Best Dessert: Whiskey Bread Pudding, Acme Oyster House

I give this one to the whiskey bread pudding at New Orleans' Acme Oyster House. Loved how that whiskey tang set off the richness of the pudding!

Runner-up: the pralines from River Street Sweets Candy Store in Savannah.

Oak Alley Plantation

En route to Houston, we stopped by Oak Alley Plantation, about one hour outside of New Orleans. If Bonaventure in Savannah is the Platonic ideal of a cemetery, Oak Alley is kind of the Platonic ideal of a plantation. I felt horribly guilty for swooning, but the place is just so damn romantic.

28 300-year-old oaks stand sentry on each side of a path leading up to the house, with a smaller number of baby oaks (150 years old) in the back. The house itself sports one of those deep wrap-around verandas.

After the tour, we parked ourselves under the oaks and had an impromptu picnic, finishing up the muffuletta we'd saved from NO.

Shopping!

I like to think that I do some things reasonably well. But I'm loathe to say I do anything extremely well... except shopping. With absolutely no hesitation, I can say that I am a 100% awesome shopper. And I can never stop shopping!!

On our last morning in New Orleans, I fell prey. The day before I'd seen some really cute dresses in a store window, so on the way back from Central Grocery, I convinced Kaii to go back with me. (Oh no! See this is where the problem is -- in the looking. Just. Don't. Look.)

After about 10 minutes, Kaii ended up leaving me there and huffing back to the hotel because we were about to miss our checkout time and I was... too busy looking at the racks of Velvet, Christopher Deane and Tracy Reese, plus Gryson and Olivia Harris bags and shoes by Giuseppe Zanotti and Manolo. Yes, this magical store, called UAL, specialized in brand-new designer clothes at wholesale prices. Amazing!! I told the nice girls there that if I lived in town, I'd probably come by every week. It's true. I tried on some really cute Christopher Deane dresses (knocked down to $59), but in the end, rushed home empty-handed.

Seriously, I recommend this place if you're ever down South! They apparently have locations in Tennessee and Mississippi too. Here's the New Orleans address:

UAL (United Apparel Liquidators, Inc)
518 Chartres Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
504-301-4437
www.myspace.com/ualfashion

Muffuletta

Day 6 dawned way too early for me. But we had to pack up our things and get ready to make the trek to Texas. And we had a bit of unfinished business in New Orleans -- muffuletta. We had to make a pilgrimage to the old-school Italian grocery store Central Grocery on Decatur to have their famous sandwich of Italian meats and cheeses topped by a garlicky olive salad.

My god! That was some sandwich. It was EIGHT inches around, cut into quarters, and cost $14. (In the last photo above, the quarter is there for scale.) The oil from the olives dripped down in a greasy, delicious mess.

A Night Out with Keith Pandolfi

So... why was I not able to blog the other night? Well, I blame it all on Keith Pandolfi and a series of coincidences. Let me explain: Earlier I had updated my Facebook status to read: "Jeni just learned how to make gumbo, jumbalaya, etc." A couple hours later I got this e-mail from my friend Keith (a former coworker) that was like, "Where the hell are you? You're not in New Orleans, are you?? I'll be there tonight." Ha! That was funny enough.

Turns out Keith was in town for the Mardi Gras parade on Saturday. It is just that big of a deal! And Keith is a Nola expert, having lived there for six years. (Later he regaled me with tales of weeklong benders in honor of Mardi Gras and other shenanigans...)

So he and his friend Katie drove out to meet me at my hotel, the Renaissance, which is where coincidence #2 came into play: Katie was headed there anyway... because it was her last day as kitchen manager at the hotel restaurant, MiLa!!

Alright, maybe I sound like a retard, but I am seriously bowled over by coincidences like that.

We met up. We went to this bar around the corner, Cajun Mike's (divey). Two more of Keith's friends came out, Elisabeth and John. Coincidence #3: John is the sous chef at Jack the Horse Tavern, a restaurant that's about two blocks from my house in Brooklyn! Amazing!

Anyway, from Cajun Mike's we were suddenly walking down Bourbon Street. I was going on about how disgusting it is, blah blah blah, but wouldn't you know it, pretty soon we were at some bar and I was getting an Abita to go in a plastic cup and walking down the street with it. Yes, you can drink outside in New Orleans. Completely ridiculous.

I think the night's itinerary from there went something like this:

1. Pat O'Briens -- probably the most famous bar in New Orleans, home of the "Hurricane" (fruit punch mixed with rum). John bought one in a souvenir glass. There were multiple rooms, including one with two people playing grand pianos facing one another, and a courtyard with a fountain on fire (?!). Also the site of Keith's very first martini at age 18.

2. Jean Lafitte's -- named after the French pirate. The oldest bar in New Orleans. Somehow we closed the bar out even though it was only 1 am.

3. dba -- cousin to the one in New York!

4. Molly's.

5. R-Bar. I think.

There might have been other stops along the way, but the memory is a little hazy. At 4 am, Katie and Keith drove me back to the hotel. And that is why I was not able to blog that night.


Elisabeth and John on Bourbon Street.


Pat O'Brien's.


Me & Keith at Pat O'Brien's.

dba.


Molly's.

Dinner at Mandina's

Kaii took a quick nap; then we took the street car quite far from the city center to Mandina's, a neighborhood-y Italian/seafood place that had been recommended to us. It felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, but we were reassured when we went in and there was a big ass line. (Ha, there's the New Yorker in me again!)

