Amazingly, the drivers that were out and about did an extremely civilized job of both driving under the speed limit and treating the intersections as four-way stops.

Getting back to the house (equipped with generator large enough to handle air conditioning, thank gawd) I was treated to more doom and gloom on TV. Lots thunderstorms were in the area with the dreaded suspicious “hook” echoes that mean there could be a tornado. The Bogue Falaya river behind the house was righteously rising up, swollen by the rain and blocked by a storm-surged lake at its mouth.

All this gave way to a great evening after the thunder cells of doom passed. As I mentioned in the last post, one of the great hurricane traditions is the feast-of-the-food-that-will-go-bad-unless-we-eat-it-now. The neighbors came over with food gathered up from fridges unprotected by generators. Baked salmon and tilapia, chicken alfredo, smoked salmon, various cheeses and veggies were on the menu. I met 10 new people, and made 10 new friends, because I managed not to talk politics or otherwise piss anyone off.

I feel a little guilty. Many people I keep up with on the internet, fellow NOLA bloggers, were forced to leave their homes. Not many had good experiences, between being caught in contra-flow gridlock or seeking safety in places that ultimately were not safe at all, everyone’s going to have some interesting posts in upcoming weeks.

So shout-outs go to NolaNotes, Stacey, Charlotte, HumidCity, Greta, WetBankGuy, LipRap, Wendy, Katie, RDPeyton and everyone else who had to flee; hope you will see home again in days, rather than weeks this time. And hats-off to YatPundit, Ryan, and GentillyGirl and others who intrepidly stayed behind to share on-the-scene updates.

It would be nice if power is restored tomorrow. I’ve had a surreal vacation, and deadlines that were breathing down my neck are extended, but not extinguished. A little normalcy would be nice here. At least we won’t have to spend 4 months getting used to the “new” normal that defined life after Katrina.

The Twitter is all a-twitter; even a reporter from the Chicago Tribune who came down to cover the storm used Twitter to quickly connect with NOLA area sources. He’s written a story (featuring our own NolaNotes) about the use of Twitter by people keeping up with everyone’s preparations; whether they’re staying or evacuating; where they’re going, what they’re taking; and, the status of traffic along the various evacuation routes.

It’s a great topic. I was convinced for a year after I first signed up for Twitter that it was absolutely useless. I’ve seen the light since then, and I’m glad the national media is recognizing how useful the service is in emergency situations. Twitter was put to good use during the recent San Diego wildfires and Los Angeles earthquake, too.

Twitter also lets people vent. Following regular updaters, and their 140-character tweets, since Gustav formed up reveals all the stages of hurricane angst. Tweets have gone from interested concern, while it was south of Haiti, to growing concern as it strengthened past Jamaica, then terror as it exploded to a category four as it approached Cuba.

But along with the concern was a spirit of defiance. We remembered (and tweeted about) a time when approaching storms weren’t that big of a deal. Neighbors and families boarded houses together. There were block parties with cookouts featuring all that meat that was fixing to go bad when the power went out. We made sure each of us had enough candles and flashlights and radios and batteries. But we were not leaving. When the winds passed, we got together and fixed what needed fixing in the neighborhood and kept our collective bravado together.

When Gustav approached, the NOLA bloggers and tweeters talked about not leaving. About getting generators, supplies, making arrangements for friends in flood-prone areas. We wanted to keep up the family/neighborhood traditions. But Category 4 status and forecast models pointing it right to NOLA got the best of us. On Friday, Gov. Jindal gave a very nervous press conference. On Saturday, Nagin did one of his patented freak-outs with his “Mother of all storms” quote. Aaron Broussard, seemingly again on the verge of tears, mandatorily evacuated the west bank; then later the entire east bank of Jefferson Parish.

Everyone was tough on looters. In Jefferson Parish, if you were out after curfew you would be considered a “suspicious person.” In Orleans, where 1500 National Guard troops have doubled the size of the NOPD, Nagin promised looters would “be taken straight to Angola…,”put in general population at the big house.

