New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (NOLA)

Katrina be damned, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival came back in 2006 as strong as ever. This was a much-anticipated homecoming for the hundreds of musicians and artists scattered around the country, as well as an emotional shot in the arm for a population striving to "feel normal" again. However, while the artists and musicians were able to find paying gigs elsewhere in the wake of the storm, the restaurant industry had nowhere to go. Faced with the combination of property damage and a severely depleted client base, many of them are still boarded up, most with a goal of trying to open their doors again by Mardi Gras 2007.

For four days during the second weekend of Jazz Fest, in addition to drinking in the best live music anywhere on Earth, I humbly donated my wallet and my stomach in my own small rebuilding effort. . .

Friday
We landed at 10:30 local time, which gave us enough time to drop off our bags and stock the apartment with beer and groceries before heading to lunch.

Parasol's - We broke with our traditional visit to Fat Harry's on the first day of 'Fest in order to make a pilgrimage to Parasol's. I say pilgrimage, because in a town where every dive bar and gas station sells Po'boys, Parasol's is amongst the best around. Their specialty is a roast beef Po'boy, which I am told is the quintessential roast beef Po'boy. I ordered one of these as well as a shrimp Po'boy, both "dressed." (Just as Philadelphians order their Cheese steaks "wiz wit", you need to learn the New Orleans lexicon. "Dressed" means that your Po’boy will come with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo. "Nuttin" means that you will just get the main ingredient on bread (though, generally speaking, the grease from whatever type of Po'boy you order will likely provide sufficient lubricant as it soaks into the crusty French bread.)

[NOTE: Those of you who did not grow up on or at least near the water will have some trouble with the phonetic menu at Parasol's. To order a fried shrimp Po'boy, you would need to point to the line item labeled, "swimps." Similarly, the fried oyster Po'boy appears under "erster." Please do try to play along.]

Let's face it, the difference between a fair Po'boy and an outstanding Po'boy is the bread. Some kitchens work their own brand of voo doo into the batter before frying, others have a lighter touch with the fry basket, but generally speaking, great bread separates the "haves" from the "have nots" in Po'boy land. Parasol's has great bread. The crisp, bordering on sharp, crust yields to a light, airy center that provides the perfect pillow top mattress for whatever you choose to fill it with. You get the dual sensations of sharp crust abrading the corners and roof of your mouth, while the soft center combines with the fry grease or roast beef jus to form almost a savory oatmeal mush on your tongue.

The fried "swimps" Po'boy was great, but for my money, the roast beef Po'boy is the way to go. The beef is warm and cooked all the way through and the resulting Po'boy is what one might expect if a Philly Cheese steak married a French Dip and raised their children in an Irish pub.

We washed these down with a tall, cold pint of Abita amber (from Parasol's bar, just on the other side of a pass-through window) and headed out to the Fairgrounds.

Fairgrounds:
Kajun Kettle Foods - If 'Fest were a religion, Crawfish Monica would be our communion. Every single person at 'Fest eats at least one order of the stuff during their time at the Fairgrounds - and for most it is a daily ritual. After driving through an eerie, semi-deserted, flood-ravaged neighborhood to get to the Fairgrounds, one bite of Crawfish Monica and the World started to seem right again.

Monica consists of spiral shaped pasta smothered in a Creole-infused cheese sauce and punctuated with crawfish. What sounds like a simple recipe is an intoxicating dish that has become the stuff of legends. All through the crowd, you hear whispers of, "my friend actually knows Monica," followed by, "my sister's roommate got the recipe - can you believe it?" Whoever Monica is, she should be canonized.

Scales Strawberry Lemonade - This is another 'Fest favorite. Aside from beer and bottled water, strawberry lemonade forms one third of 'Fest's trinity of liquid hangover fighters: strawberry lemonade, sweet tea, and cafe au lait. The lemonade is fresh-squeezed and over-packed with ice to create a cool, refreshing, not-too-sweet libation that is just what the doctor ordered to stay cool under the hot New Orleans sun.

As an aside, towards the middle of their set on Friday afternoon, Little Feat had Jimmy Buffet join them on stage. This wasn't too much of a stretch, but at one point they broke into a cover of the Dead's "Darkstar." There was a collective look of confusion in the crowd, like nobody was really sure whether they were hearing it, imagining it, or flashing it back.

Fat Harry's - After our first day at 'Fest, we retreated to Fat Harry's to pick up the rest of our party. We got there as they were polishing off their Po'boys and boiled crawfish. We grabbed a few cold beers, closed the tab and headed out for dinner.

