When the new year starts, I always get more serious about cooking at home. I want to try new dishes. Learn techniques. Finally explore the cookbooks that have been piling up in my office. Do you eat and cook differently each year when January arrives?
Where to eat now in New Orleans (and beyond)
Munch Factory
The gumbo (pictured) is dark and densely packed with seafood and sausage. I never eat here without ordering a bowl. The rest of the cooking is crowd pleasing if your crowd comes from New Orleans: shrimp and grits, local fish, a salad topped with fried oysters. The Munch Factory, after moving to the Lower Garden District, is back in Gentilly with a second location inside the clubhouse of the Joseph M. Bartholomew Municipal Golf Course. On a recent Friday, it was great to see the new place packed and buzzing.
6514 Congress Dr., New Orleans, 504.324.5372
Mayhew Bakery
If the trend holds, we'll soon have a bakery every third block -- and I have no complaints. Mayhew is where I've recently been trading my cash for carbs. The bakery, from Kelly Mayhew, is in a converted church on Orleans Avenue. Mayhew doesn't do laminated dough, so you won't find croissants here. But you will find muffins, expertly made biscuits and an apple cake that changed my mind about cake for breakfast. At lunch, the baguette with ham and a thick smear of butter is my favorite (pictured). And as an occasional early riser, I appreciate that Mayhew opens at 7 a.m.
3201 Orleans Ave., New Orleans, 504.702.8078
Rockrose
The new restaurant, in a space inside the International House hotel that has sat empty for years, takes an upscale approach to Greek food. At a recent lunch, there were some disappointments, like the underwhelming souvlaki. But most of what we ordered, such as the tender grilled octopus (pictured) or the sunshine bright lemon potatoes, made me want to try more. The best dishes showed a delicious amount of balance and restraint.
217 Camp St., New Orleans, 504.369.3070
Herbsaint
My first dinner back in New Orleans after Katrina was at Herbsaint. Last month, I was there again to say goodbye to a friend leaving town. It reminded me how important it is to have restaurants with long lives. There is a comfort in being able to organize memories in a single place, and in knowing you can return to that place again. We are lucky in New Orleans to have so many long-running restaurants. We're even luckier to have one like Herbsaint, a bistro that still feel vibrant and vital two decades after opening. (Pictured: citrus salad)
701 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, 504.524.4114
Hot Links
Two years ago at a symposium sponsored by Commander's Palace, chef Donald Link made a point that stuck with me. We talk a lot about the French influence on Louisiana, but the last major migration of French sparkers came from Haiti, he said. For The American South, I took a look at how Haiti influenced the way we eat here.
She's back! Ann Maloney, my colleague at the Times-Picayune, is now the recipe editor for the Washington Post. For her first column, she made shrimp étouffée.
Earl Bernhardt, who co-created the Hand Grenade cocktail, died in December. No matter you think of drink (me: yuck), he was a true French Quarter character. The Southern Foodways Alliance recorded this oral history with Bernhardt in 2015.
12th Night would have been Leah Chase's birthday. In the Los Angeles Times, Lolis Eric Elie remembers her for the complex and often surprising woman that she was. (I love that they used a 2006 photo of Chase with my friend and post-Katrina roommate Sara Roahen, who was the Gambit critic for years.)
Where did they all go?
Do you miss restaurant review? I do. Corey Mintz writes on Medium that Toronto, a city of 3 million, no longer has a restaurant critic. That's not unusual. While a few of the healthiest papers, like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, still support reviews, it's a dying art. A critic for the daily in one of America's largest city told me she suspects no one will replace her when she retires.
In New Orleans, reviews have largely vanished. Having been on the inside, I know there are many reasons. They're expensive to do right, racking up receipts for multiple meals. Readers are more likely to click on news. And writers, these days, often want to tackle other subjects. But I still relish reading a smart writer turning their meal in a vivid meditation. Maybe that's now a minority opinion.
I don't know much about the business in this photo. It might have been located at 1101 Prytania St. It's hard to say, because I can't find an exact match in the Times-Picayune archives for N.E. Saul's Grocery. I know when it was shot: 1936. And who took the photo: the legendary Walker Evans. He was part of a project from the Farm Security Administration that sent photographers across the country to document workers and businesses.
1936 photo of N.E. Saul's Grocery from the New York Public Library's Digital Collection
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