What happened? Rather than see what the hurricane would actually do, everyone left. By most accounts, getting out of the city wasn’t too bad. But bottlenecks at the I-55, I-12 and I-55 interchanges created parking lots. As of 10pm Sunday, there are reports of slow-moving, jammed-up traffic even as the first squall lines of Gustav’s outer bands approach.

Twitter is full of angry tweets. Angry because people feel forced out on an unplanned road trip, including pets, and forced to do so in many cases without too much spare cash. Now, they are angry because the pets and the kids are squalling because THEY’RE angry they’ve been stuck in a slow-moving car for 10 hours and aren’t any closer to their destination than they were 5 hours ago.

On a positive note, what these angry tweets can add up to are the tweets we never hope to read-the desperate tweets. “I’m on my roof, come get me!” tweets. Or, “I’m in my house, and the water is two feet now and keeps coming!” tweets. Or, “My parents are trapped. Can someone check on them?” tweets. A week after Katrina, I saved the HTML file of the nola.com forums that contained hundreds of such postings. I still have it, and read it when I feel able.

We don’t know what the future is going to hold. Is it, as NolaNotes asks, global warming? Is this going to keep happening every couple of years? Can we handle it if it does? If the city floods again, is it “game over”? Who knows. I just hope we don’t have a future with desperate tweets.

It’s hard to read, but on the telephone pole to the right of the storm-bent (but still standing) stop sign, a sign asks the stupid question: “Got Mold?”

Everything was fine, if there had been a water line it had been cleaned off. What was odd was that there were signs of people having been living in the cemetery before it was opened up. This makeshift shelter was on the tomb across the aisle from ours. It’s some lumber that’s been placed across from the top of the tomb to the adjoining fence, covered with blankets and fronds from a nearby palm tree. And a big 40oz. beer can and some other stuff needed for camping out in the cemetery while the city is evacuated.

Three years later, after poor management and foot-dragging by State Farm, Harborview has still not been issued an occupancy permit. Three years of owners paying mortgages and condominium assessments (that often are in excess of their notes) for a home that cannot be lived in or sold.

You can see the big mud puddle and light poles that once was the Coconut Beach volleyball complex and the bridge over the 17th Street Canal to Bucktown (or where Bucktown used to be).

Remains of the West End lighthouse and Southern Yacht Club.

A view up the canal along Hwy. 11 in Slidell, you know, where Tites used to be.

And, finally, I give you Boat Mountain.

These boathouses all looked fine, from the air. Really fine roof construction, apparently, but the rest of the structures didn’t stand a chance. It was only when we got back out there towards the middle of October we saw what the storm surge had actually done.

Neighbors had been feeding the cats, who, needless to say, were freaked out when I got back. The one in the first picture finally came out after 2 days of hiding from me under the furniture.

The last picture I took on my first gawking venture down Highway 11. It was about a week before they were letting people back into New Orleans. There was a marina, called Tites, at the end of Hwy. 11 before the bridge. It, and every other business, on that end of the road was wiped out.

While I was taking this picture, a Humvee with National Guard people pulled up. So did a a lady, who got a box of crackers out and started feeding the ducks. She must have been feeding them regularly, because they started hauling ass towards the road where I was standing when she got out.

Here are two more boat-out-of-place photos. The first is a boat I just couldn’t get enough of, photographing it several times until it was finally removed. It’s been tossed up at the floodwall gate at West End Blvd, and the marina. The second is a sailboat that appears to have set down gently on the jetty at the yacht basin.

Don’t forget to keep tabs on the Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster blog where, until the anniversery on August 29, Loki will be examining what the past three years have, or have not, wrought upon the Gulf Coast.

The first is a photo of a Porsche Boxter UW (under water edition) that got left behind in the parking garage under my sister’s condo building near the Marina.