Casamento's - Having grown up in Maryland, I couldn't help but fall in love with Casamento's. The front room has a few small tables and an oyster counter and the back room has some longer tables for larger groups. The kitchen is maybe 8x10 and if you want to use the bathroom, you walk out through the kitchen, outside, past the storage area and hang a left. The decor is pastel tiles - floor to ceiling - no muss, no fuss.

They were too busy to take our party of eight, so we crowded around the oyster counter where we sucked down some of the plumpest, freshest oysters I have had in a long time - all for the bargain basement price of $7.95 per baker's dozen (technically the pricing was per dozen, but in Louisiana, you always get a thirteenth oyster on the house - a "lagniappe").

Once we sat down, we perused the menu and quickly made our decisions - the menu is very simple and skewed towards seafood. You basically need to pick an animal and then decide on "platter" (no bread and served with sides), Po'boy, or "loaf" (same philosophy as a Po'boy, but served on thick Texas toast, not a French roll - the result is a higher meat:bread ratio).

I opted to share a cup of oyster stew with Kate and then have the soft-shell crab loaf for dinner. The oyster stew was a letdown. I had some last year at 'Fest and thought it was the best I had ever had outside Maryland's Eastern Shore, but this year's batch was "broken" - the cream separated from the broth into little white chunks that resembled curdled milk. Not good.

The soft-shell crab loaf was a World apart. They crammed two thick fried crabs onto a piece of toast and dressed it with lettuce and tomato. The crabs were juicy, tender and up there with the best of them. I actually struggled to get both down (what with a dozen oysters already rolling around in my belly) but in the end I prevailed. This continues to be one of my favorite places in New Orleans.

Ms. Mae's - Just a few doors down is a fantastic no frills bar. I bought a round of mixed drinks for the eight of us - including a few "doubles" and got change from a $20 bill. We settled in here for a few rounds to let dinner digest and to get ready for some dancing. As a bonus, we got to meet Ms. Mae who, like Yeltsin, is living proof of the preservative effects of alcohol, albeit with the same look of the "living embalmed."

Le Bon Temps - Still trying to decide where to go for the night, we decided to stop in to Le Bon Temps for a quick drink. On our way in, we found out that Anders Osborne would be playing two sets at 11:00, but that it was still early, so there was no cover. We marched in, started ordering drinks and staked out some real estate in the back. Anders put on a great first set in a room that was so packed that he practically had to stand in the crowd to play. The second set wasn't as "tight" so we retreated to the patio to cool off and wind down.

Saturday
We managed to get everybody up, showered and out the door and were sitting on our blanket at the Fairgrounds by noon - truly a logistical feat and a testament to the powers of Advil and Gatorade.

Fairgrounds:
Panorama Foods - We decided it was time for some crawfish bread - the only other foodstuff that comes close to rivaling Crawfish Monica in popularity. The dish consists of a ciabatta-like bread, split horizontally, stuffed with crawfish, cheese and Creole spices and then wrapped in aluminum foil and baked. The result is a delicious pocket of cheesy, hot, dough goodness. The trapped steam moistens the bread and as your teeth sink into it, strings of cheese trail away from your lips to the aluminum foil. Ambrosia.

Papa Ninety Catering - While Kate and I munched on Crawfish bread, our friends picked up an order of boudin balls. Imagine taking the filling for sausage, before it goes into the casing, then rolling it into little balls and tossing it in a deep fryer. This is not recommended for those with a family history of heart disease, but it is truly outstanding. It rivals Chef Nobu's "tempura avocado" under the same belief that the only thing tastier than fat is fat that has been fried in a different fat.

Patton's Caterers - We also picked up some crawfish beignets to snack on. These are similar to the fried dough confection that has made Cafe du Monde famous, but are savory, not sweet. This is accomplished by wrapping the dough around a ball of spicy crawfish before tossing it in the fryer. The resulting golden brown morsels are served with a mustard cream sauce. I think this particular batch was a bit overdone, but I didn't see any go to waste.

We heard some blistering horn section from the Jazz & Heritage stage, so we took our food over there to check it out. We were delighted to see that the Lil' Rascals Brass Band was playing an unscheduled performance AND that Derrick Shezbie and Vincent Broussard from the Rebirth Brass Band were sitting in with them for the set. "I said - I - I - feel like funkinitup - funkinitup-funkinitup-a." How can't you love Jazz 'Fest?

