The Big Easy, Briefly
I imagine saying The Big Easy is akin to The Big Apple or Frisco or whatever horrible nickname locals would never use. I didn’t go wild with New Orleans photos considering I’ve probably taken shots of most of the classic foods (how many beignets, Sazeracs, and bowls of gumbo does one need to see?) during my four trips over the past decade (still thinking it’s weird that I ended up going the exact same week of February this year, as my first visit in 2002) and I rarely take photos of people or objects or myself anyway. But this is what I ended up with.
Time is short in my world due to a combination of day-job-demands and general inertia, so I’m not likely to blog about any of my meals. I would probably talk about Dooky Chase and how it’s not fair to compare the fried chicken to Wille Mae’s on the next block, as I had intended because Willie Mae’s makes some of the best fried chicken in the country while Dooky Chase is more about the breadth of Creole cooking, as exemplified by the lunch buffet that I intended to bypass for a chicken-only-snack but got sucked into.
And how I wasn’t feeling Herbsaint, but my urge for modern Southern/NOLA cuisine was more than satisfied by newish Sweet Olive in the lobby of The Saint hotel where the minimalist, lucited style bucks typical New Orleans frippery. Drum (the fish), pimento cheese, sweet potato, fried oysters, collard greens, grits, crawfish, chow chow, banana pudding, and red velvet all get elevated.