Chasing the Eclipse: Gastronomic Notes from a Trip to New Orleans and Dallas.
Wherein we discovered that Po-Boys are just subs
I had meant my trip to New Orleans to be a foodie trip of sorts, and I wanted to make sure we tried most of the most typical dishes of the city, a rather hard task for a two day trip as there are many. One of them are po’boy sandwiches. I had had po’boys before, at different restaurants in California, but I was never quite clear as to what exactly they were. Well, it turns out that they are just a version the New Orleans version of sub sandwiches: hot sandwiches served in half-loaves of French bread. There are different stories as to where they got the po’boy name in New Orleans and clearly different ways to spell its “poor boy” name. The most famous po’boys in New Orleans are generally those featuring oysters or shrimp/crawfish (the latter are basically just fresh water shrimp), but they can have almos any filling you can imagine. Johnny’s Po-Boys probably has one of the most extensive selection of po-‘boys in New Orleans. They also serve seafood platters and New Orleans specialties such as jambalaya and red beans and rice.
Johnny’s Po-Boys is a very casual eatery. It’s the oldest family-owned po’boy restaurant in New Orleans, now in its eight decade of existence. It features a handful of tables covered with plastic tablecloths and a counter where you order your po’boy. It gets pretty busy at lunch time. Prices are pretty high, from the mid-teens to low twenties for a sandwich. But this is the French Quarter and they mostly cater to tourists.
I wasn’t yet hungry enough for lunch, so Mike ordered a Vodoo Shrimp po’boy for himself ($20) with lettuce (and additional 25-cents!). He thought it was awesome. It had a generous amount of shrimp and a very tasty, and only slightly spicy, sauce. He gave it a 10/10, which is extremely unusual for him. He would definitely order it again.
Johny's Po-Boys 511 St Louis St New Orleans, LA Th-Su 8 AM - 3:30 PM
New Orleans is famous many dishes, with savory and sweet, but among the latter beignets reign supreme – at least, among tourists. I can only imagine that it’s the fun of eating a pastry that is guaranteed to cover you and everything around you with powdered sugar that makes them so appealing. And fun they are, even if they otherwise were rather disappointing.
Among the establishments serving beignets in the French Quarter, the two most prominent ones are Cafe du Monde, which has been selling beignets since 1862, and Café Beignet, a mere 30 year old restaurant which makes up for its youth by having actually four different branches in the city. We visited the one on Decatur St. for breakfast our first morning in New Orleans, though we twice stopped at the one on Bourbon Street to rest our feet and listen to some live Jazz. The garden at the latter site is glorious.
The Café Beignet branch on Decatur Street has a fun dining room, somewhat evocative of la Belle Époque. The wooden bar is beautiful. Outdoors, there are only a couple of tables on the sidewalk by the restaurant. It’s not particularly picturesque, but it allows you to people watch as you eat.
You order at the counter, and food is brought to your table. The menu consists of omelettes, sandwiches, breakfast items and Creole specialties like jambalaya and crawfish etouffee. And, of course, beignets and other pastries. They have a bunch of coffee dishes, but not fresh orange juice.
I’m not a breakfast eater myself, so I ordered the beignets ($4.50 for 3). These were relatively large squares of fried dough covered with powdered sugar. As the powdered sugar is the same everywhere, it was all about the fried dough. And this fried dough was not great. It was dense and chewy and not particularly flavorful on its own (thus the need for powdered sugar). Basically, they were heavy – and the last thing you want in the morning is a heavy piece of fried dough. I ate a beignet and sort of nibbled on the second one. Mike took a bite, and was done.
Apparently, the problem with New Orleans beignets is that they are made from a leavened dough instead of the choux pastry used in France. The latter makes them far lighter and enjoyable.
Mike ordered the Andouille sausage omelette ($12), which came with grits and a slice of French bread. Miked liked it. The sausage was very tasty, spicy and flavorful, and it was well mixed with the omelette. The omelette was on the small side, but it wasn’t very expensive. The grits and herbed toasted bread was a disconcerting choice – Mike would have preferred a biscuit.