After Theresa Anderson's set, we listened to Warren Haynes lay down a great acoustic set and then went looking for some lunch (yes, the aforementioned food was breakfast).

Vaucresson Sausage Co - Realizing that dinner was only about four hours away, Kate and I decided to split a hot sausage Po'boy from this venerable purveyor. The sausage was dynamite - spicy, reddish sausage somewhere between a hot Italian sausage and chorizo - grilled, split lengthwise and laid out on a French roll. The only downside was that there was about twice as much bread as you needed, so we tossed the top half of the roll and ate ours open-faced. You haven't lived until you have burned the roof of your mouth with pork fat. Next year I will get two small orders and combine the meat from both into one roll.

We got back to the blanket just as Robert Randolph and the Family Band were taking the stage. They played a characteristically upbeat and lively set that concluded with Warren Haynes joining them for a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child." I go to a lot of concerts and it will take a long time for that memory to be surpassed.

Cafe du Monde - Starting to fade from a day spent dancing, drinking beer and eating fried foods in the sun, I stopped off at the Cafe du Monde stand for a 24 ounce Cafe Au Lait to re-charge my batteries before the Jimmy Buffet set. They offer hot, iced and frozen varieties of this delicious beverage (one of my friends confessed that it contains three of the four essential food groups: caffeine, sugar and fat). I opted for the silky smooth and deceptively strong iced variety and had consumed it all in about 20 paces.

Jimmy played a solid set of mostly old favorites to a standing room only crowd. People packed the infield, spilled over the crown of the track, packed the track itself and I even saw some people on the railing outside the track craning their necks to see the jumbotron. I'm not sure what was in the water this year, but just as he did on Friday with Little Feat, on Saturday evening Jimmy covered another Dead tune, this time it was a fairly inspired version of "Scarlet Begonias."

We packed up our stuff and began my favorite 'Fest tradition - the sprint to Jacque-Imo's. We drive there as fast as we can, screech the car to a stop outside the front door, send in an advance party to negotiate a table and then take turns trying to use the back seat of the car and the sidewalk to change clothes, slather on fresh deodorant, etc.

Jacques-Imo's - As luck would have it, we were early enough that they gave us a table for 10 as long as we were out before the 8:30 reservation showed up. Isn't it funny how when a restaurant in NYC says, "you can only have the table until 8:30" you want to punch them in the face, but when someone in NOLA says it, you thank them for their hospitality? I guess there is a lot to be said for style points. Anyway, we sat down, ordered up a round of drinks and sank our teeth into Jacques' fantastic cornbread while we read the menu. It really is outstanding cornbread - the top caramelizes and seals in the moisture. It is served garnished with butter and a bit of basil.

For starters, we all shared: Fried green tomatoes w/ BBQ shrimp on top, fried oysters, and smoked boudin w/ mustard sauce.

The fried green tomatoes w/ BBQ shrimp have become a signature dish here. The shrimp are massive - often sticking out from both sides of the tomato slices - and cooked to tender perfection under a sweet/spicy glaze of BBQ sauce. We start with two orders and we always want more. Jacques' fried oysters are exactly as they should be - lightly breaded and barely fried - closer resembling a soft chocolate truffle rolled in cocoa powder than the heavy, greasy racquetballs that many people pass off as fried oysters. [NOTE: If you don't want to order a whole portion of them (the only reasonable excuse being that you already ordered the shrimp & fried green tomatoes and ate a plate of corn bread), rest assured - a fried oyster tops every house salad at Jacques'.]

And then came the boudin. I must confess, as much as Maryland was a slave state during the Civil War, I have never felt more like a Yankee than the first time I was served boudin at Jacques'. Unlike sausage everywhere else I have ever had it, in Louisiana, you do not eat the casing, and rather you squeeze the meat out of it like a bizarre savory push pop. During the day, at the 'Fest, people use their hands to squeeze it onto saltines, but at night - armed with fork and knife - it is customary to slit the casing lengthwise and then remove chunks of meat with a fork - more like Scottish haggis than anything else. The sausage inside is a sweet, spicy mixture that is Heaven-sent when dredged through some of Jacques' spicy cream-based mustard sauce.

After these came everyone's house salad - spinach in a light vinaigrette, topped with a fried oyster. It is so simple, but so perfect. It is also routinely the only greens I eat during my entire run at 'Fest each year.

