New Orleans Food

One of the things I love most about traveling to see the Wizards play road games is the opportunity to sample some local food. Some cities are admittedly better than others for this indulgence; I've had poutine in Toronto, Usinger sausages in Milwaukee and a cheesesteak in Philadelphia over the past few years whereas I came up a little bit emptier in Orlando and Indianapolis. Hey, I have to have a plan to eat myself happy again when the Wizards inevitably fail to win like they did this past Friday night in New Orleans. And the Big Easy is a great place for an appetite.

I think I could eat meals for about a week in New Orleans and get some different local flavor each time I sit somewhere to chow down. There are few places in the United States with this kind of culinary diversity with this many dishes endemic to the city or region. Where else you got? New York? Hawaii? Maybe Chicago? New Orleans to me means crawfish, po' boys, muffulettas, blackening spices, catfish, pralines, low country boil, oysters, beignets, gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, alligator, etouffee, king cakes and maybe some other things here and there that I've left out in my hurry to write this paragraph. Are you kidding me? This city is a diner's paradise.

Knowing I only had about four meals in the city based on our schedule for the long weekend, I tried to pick carefully and not repeat. Always a risk, but I'm happy with what I ate this past weekend. Below is the blow by blow, complete with pictures of each dish. I'm skipping the alligator po' boy I ate at the game. I've already panned that one in my game blog post.

Muffuletta

Napoleon House, 500 Chartres Street

The muffuletta sandwich, which consists of Italian cold cuts, provolone cheese and an olive salad (known similarly elsewhere in the country, particularly Chicago, as giardiniera) on a 10 inch round sesame seed loaf, was invented in New Orleans at the Central Grocery in 1906. According to legend or folklore or whatever you want to call it, Central Grocery owner Salvatore Lupo was inspired to invent the sandwich when he saw immigrant Sicilian workers balancing their meals consisting of all the muffuletta ingredients on their knees during lunchtime. He figured why not make a sandwich (which he named after the loaf of bread) out of it. Good idea! And by the way, you don't have to eat a whole 10 inch loaf; they come in halves or quarters.

The Central Grocery is still in business today and they still serve muffulettas, albeit I'm assuming NOT exclusively to Sicilians. The last time I was in New Orleans I opted to sample this sandwich at Serio's Deli, which I saw on the Food Network show Throwdown. I was disappointed: too much bread and not enough flavor. This time around, I opted for Napoleon House, located deep inside the French Quarter and one of the coolest restaurants I've ever been to. A muffuletta is traditionally served cold. Napoleon House serves theirs warm. I was hoping that would make the difference that I sought.

Napoleon House has been in business since 1914 and was named after a plan by original building owner Nicholas Girod to offer the place as a residence for exiled French emperor Napoleon after a planned rescue attempt that never got underway. Complicated, I know. Today, the bar and restaurant is a classic New Orleans establishment: old plastered walls, tiled floors, wooden bar and cafe tables, and tons of tons of pictures of Napoleon plus classical music. Always classical music. The atmosphere is fantastic.

I liked the muffuletta at Napoleon House and I'd get it again. For sure! If I were rich and moved to New Orleans, I'd hang out and drink at Napoleon House every day if I could and I'd definitely get the muffuletta like four days of the week. The loaf was not as thick as it was at Serio's and the toasting on the bread and the meats hanging out of the side of the sandwich gave it a much needed slight crunch. The overall effect is salty, but then what else do we expect out of an Italian cold cuts sandwich with olives? The bread balances the salt a little. I wiped the juices from the olive salad that had squirted out of the sandwich with my last bits of loaf.  Have it with a Dixie beer. :)

Beignets

Cafe Du Monde, 800 Decatur Street

Think doughnut here because despite a little textural difference, beignets, brought to the new world by French colonists and adopted whole-heartedly by the city of New Orleans, are at their most basic level dough fried in oil. And then covered with a copious amount of powdered sugar, at least as demonstrated by the picture above

Beignets are available all over New Orleans today, or at least I think they are. But for me and almost every other tourist that makes it to the Crescent City, there's only one place to sit and gobble down some of these things and that's Cafe Du Monde. So of course, that's where I headed for the full tourist experience. 

Cafe Du Monde serves one dish: beignets. That's it. Nothing else. When you sit down at a table at the restaurant (cash only, by the way), you have two choices to make: (1) do you want beignets and (2) what sort of drink do you want? That's it. No other decisions to make. I opted for "yes" on the beignets and an iced coffee, which is a chicory coffee that I find extremely bitter and which requires for me a heavy pour from the sugar dispenser on the table.

