Fitzmorris - Tom Fitzmorriss hungry town: a culinary history of New Orleans: the city where food is almost everything

Published in 2010 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS

Text copyright 2010 Tom Fitzmorris
Cover photographs 2010 Jeff Elkins

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Fitzmorris, Tom, 1951
Tom Fitzmorriss hungry town : a culinary history of New Orleans, the city where food is almost everything / Tom Fitzmorris.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58479-801-9 (alk. paper)
1. Restaurants--Louisiana--New Orleans--History. 2.
Cookery--Louisiana--New Orleans--History. 3. Fitzmorris, Tom, 1951- 4.
Hurricane Katrina, 2005--Social aspects--Louisiana--New Orleans. I. Title.
TX907.3.L82F57 2010
641.5976335--dc22

2009039995

Designer: Alissa Faden
Production Manager: Tina Cameron

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For the incomparable restaurateurs of New Orleans

CHAPTER ONE
The Pleasures of Hard Times

CHAPTER TWO
How I Got This Job: A Lucky Coincidence of Interests

CHAPTER THREE
New Orleans Learns to Eat All Over Again

CHAPTER FOUR
A Mentor Resets the Dials

CHAPTER FIVE
All Food, All the Time

CHAPTER SIX
The Stars Come Out

CHAPTER SEVEN
Localism Leads to Cuisine

CHAPTER EIGHT
Good-bye, Creole World

CHAPTER NINE
Eight Hundred and Nine to Zero

CHAPTER TEN
Rebirth Begins in the Kitchen

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Appetites Return

CHAPTER TWELVE
Back to Abnormal

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Standing Reservations

Commanders Palace. It took more than a year to repair the antebellum building after Katrina.

CHAPTER ONE

The Pleasures of Hard Times

EXPOSED TO THE ELEMENTS

New Orleans is like your first raw oyster. You must suspend your squeamishness and take it on its own terms to enjoy it. If you keep your distance, youll never get it. If you go for it, though, you will be rewarded with the fulfillment of lust. Lust is an urge you need to have to live in this city successfully. Without lust, youre probably better off living somewhere else.

No matter what else you think or hear, the central lust in New Orleans is for eating. Passionate eaters recognize that about the city almost as soon as they arrive. The same way they do in Italy, France, and Spain, and for the same reasons.

Some people who love New Orleans might hesitate to credit something as quotidian as food with having so much magnetism. But not long ago some very convincing proof that food is almost everything was put before us. For New Orleanians, it was an extreme example of what we feel when we travel to another place and realize that the people there dont cook the way we do. We begin to itch to get back.

People who were living in New Orleans in the summer of 2005 will talk about what happened then for the rest of their lives. I was, and I will. Those of us who survived Hurricane Katrina (and many didnt; it was as bad as the television coverage made it look), those of us who love living in New Orleans, wondered what force possibly could pull our city and our lives back together.

To our surprise and delight, that force was provided in almost unbelievable measure by cooks, restaurants, gumbo, poor boy sandwiches, soft-shell crabs, and our love of eating together.

I should have known. Ive spent my entire adult life eating, thinking about eating, writing about eating, and talking about eating. But every time I think about the role our unique culinary culture played after Katrina, I shake my head and grin.

My first inkling that something wonderful was about to happen came on October 12, 2005, with an e-mail from a reader of my Web site: I saw in your newsletter that youre back in town. My wife and I have a reservation for eight oclock at Restaurant August. She said that even though we dont really know you, you really ought to join us and our son as our guest. Please say yes!

How could I say no? Id just returned to New Orleans after six weeks of post-Katrina evacuationmy longest absence since I was born on Mardi Gras 1951. I was home alone while my wife and two teenage children remained evacuated in Washington, DC.

Downtown New Orleans was still a bizarre mix of familiarity and chaos. I parked my car on a sidewalk behind a fire hydrant on Gravier Street, just off Tchoupitoulas. The New Orleans Police Department was in disarray and wasnt paying the slightest attention to even flagrant parking violators. Across the street was Restaurant August, a primary contender for the title of best restaurant in town since it had opened in 2001.

I opened the door and pushed into the crowded bar. Every face I saw was familiar to me. Some were friends, some prominent New Orleanians, some both. Most of the men wore jackets and ties, as did I. The women were dressed beautifully.

For the next ten or fifteen minutes, we all gave each other the Katrina hug. In those days, thats how we said, My God! Youre still alive! Since well over a thousand people died as a result of the storm, the hug was given and received in earnest. After disengaging from it, we traded stories of our situations, knowing that we could go on for hours. Meanwhile, I scanned the room for my hosts. I saw three people I didnt recognize sitting in the corner of the bar. I figured it had to be them.

It was. They had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot open and a glass of it poured for me by the time I elbowed my way over to them. I gave these strangers the Katrina hug, and we began a (lengthy) dinner that will never fade from my memory.

Ive had more than a few unforgettable dinners. I started writing about them in college, and I never quit. It became my lifes work, distributed mostly in print and on the radio, but in practically every other medium too. What most engages me, in work and play, is the food of New Orleans. I love it passionatelyas did these new friends whod invited me to dinner. As compelling as our Katrina conversation was, they also wanted to talk about food.