By this point, sun burn, alcohol and the fullness of the appetizer orgy begin to set in and most people forget what they ordered for an entree. What ensues is a confused communal dining where people randomly take a few bites of a dish, then pass it along. Over the course of the meal, I sampled fried chicken w/ corn macquechaux and smothered cabbage, fried grits, fried venison steak and grouper.

The fried chicken is really not to be missed. I know there is nothing exciting about going to a restaurant with a cloth napkin and eating fried chicken, but trust me on this - theirs is amazing (and enough to feed two people comfortably).

I thought the fried venison steak was a little tough and greasy - really a terrible thing to do to venison, but I was in the minority here (when in Rome. . .). The fried grits were a little too close to polenta for my taste, but perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for fried anything else at that point in the meal.

Finally, the grouper was a nice, light change of pace. A remarkably fresh piece of fish delicately seasoned and bursting with moisture. It marks the first time in the history of civilized man that fish was successfully used as a palate cleanser.

We stopped back at the apartment for a quick change of clothes and then headed out to Ms. Mae's again to fortify ourselves for the "late night show" at Tipitina's. Our tickets said "Greyboy Allstars - 2AM" but I think they went on stage closer to 3:00 and were still playing when we called it a night at 6:30.

Sunday
Sunday is a special day at 'Fest - aside from the fact that everything has a fuzzy “morning after” haze about it, nowhere else on Earth is going to "church" more fun. I am not a religious man, but a quick stop by the gospel tent on Sunday morning of 'Fest and I feel like I shave years off my time in purgatory. Afterwards, my attention turns to thoughts of "what do I need to eat more of, since it has to last me a whole year?"

Fairgrounds:
Mrs. Wheat's Fabulous Foods - Spicy Natchitoches Meat Pies are an old Louisiana tradition. After Katrina, their factory was destroyed, so they relocated to Atlanta, set up shop, and returned to the 'Fest this year same as it ever was. Grab a piping hot meat pie (in a wax paper bag) and pour hot sauce straight into the bag. After a few quick shakes (remember the instructions on the back of a "Shake and Bake" box?) you are good to go. A crispy, flaky outer shell yields to a gooey inner layer of dough and a hot mixture of meat and potatoes smothered in hot sauce. This is to Louisiana what samosas are to Indian fare.

Galley Seafood Restaurant - Just after I picked up my sack of meat pies, Kate spotted the soft-shell crab Po’boy sign. This turned out to be an exceptional soft-shell crab. It was still juicy and had just the right meat:bread ratio (they used smaller rolls to avoid the mistake that the Vaucresson Sausage folks were making half way across the Fairgrounds). We had no sooner paid for our breakfast than the skies erupted and the rain that had been threatening to pour down all weekend finally arrived. We polished off our food under a blue tarp (cliché, I know – at least I didn’t say “FEMA tarp”) and when the sun finally came back out, went looking for dessert.

Cafe du Monde - If you aren't already in love with what you have read of 'Fest above, this should seal the deal. All day - every day - at the Fairgrounds, the lovely people fro Cafe du Monde serve up fresh beignets and cafe au lait. These are the real deal - the original - the often imitated and never equaled - little mounds of powder sugar covered fried dough. Imagine the best funnel cake you ever had at a state fair growing up, this is hundreds of times better - this is Plato's form of the fried dough. We grabbed a plate of beignets - fresh from the fryer - and headed back to our now water-logged blanket.

Sunshine Concessions - With more powder on our face than at an Escobar family reunion, we stopped off for some sweet tea to cut through the sticky paste of powdered sugar that lined our mouths.

Shortly after returning to our blanket, Paul Simon came out onto the Acura stage to deliver a truly uninspiring performance. He sounded old, frail and out of tune. He also selected songs that were slower and somehow more depressing than you could ever imagine. Hey Paul - you are playing in New Orleans after Katrina - and the audience in front of you is now sitting in a sea of mud - maybe now is NOT the time to play, "bridge over troubled water." He didn't even bother to bring his usual assortment of fourth world backup singers/dancers. We left after a few songs in search of anything that might give us a reason to live.

Mrs. Linda's Catering - Mrs. Linda is famous for serving food in the wee hours of the morning to denizens of Tipitina's. Her signature dish is called Ya Ka Mein - a spicy beef noodle soup that locals have nicknamed, "old sober." We grabbed a bowl of this while listening to the Real Untouchables Brass Band. Between the searing horn riffs and the beads of sweat forming under my eyes from the pepper in "old sober" we managed to exorcise Paul Simon's demons.