So how were they? Well how bad can fried dough covered in powdered sugar be? They were pretty good, worth the what in seemed like an extremely long line only to be really about 15 minutes. I've been to Cafe Du Monde before this trip and I'll come back if I'm ever back in the bayou. If it seems sketchy that a place that only serves one food dish could stay in business today, consider this: we took a cab back from Frenchman Street just before 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night and there was still a small line. This place practically mints money. The coffee does need a ton of sugar though. Wired on caffeine and sugar after this meal.

Pralines

Southern Candymakers, 334 Decatur Street

After a meal of sugared beignets and heavy-on-the-sugar chicory iced coffee, surely I wouldn't need anything sweet for a while, right? Well, NEED is not the issue here. So after my breakfast at Café Du Monde, I headed down Decatur Street for some more sugar, this time in praline form. And for me based on sampling as many different pralines (pronounced prah-leans) as I could when I visited in 2012, there was only one place to go: Southern Candymakers.

So what's a praline? Well, it's basically sugar, cream (or something similar like evaporated milk) cooked and poured over pecans and cooled until the mixture barely hardens. The result is a fudge like melt in your mouth caramel tasting sugar bomb that is about the most delicious sweet thing you have ever eaten. Or so I think.

Southern Candymakers produces a veritable smorgasbord of praline flavors, including rum, chocolate, sweet potato, peanut butter, coconut and original creamy. I opted for one chocolate and one original creamy on this trip. I guess you could say I was going light based on the fact that I'd just consumed about a half a pound of sugar at Cafe Du Monde about 15 minutes earlier. I ate the original creamy first and saved the chocolate for last. Mistake! There's nothing like the original pralines. I should have just gotten two of those and had done with it. The chocolate just doesn't compare.

There's no place like Southern Candymakers. The sign outside their shop which simply states "Best Pralines" is totally correct. I had one last praline at the airport on my way out of town (Nanny's, if you must know) and it was nowhere near as good as Southern's. I'm going to have to start mail ordering these things soon. 

Red Beans and Rice
Original Pierre Maspero's, 440 Chartres Street

 

Red beans and rice is a traditional Monday dish in New Orleans, a day when the washing was done and the meal consisted of a slow simmered for hours pot of red beans flavored with the bones or leftover pig from the family meal the previous Sunday. I got mine this year on a Saturday, since we can get pretty much anything we want at any time these days.

 

I love properly cooked beans. I could eat these things every day and the ones at Pierre Maspero's on the corner of Chartres and St. Louis in the French Quarter hit the spot for a quick lunch this past weekend. If I were in New Orleans again any time soon, I'd probably go somewhere else though. Some of the rice was a little al dente (not a good thing for rice to be) and the alligator and andoullie sausage pretty much just added extra protein without a whole lot of flavor. But the beans were perfect and the spice level was just right.

Oyster Po' Boy

Acme Oyster House, 724 Iberville Street

Stroll down Iberville Street at any time between about 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. and you are likely to walk past a line on the 700 block starting at a neon sign and extending northwest up the sidewalk. The neon sign hangs right above the front door of the Acme Oyster House, in business in New Orleans since 1910. Yes, it's touristy and everyone has to stand in line to say they've eaten there but the food is good. And the line's really not going to take that long unless you have a big party.

I hate raw oysters so it might seem odd that I stood in line for an oyster joint. They are just a slimy mess of goo that you load up with sauce and choke down. I can't even chew them. I've swallowed whole the one or two I've consumed in my life like some nasty sort of medicine. But coat them in flour or breading and fry them? Well, now you are talking. Instead of slimy and nasty, you get juicy and flavorful. Throw them on a sandwich with some lettuce, pickles and tomato with a smear of mayonnaise and a healthy dose of Tabasco? Now you've got a great meal, which in New Orleans is called a po' boy.

Now in case the name po' boy doesn't mean anything to you (even after the description above), it's nothing more than a New Orleans term for a submarine sandwich (substitute hoagie, grinder, hero or whatever else you call a long sandwich filled with meat in your corner of the world). According to legend, the sandwich got its name in the crescent city during the streetcar conductor strike of 1929. Benny and Clovis Martin, store owners in the city, decided they would provide sandwiches free of charge to all striking workers in a show of solidarity with the men. The jobless men became known as poor boys which the Martins adopted as the name of the sandwich, subsequently shortened to po' boy. The strikers lost their battle, but the Martins invented a famous sandwich out of the deal.

The oyster po' boy I got at Acme last weekend was the exact same thing I got on my first visit to this place. Why mess with success. Juicy and crispy oysters, quality bread with some acid from the pickles, lemon and a heavy hand with the hot sauce makes for some delicious eating. If I could get these locally around D.C., I might have a real issue with overeating. Like more than I do already.