The second shot is a view east down either Mouton, Chapelle or Downs (I wasn’t paying attention, sorry) street from the intersection of West End Blvd. It’s just a small sample of the overall suckage that covered the entire city from the 17th Street Canal east to St. Bernard Parish.

The area she’s standing in, I believe, was once the site of a small shotgun house that did get washed away and floated down a couple of blocks towards 37th Street. I’ll put that picture up soon. This one would have been taken October 30, 2005.

Manale’s is an old-school New Orleans place. We used to go there about once a year or so when my folks came to town. It’s really an Italian restaurant with strong Creole influences. There are lots of seafood dishes on the menu and there’s an oyster bar right at the door when you walk in. The walls are covered with pictures of movie and TV stars who’ve dined there over the years. They are really heavy on personalities from the 70′s and 80′s. CS spotted a Gene Simmons-autographed picture of Kiss and recognized it as one “from the make-up years.”

Manale’s most famous dish is the barbecued shrimp, with the barbecue part a complete misnomer. Served in a large soup bowl, the dish features a dozen or so large shrimp, whole, unpeeled, with heads on. What I mean by large shrimp, I’ll say what I said last night when the dishes appeared at the table: “Those are some big-ass shrimp.” Big-ass shrimp served in a butter-olive oil-spice-and-pepper sauce. It’s a messy affair to peel big-ass shrimp covered in butter sauce; Manale’s supplies a bib to anyone who orders it.

Tom Fitzmorris calls it one of the four or five best dishes in New Orleans cooking. Here is his account of how the dish came to be (go here for Tom’s recipe):

They’re neither grilled nor smoked, and there’s no barbecue sauce. It was created in the mid-1950s at Pascal’s Manale Restaurant. A regular customer came in and reported that he’d enjoyed a dish in a Chicago restaurant that he though was made with shrimp, butter, and pepper. He asked Pascal Radosta to make it. Radosta took a flyer at it. The customer said that the taste was not the same, but he liked the new dish even better. So was born the signature dish at Manale’s.

The dish is simple: huge whole shrimp in a tremendous amount of butter and black pepper. The essential ingredient is large, heads-on shrimp, since the fat in the shrimp heads makes most of the flavor.

Everyone at the table save myself and one other ordered the barbecued shrimp. I had one of the specials the waitress told us about in her opening spiel, a fried drum fillet topped with crawfish étouffée. M**** ordered their veal parmigiana, one of the restaurant’s Italian dishes. Most of us started off with gumbo, which was hot, spicy and full of seafood. They’re also not stingy with the French bread, a necessary accessory at Manales to sop up the barbecued shrimp sauce. No food porn, though. I didn’t bring a camera.

C***** pulled the waitress aside as she was clearing the dishes and pointed to CS, “It’s his birthday.” “Does he like bread pudding?” the waitress replied. She looked at me, I said, “I think so.” A couple of minutes later a parade of all the waiters in the place came into the dining room and got everyone in the joint to sing “Happy Birthday” to CS. After sufficient embarrassment he dug into his dessert, pronounced the bread pudding “too sweet,” and passed it around the table for everyone to taste. The sauce was a bit sweet and lacked the whiskey punch found at the Bon Ton, but was super buttery and creamy. The bread pudding itself wasn’t sweet at all and was moist, cinnamony and full of raisins.

Manale’s took on about 4 feet of water during Katrina. I don’t know whether they rescued all those old photos before it flooded or whether they had them all restored, but the atmosphere is unchanged from the last time I was there before the storm. They’ve come back nicely, and if Saturday’s crowd is any indication, I think they won’t have too much trouble making it in the long run. I also hear Charlie’s Steakhouse a block up Dryades will be back soon. All good news.

