New Orleans, the old world
The emails were pouring in as we waited at our gate at Logan Airport. They were urgent, laced with directives: Let’s rethink our common spaces. Let’s equip ourselves with hand soap and Purell. Let’s put out Emergen-c, take away the oranges. It began to dawn on me as I tried -fruitlessly- to order sanitizer from our vendors that a change was already upon us, as silent and inescapable as fog slipping in over the horizon line.
But we were innocent, so New Orleans was perfect. When we avoided the crowds on Bourbon Street, it was due to introversion and not any worry about contagion. We felt cosy in our window seat at the bustling Bywater American Bistro. There was nothing in our mind but the roasted cabbage -a revelation- and an oyster gravy so divine that we proclaimed that it alone was worth the flight. We knew no fear.
It was our last trip before the world changed. And it was perfect. We went to Bacchanal. So often the places that you read about turn out to be overhyped or somehow hollow, but here at Bacchanal was something unguarded, exuberant. Wedges of cheese sized just right for a sampler and wine priced just right for a splurge. Paint buckets that we filled with ice from an oversized Igloo. And the soaring trumpet of Steve Lands. Matt jostled down the balcony and with a twenty for the tip hat. I sipped my wine and watched him work his way through the crowd, both of us happy.
We booked a BBQ shrimp cooking class on Airbnb. Our host Jack told us his friend had pulled the shrimp from the gulf that morning, a pound per person. His stories were so lively, and we asked him to tour us around the block the next day. He bought us a round of oysters at Superior Seafood. We ate them with Crystal hot sauce, paid our bill, and took a second round of drinks to-go. Sipping a frozen French 75 from a plastic cup beneath the old oak trees felt foreign, gentle, free.
In the airport I scribbled a list of moments that didn’t make the camera roll, titled it, “Glimpses of New Orleans”. Don’t forget, I told myself. I knew it was precious. I didn’t know how much.
Joe and Nancy, scotch and bourbon lovers who recommend a visit to Markers’ Mark in the Spring, to see the fleet of wax-dippers and the blossoms. Karen with her kumquats on the generational street, where she’s lived for 20 years and is still the new kid on the block. Phu the oysterman whose mom & grandmother were so cute and so proud of his oyster slinging prowess. Delicate magnolia petals upright on the branches.
A foggy morning with the green St. Charles streetcar rolling through.
The heady scent of crawfish on every corner, emanating from the backs of pickups and food trucks and little nondescript fish houses.
That bike courier rolling down the streetcar tracks, the feathery confetti of mardi gras making the live oaks ghostly and alive.
The lone violinist against the crowds at Jackson Park, making intimate & lovely the eternal square, framed by townhouses.
Dive bars with Jack B Nola, the door always open (except for 7 hours on Christmas Day). Edith Piaf, his cat, who’s warmed to dinner parties.
Four pounds of crawfish! Just bursting with flavor.
Glimpses of New Orleans