One long weekend, one basketball game and great food at every turn sounds good to me. I made my choices in New Orleans based on what I like best but I could have eaten way differently and still been completely local in everything I gobbled down. There's lots on the menu for future trips. If you are looking at a Wizards road trip, I'd highly recommend New Orleans as a destination. Heck, I'd recommend it even if you make the trip without hoops. Feel free to eat like I ate. Or not. I don't think you can go wrong with food here.

May The Force Be With You

I don't get this Washington Wizards team. I realize this kind of up and down, good one night and bad the next sort of stuff is par for the course for the Wizards, but this year was supposed to be different, wasn't it? We've finally had the breakthrough we were looking for and made it to the second round of the playoffs the last two years, now it's time to take it to the next level, maybe a Southeast Division title or maybe a Conference Finals appearance? Heck, maybe even a 47 win season like every other team (other than the expansion Bobcats turned Hornets) has had since I've been a season ticket holder the last 16 years.

Instead what we've got is a 10-12 team that can beat the Cavaliers in Cleveland and then turn around the very next night and lose to a horrendous Los Angeles Lakers team that has no business even being competitive at Verizon Center. Yes, Kobe Bryant had a vintage type performance with 31 points, but John Wall poured in 34 that night. Are you telling me the rest of our lineup can't offset the spare parts the Lakers have on their roster? Yes, I get that there have been a significant number of injuries; we have been missing up to 1/3 of our available roster on any given night and have had to release one player (Martell Webster) because he's just likely to not play ball ever again. But this season's downs have been particularly difficult.

Take this past weekend: in what figured to be an especially grueling week long four game road trip, the bright spot appeared to be Friday night's game in New Orleans against a 5-16 Pelicans team. After road wins the past two weeks in Cleveland and Miami, it seemed like that one was a gimme before certain losses to Dallas, Memphis and San Antonio. Instead, the Wizard laid another egg, allowing the Pels to drop in a franchise record 16 three pointers en route to a two point win. And then turned around the very next night and beat Dallas. Frustrating.

I was not home for the Dallas game so I missed the win. I followed the score and the almost completely blown lead via smartphone and texts from a club on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans. Of course the fact that I was in New Orleans meant I not only saw the Pelicans' win Friday, but I was there for it, as part of my annual commitment to try to eventually see the Wizards in every arena in the NBA. It was Star Wars Night, too. That may have been the best part.

So first things first: the game. Drew Gooden was out. So was Nenê  So was Alan Anderson (hasn't played yet for the Wizards). So was Kris Humphries. And so was Bradley Beal. So fine, we are down to ten men. The team on the other end of the floor had just five wins!! Beal by the way has now missed five of the Wizards 22 games (including Friday and Saturday). Yesterday the team declared him out for at least two weeks. That would have him missing five additional games assuming a return on Boxing Day in Brooklyn. That's 72 games max this year if two weeks holds and he plays every game the rest of the way. And he's hoping for a max deal? Please, don't, Wizards.

Some troubling season long trends continued in a game that quarter by quarter was remarkably close. No team outscored the other by more than two in any one quarter. It's not like the game was a blowout by any stretch of the imagination. Defending the three point shot continues to be an opportunity for improvement and Friday night was not the first time this year the Wizards have been torched from beyond the arc. There have been multiple games with double digit three pointers made from the opposition, including against Oklahoma City (15!), Boston (12 twice!) and Indiana (19!!!). Heck Wes Matthews scored ten by himself when the Mavericks visited Verizon Center a couple of weeks ago. There has to be an adjustment here and fast.

The second trend that has me mighty worried is the Wizards ability to put opponents away. After a sluggish start against the Lakers, the Wiz caught up and pulled ahead momentarily. They should have just put the hammer down and buried the Lakers. Instead, they relaxed on their way to another loss. The same could be said of Friday's game. The Wizards led by seven in the fourth quarter behind an unconscionably good 56.8 percent shooting and couldn't put the Pelicans away. The killer instinct seems to be missing.  If it was ever there.

The concourse of the Smoothie King Center.

I hate losing on the road; walking out of an opponent's building wearing Wizards apparel is humiliating. But I love visiting other NBA arenas. It gets me out of the city and gives me an excuse to see other parts of the country (not like I need one really). It also lets me see how things are like for NBA fans in other teams' houses. Sometimes I'm jealous; other times I'm thankful for what I have at Verizon Center.

The number of times I've felt grateful for Verizon Center is pretty small. Most of this is nothing bad about VC but more a victim of its siting. The lot for our building is inflexibly small. The folks building the arena on F Street downtown did what they could and the place is finished pretty decently, I think. But there's relatively little else in the building because there's just no space on the block where the building is constructed.