He hooks up first with Chris Rose. They talk about the storm, its aftermath, basically Chris plugging his book non-stop. Chris did a great job being the voice of the city in hard times. But I’ve had enough of it. He’s got some good lines, though. In the Katrina aftermath mode of living, he said you would, “Cry in your beer, cry in another beer, next thing you know, you’re crying in your whiskey.”

Rose takes Bourdain to Domilise’s for an “off menu” special: a fried shrimp and swiss cheese poboy with roast beef gravy. Bourdain gets his and asks: “Hot sauce, mayonnaise, cheese?” Yes to everything, except no tomatoes. Rose doesn’t know why they don’t have tomatoes at Domilise’s. They ask the bartender, whose been working there for ages. He doesn’t know. Bourdain thinks the answer lies in the poboy’s structural integrity. Tomatoes would cause, “Layer slide. A techtonic shift in the sandwich.”

Domilise’s was one of my favorite places to have lunch my senior year of high school. Seniors enjoyed and open campus, and the restaurant was around the corner. My favorite then was the trout poboy, followed by the roast beef, all washed down with Dixie beer or Barq’s served in big goldfish bowl glasses.

Tom Fitzmorris took Bourdain to the Lower Ninth and explains how it got hit from levees failing in both directions. Then Tom did what I guess he usually does after a visit to the Lower Ninth–he heads over to Antoine’s. I know I do.

Bourdain observes that Antoine’s is the type of place a foodie travel host would have as his first stop in NOLA, and proceeds to go on a tour of the kitchen and private dining rooms. His voice-over notes that, although the rooms are empty of customers, “A century of Mardi Gras royalty stare quietly at you from the walls, fading ghosts of a restaurant’s past.”

Cut to Bourdain sitting down with Fitzmorris. He does have a pertinent observation, “The weight of all that tradition–it’s for real. It’s not like those Irish pubs where they buy it all out of a warehouse. These are peoples’ real grand-dads and great-grand dads on the walls.” He notes the old-school type of service, that the waiter is a professional, not some actor in-between auditions. They talk to him–he’s from St. Bernard, lost everything in the storm. Fitzmorris talks about staffing problems after the storm. He says, “It is not going to be easy for this restaurant to survive. It’s a problem, really.”

What I didn’t understand was that it seemed they went to great lengths to make it appear Antoine’s is on the brink of bankruptcy. The restaurant was empty, obviously it was not open. Maybe it is hurting, I don’t know.

Bourdain goes on to visit Cafe Reconcile in Central City. It’s a training ground where troubled youth can learn cooking and restaurant management skills, and more importantly, social skills and responsibility. I’d say I should go there one day, and I should, but it is in a pretty rough part of town.

He then has an audience with Emeril. It was kind of touchy–Bourdain had a lot of fun at Emeril’s expense the last time he visited. They buried the hatchet and broke bread together, having a nice meal while Emeril told his Katrina story. Hundreds of employees scattered about the country, and Emeril’s efforts to find work for them all until his New Orleans properties recovered.

He observed that Creole, Cajun and southern dishes have their roots in poor people’s cooking and asked Emeril if that might ever go away. Emeril said he didn’t think there would ever be a chance that the pots and pans filled with red beans, gumbo and jambalaya would ever disappear, and, if they had, they’re back now.

Next, Bourdain visited a bar in the warehouse district that’s frequented by service industry personnel, where he interviewed a guy I’ve actually met, New Orleans comedian Bill Dykes. Again, it’s more Katrina stories.

The final visit was with chef Donald Link of Herbsaint and Cochon. Did I mention Chef Link is foulmouthed? His Katrina tale–getting past blockades to come into the city to clean out his restaurants, the filth-filled walk-in cooler to be cleaned out, etc.–was half bleeped out. Link did treat Bourdain to a combination crab boil and cochon de lait cookout, which the jaded New Yorker tucked into quite nicely.

All in all a pretty good episode. I just think the time has passed for doing such a Katrina-centric show. But I guess the rest of the world needs to know all is not perfect here. Thanks for coming, Tony.