Coffee Cottage - The one note most appropriate to end 'Fest with (unless you need a fourth or fifth Monica or crawfish bread) is white chocolate bread pudding. Coffee Cottage makes this deliciously gooey bread pudding in massive baking trays and serves it with ice cream scoops. Once your scoop is safely nestled in a bowl, they baptize it with a white chocolate sauce. The sticky, sweet, warm confection melts in your mouth and somehow eases the pain of having to face the end of 'Fest.

We left towards the end of Lionel Ritchie's set and made a beeline for Frankie & Johnny's.

Frankie & Johnny's - This little place looks like something you could drive by a dozen times and never notice. Even if you got past the grease trap on the front sidewalk and actually walked in, the entrance is a dark, smoky, low-ceilinged bar that looks very uninviting to out of towners. Those that press on - and more than a few do - are treated to some of the most honest cooking around. This is pure Louisiana cooking - nothing fancy: crawfish, Po'boys, gumbo, jambalaya, etc. - served on sticky red and white checkered plastic tablecloths with pitchers of beer. What could be better?

The thing to do here is put in an order for crawfish, pitchers of beer and several orders of "fried pepper rings" while you look over the menu. The crawfish are superlative (they boil them with knobs of garlic, which imbues a unique depth of flavor), but the fried pepper rings are as good as they are unique. They take green bell peppers, slice them into rings, batter then and then fry them before serving a heaping mound accompanied by a ranch dressing dipping bowl. What a great concept - and one that could only be born in LA - take something healthy, bread it, fry it in fat, and serve it with a bowl of a second kind of fat to dip it in. Try it - you'll like it.

After the crawfish and fried peppers were cleared away, they brought out our salads. Don't get excited - these are iceberg lettuce and a plastic cup of dressing - you almost with they wouldn't bother.

After that, as at Jacques Imo's, there was a random sampling of entrees that ranged from gumbo and jambalaya to crawfish and shrimp Po'boys and even a fried catfish. I thought the gumbo was a little thin and bland, but the jambalaya was simply amazing - thick, spicy, full of bits of andouille - exactly what I was hoping for when I ordered it. The Po'boys are fantastic as well - I think the crawfish Po'boy is better than the shrimp, for what its worth. Finally, the fried catfish may have been the best thing on the menu. It was a butter flied catfish, glowing red with spices and very lightly fried. The meat was tender and not at all flakey the way catfish can get when it is over-cooked. Next year I will be hard pressed to decide between the catfish and the jambalaya.

Cooter Brown's - We retreated to Cooter's for some of their 100+ beers afterwards. Next year I want to sample the curious new potato and cheese mixture that most people seemed to have on their tables at Cooter's - it looked like some pre-historic ancestor of cheese fries.

We ended the night at one of our favorite clubs in NOLA - Blue Nile. This place was closed after Katrina, opened up just for Mardi Gras and 'Fest (with temporary walls erected to make it structurally sound) and was to begin a total re-build as soon as the last note was played at Jazz Festival. We caught the better part of three sets from Kermit Ruffins - the legendary trumpet virtuoso. He sounded as good as ever and true to form, despite promises to "play all night long" we walked off stage early in his third set at just after 3AM. Feel free to stop by Cafe du Monde on your way back out of thw Quarter if you didn't already get your beignets fix.

Monday
Monday is the first day of recovery post-'Fest. The unlucky ones have to do this at work or on a 6Am flight. Savvy veterans of 'Fest know to take Monday off, sleep in, get one last big meal in NOLA and then face the World on Tuesday. We were in the latter camp.

Superior - This is a micro chain of very good Mexican restaurants in LA. We dropped in to drink as much water as we could and devour as many baskets of corn chips as they would bring us.

We started off with chile con queso, which was a thick, spicy, meat and cheese concoction that broke more than a few chips. We also sampled a surprisingly good crab, scallop and avocado ceviche while we nursed our water (and maybe a few margaritas).

From there, we moved on to a soup course - every entree is served with your choice of black bean or tortilla soup. Both were good, but the tortilla soup was the better of the two, with a real spicy kick to it versus the somewhat tired black bean soup. We finished up with chicken and beef fajitas all around. There was nothing remarkable here - just your better than average fresh fajitas.

With full bellies, hardened arteries, ringing ears and scarred livers, we made our way back to the airport having had another tremendously successful 'Fest.

As Kermit Ruffins says, "if you don't love this life, you must be crazy."