In contract to Verizon Center, New Orleans' Smoothie King Center (take your pick between the Pels' building and the Suns' Talking Stick Resort Center as worst name in the NBA) is under no such urban constraints. It's located right next to the famous Superdome just about three quarters of a mile walk from the closest edge of the French Quarter. I love being able to walk or take public transportation to a game; sports absolutely belong in the city's downtown.

But despite being absolutely free to go wild with the building's envelope to incorporate sophisticated special features about the history of basketball in New Orleans or something like that, the Smoothie King Center (hereafter SKC) misses the mark, and I suspect it's all money related. Walking around the concourse of the SKC is like walking around a building not quite moved into. The slabs of the building were clearly cast in place out of concrete and the exposed beams, which do not succeed as an architectural feature here, make the place look unfinished. Combine that with the relatively inexpensive floor and wall materials, and Verizon Center looks like a palace.

The one place that money was spent was on the arena's primary scoreboard. This thing is huge, especially on the long sides, and accommodates all the stats that I crave at Wizards home games in one convenient spot, rather than having to search for them in the corners of the arenas (and sometimes having to wait for the other team's stats to disappear). Definitely an upgrade over Verizon Center's main scoreboard, which at the time it was installed was (I believe) the only high definition scoreboard in the league.

The scoreboard is featured prominently during shoot around and player introductions. This is not much of a surprise. Verizon Center's main display shows images of our players shooting before the game and overlays stats on top of the highlighted player; our player introduction video always plays on the scoreboard too. But I was shocked to see the Wizards prominently featured on the SKC scoreboard during pregame activities and the images of our players on the center display during player intros were about as big as they could get. When he bought the team, Ted Leonsis established (and is maintaining) a zero tolerance policy against highlighting the other team's players in any way. I love Ted's approach. I'm not sure I can remember another arena doing what the Pelicans do. As a Pels fan, I'd hate it. As a Wiz fan, I loved it. Now if we could have just won the damn game...

Metal detectors in the street between the Superdome and Smoothie King Center.

Two final thoughts on the arena experience in New Orleans. First, I loved the entry sequence, primarily or only because the metal detectors are installed in the street, rather than inside the doors of the building as they are at Verizon Center. I suppose the Pelicans have this luxury because it's mostly always warm in southern Louisiana and because there's enough space outside the building to put metal detectors. I'd never seen this done before and I loved it. One of my pet peeves about Verizon Center has been the backed up line out the door during busy games. Great idea!

My final thought is about the food at SKC. New Orleans' food is a trip (and a blog post too apparently but more on that later this week) in itself and I was hoping desperately we'd see some local flavor at the arena. Sure enough, I was right. In addition to smoothies at the Smoothie King stand (of course...) the arena food choices included some southern barbeque of various varieties, a praline stand and a couple of Zatarain's booths serving jambalaya and alligator sausage po' boys. Sounds pretty good, right?

It did to me, too. And being a sucker for exotic meats and having never ever seen alligator on a stadium menu before, I opted for the alligator sausage po' boy, which I imagined would come as a deliciously messy sandwich complete with dressing of some sort and maybe some pickles, lettuce and tomatoes, just like I expect a po' boy to be. And at $10, it seemed like a bargain.

Having no previous standard for alligator sausage at a stadium, I have to say that this was the best one of these I've ever had at a game. But a po' boy it was not. Bun. Sausage. That's it. It was basically an alligator hot dog, which I dressed with mustard, since I always have mustard on hot dogs, and some Tabasco, which I always use on po' boys. Disappointing for sure, but then again it's stadium food, right? I'll take the brats at VC any day even though those lack seasoning.

This game went down to the wire. Gary Neal missed a two point shot at the buzzer which could have tied it, although from our angle at the top of the lower bowl, we didn't understand why John Wall didn't take it all the way to the cup. I guess that's better than a blowout. But there's always a hollow feeling in a road loss (like, I came all this way for THAT???). I have to say the Pelicans fans were gracious and nobody said anything to us unlike some other places (Indiana comes to mind here). I was also surprised by the number of Wizards fans there who appeared to be genuine Wizards fans, not just John Wall fans. I even got a consolation fist bump from a Washington fan on Bourbon Street on my way back from some jazz after the game. 

Oh...and Star Wars night. Didn't get much out of it except a Stormtrooper mug on the way in, which we traded to a dude working at the Bourbon Cowboy for a knitted Budweiser koozie. It's way cooler than it sounds. Next roadie: L.A. in April. Lots of work to do before then.

Alligator sausage po' boy, folks. You are underwhelmed, I know.