Father's Daze

We spent three full days, part of two others and four nights in New Orleans to celebrate our 35th anniversary, and Terry and I barely scratched the surface of what the Big Easy has to offer.

That includes cuisine, libations, music, history, architecture, culture and much, much more.

I guess it just means that we’ll have to resign ourselves to go back there again sometime. I’m pretty confident it won’t take another 35 anniversaries for us to return.

I left us last week in our gustatory perambulations — I’ve just used up my quota of big words for the entire year and I’m not even through this paragraph yet — having just polished off a seafood/Cajun smorgasbord at the Acme Oyster House Sunday night.

By the way, a smorgasbord is one of the few epicurean offerings you won’t find easily in New Orleans. Apparently it’s too hot there for any Scandinavians to have stuck around long enough to have had any influence on the local cuisine — their loss.

It left us with a day and a half to continue working our way through the long list of local delights we were hoping to try before we had to leave. So little time, so much to eat!

We had already tried another item New Orleans is famous for, beignets — not just once but several times. The beignet is the official state doughnut of Louisiana, but to say a beignet is a doughnut is like saying filet mignon is a piece of meat.

Beignets are rectangular fried dough buried in a blizzard of powdered sugar — the only blizzard you’ll ever encounter in New Orleans.

There is no neat way to eat beignets — and plural is correct, since they come everywhere three to an order.

You don’t want to eat them while eating a black shirt or you’ll like you’re suffering from the worst case of dandruff in human history by the time you’re done. In that case, it would be worth it to take off your shirt before diving into your beignets.

Since they come three to an order, we felt obliged to eat beignets three days in a row, just to create some kind of symmetry. That’s not to say what kind of symmetry eating all those beignets created in my physique, but that’s why we were doing so much walking around the French Quarter.

Monday’s lunch was another N’awlins specialty — a muffuletta sandwich.

That was one muffuletta sandwich for the two of us, and that was still a struggle for us to finish.

We headed for the Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the Quarter, where the muffuletta originated, only to find that it was closed on Monday. Fortunately, right next door was Frank’s, which also features muffuletta sandwiches, so we headed in there.

The muffuletta is an Italian sandwich made of three Italian meats, two Italian cheeses and a special olive salad all on a muffuletta loaf — hence the name of the sandwich.

And it’s not an exaggeration to call it a loaf, which is nicer than calling it a roll on steroids, which might be a better description. After it’s heated, it’s served quartered, which gives two average people a fighting to chance to finish off a whole muffuletta.

Monday night we finally made it to Mr. B’s — one of the French Quarter’s finer establishments — for dinner. It was another recommendation from Anne, our cook/teacher at the New Orleans School of Cooking, and once again her recommendation passed with flying colors.

We also took her recommendation for our final lunch in New Orleans Tuesday, heading to Johnny’s on St. Louis Street for a genuine New Orleans shrimp po’ boy.

Her’s wasn’t the only recommendation for Johnny’s, apparently, as one wall was covered with autographed pictures of celebrities who apparently had enjoyed po’ boys there.

Once again, one sandwich was big enough for the two of us to split, which we did as a fitting finale to our New Orleans dining tour.

We had learned the day before, taking a carriage tour of the French Quarter, that the po’ boy — a New Orleans version of a submarine sandwich, basically, but really much more than that — was so named because it originally was sliced meat in a French bread loaf that was given to poor boys who couldn’t afford fancier meals. If that’s true, then it may be the only good thing to come out of poverty.

The carriage tour pointed out a few things that we had missed in walking around the French Quarter over several days, but that only gave us a few more things for a list of places to visit when we get back to New Orleans.

One thing we noticed walking around the French Quarter was that, if you somehow didn’t know who won the last Super Bowl, it was quickly learned within the first block — make that less than a block.

Every building, home and storefront seemed to have at least a Saints Super Bowl poster, newspaper headline, flag or banner. Every other tavern, restaurant or store that didn’t have live music seemed to be playing “Who Dat Playin’ in the Super Bowl” over their loudspeakers. And every t-shirt shop had at least a small selection of Saints Super Bowl t-shirts.

I suppose, since it took them so long to finally win a Super Bowl, the people of New Orleans should be allowed to keep celebrating months later. After all, nobody knows how to party like New Orleans. Just makes you wonder what it would be like in the Motor City if the Lions ever manage to win a Super Bowl.

After our po’ boy at Johnny’s, it was time to head back to the hotel, get our bags and head for the train station to go back home. I don’t think I’d seen Terry cry that much since at our wedding 35 years ago — and I wasn’t far behind her.