I was so full after the turtle soup (it's actually made with veal) and shrimp remoulade (cold shrimp in a creamy mustard sauce -- another Nola specialty), that when my trout almandine came, I could only manage a few bites. Seriously. The fries were amazing though -- they kind of reminded me of my favorite fries of all time, these golden beauties in St. Petersburg over 10 years ago that were almost definitely cooked in lard. Ah... they live on in memory.

Anyway, Kaii insisted on having milky way pie for dessert, but I was DONE.

Afternoon snack at Mother's

On the way back to the hotel, Kaii wanted to stop and try the food at Mother's, a local place renowned for its po' boys. It was cute, but unfortunately, we weren't blown away. Kaii had a gigantic po' boy w/ beef brisket on top of turkey and ham, while I just had a little cup of red beans and rice (with bits of pork and bacon in it).

Garden District Tour: aka "Star Homes" Part 2

And here are some more notable homes/institutions:


Commander's Palace, the restaurant where Paul Prudhomme and Emeril first became famous.


House where they shot "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." (Incidentally, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in the 'hood at one point, but not when he wrote that story, I believe.)


House whose architecture was inspired by temples in Bangkok.


Where Degas came to visit and paint.


Just a really pretty one. The peeps who own this one spent tens of millions on the renovation, and now come to visit from New Jersey a couple times a year -- like this weekend, for the Mardi Gras parade.

Garden District Tour: aka "Star Homes," Nola Edition

The second part of the Garden District Tour involved walking around basically gawking at rich and famous people's houses. In other words, it was perfect!

Here's some of what we saw:


Where Anne Rice lived for 15 years.


Trent Reznor.


Where they shot Oliver Stone's "JFK."


Where Eli and Peyton Manning grew up.


Nicholas Cage.

Garden District Tour: Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery

Feeling stuffed, we hopped on the 19th-century era streetcar -- which still had wooden seats and complicated-looking mechanical levers for the conductor -- to the Garden District for a little tour. Turned out we were the only ones on it.

First stop was Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery -- the above-ground "city of the dead"-style cemetery you see in a lot of fantastical thrillers set in the South. (Movies like, apparently, "Double Jeopardy" with Ashley Judd and "Deja Vu" with Denzel Washington. Oh, also "Easy Rider"!)

Our tour guide, Dave Roberts, explained how the family crypts worked: There are two slots for one coffin each, top and bottom. When the next person in the family dies, the grave workers come and take the bottom coffin out and dump the bones in the pit underneath and stick the new one in. That's how, like, 20 people can fit in one little crypt!


See, here is an abandoned crypt whose front panel has fallen off or been removed -- you can see the top and bottom compartments, plus the pit o' bones underneath! (There were no bones that I could see in this one.)

Cooking Class

After beignets. we headed to St. Louis Street to take a cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking. Yes, super tourist-y, but it was fun! And yes, there was a "general store" out front where you could buy all the spices and mixes that are ever so conveniently mentioned in class.

Our teacher was actually reasonably good about not over-promoting. His name was Kevin, aka Big Kev, and he has a restaurant in the Hilton called Lil' Dizzy's Cafe. He was a funny dude. Kept us entertained as he made first a coconut bread pudding (so it could bake in the oven), then gumbo, jumbalaya and finally pralines. He cooked up on a stage kitchen that had a big mirror over it so you could see what he was doing, and we sat at round tables of eight or so covered in checkered cloths. Big Kev was really casual with the measurements and everything -- drove the Virginia ladies at our table crazy. They kept asking how many cups of this and that, and he just laughed at them. It was funny.

YUM, the food was good! Especially the gumbo and pralines, in my opinion. I can't wait to try my hand at them at home. :)


Us in the mirror over the cooking area.


Big Kev in the process of making a jumbo portion of the jumbalaya in a cooker so big it looked like an Airstream.


The gumbo. Do you know why gumbo's so brown like that? I had no idea -- the base is a "roux," or flour cooked and browned in oil. That's what makes it so thick and tasty.


Jumbalaya, served with Abita root beer. Real Abita beer was being served too, but I opted to keep it PG.


The bread pudding, with praline on the side. He made the pralines look so easy!

Day 5: Nola to the Max

OK, here goes... let me rewind a day and go back to the very busy and packed day we had in New Orleans yesterday.

We started things off by having beignets and cafes au lait at the Cafe du Monde in the French Market. Just as we'd been warned, the heaping powdered sugar cascaded onto our laps. Good thing I wore all black.

Acme Oyster House

So, obviously, it was a tough call for dinner -- so many options, so little time! Being a New Yorker, I was won over by the line outside Acme Oyster House (line = must be good). We got there in the nick of time -- about 20 people piled in after us within five minutes!

The meal did not disappoint. I would say this was the best seafood on the trip so far, and definitely some of the best oysters I've ever had. We had a half dozen raw, followed by shrimp and crab gumbo (amazing), crawfish etouffé (crawfish tails in a buttery sauce served over rice) and an oyster and shrimp po' boy w/ tabasco mayo. Most uncharacteristically, Kaii was not in the mood for dessert, but I made room for bread pudding w/ whiskey sauce. It was pretty great.

Eating New Orleans

You could probably eat here five times a day and still have places left over to try. We and our stomachs will do our best. Here are some of the places on Decatur Street alone that we may or may not visit in the next 1.5 days: Central Grocery for muffuletta sandwiches, Cafe du Monde for beignets and Tujagues (pronounced two-jacks) for seafood.