Café Beignet 600 Decatur Street New Orleans, Louisiana M-Th 8am-6pm F-Su 8am-8pm
Napoleon Houseis one of those “must go to” restaurants when you visit the French Quarter. Not only is it famous for its muffulettas – a sandwich invented in New Orleans, albeit at an Italian deli, not here -, but it’s located in a beautiful, historical home that convenes in one place the whole spirit of the French Quarter, itself a magical place.
As the story goes, the house was originally built in 1797 and enlarged in 1814 for Nicholas Girod, then mayor of New Orleans. A large three story brick building with plaster covered walls, the house reflects French architectural influences with its hipped roof , dormers and French doors and Spanish ones, as shown in its internal patio and wrought iron balconies. In 1821, Girod seems to have devised a plan to rescue Napoleon, who was then on exile in the island of St. Helena after his defeat at Waterloo, and bring him to live in this home. While Napoleon died before Girod could undertake this scheme, the house inherited Napoleon’s name. In 1914, Italian immigrant Joe Impastato turned it into a bar and the business slowly evolved into the restaurant it is today.
And a beautiful restaurant it is. The smallish, dark dining rooms still display those discolored stucco plastered walls, evoking a long ago feeling. They are decorated with old pictures and Napoleon memorabilia, and you can imagine yourself plotting up a secret mission or a pirate raid on its tables. The patio, where we didn’t eat, is more conventionally beautiful and relaxing, though it still conveys an old world feeling.
Napoleon House is a casual place with a casual menu. It serves salads and sandwiches, with a few ubiquitous appetizers and sides. Like most restaurants in New Orleans, it offers beers and wines as well as local cocktails. They are particularly known for their Pimm’s No.1 drinks, though I didn’t realize that until later, so we didn’t try them.
What I did have was the muffuletta – or at least a quarter of one ($8.5). It wasn’t until we got to the restaurant that we realized we weren’t that hungry after all, and we wanted a light dinner. A quarter of a muffuletta seemed perfect – in particular, because I was very apprehensive about them. A muffuletta is a sandwich of deli meats and cheeses typically covered with a thick layer of olive salad. Neither Mike nor I are fans of olives, so we were afraid we wouldn’t like it. Watching the videos of how they’re made at Central Grocery & Deli, the place where they were invented, I still think that’s likely to be the case there, but the one at Napoleon House was just perfect. It had enough olives to give the sandwich a kick, but not enough to actually taste them individually. At Napoleon House, the muffulettas are served hot and the melted cheese deliciously brought the whole sandwich together. In all, it was a delicious sandwich and just the right size for my light hunger. I’d definitely have it again.
Mike ordered the Boudin sausage ($8) which was served with bread and mustard. I was surprised that it wasn’t a blood sausage – I usually think of that when I hear “boudin” – but in Louisiana, a “boudin” sausage typically refers to one made of pork and rice. This gives the sausage a disconcerting soft texture, but it had a pretty good flavor. Mike liked it though he wasn’t awed by it.
For dessert, I tried a New Orleans classic: chocolate Doberge Cake ($8). This consists of a multi layer chocolate cake with chocolate pudding filling. I wasn’t thrilled with it. It just tasted like your typical, overly dry chocolate cake. Warming it up and adding ice cream might have helped, but as it was, it was a waste of carbs.
As we didn’t know about the Primm’s, Mike ordered a Sazerac with absinthe ($13), another traditional New Orleans cocktail. Alas, he didn’t really enjoy it, and it was too strong and bitter for me to do anything more than taste it. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great Sazerac, but it was enough to make it our first and last experience with the drink.
We had no complaints about service, and we didn’t feel any pressure to leave even though I think we stayed until closing time. In all, I’d recommend Napoleon House to anyone visiting the French Quarter.
Napoleon House 500 Chartres Street New Orleans, LA (504) 524-9752 Su-Th 11am-10pm F-Sa: 11am-11pm
A decent blue cheese burger & an unmemorable salad at San Diego International Airport
No one goes to an airport to eat, but flight schedules sometimes make you have to rely on whatever food you can find at the airport for substance – particularly if you’re flying a no-frills airline which doesn’t even offer meals for purchase. While in recent decades airplane food has gotten better, it’s usually disappointing and overpriced. Our recent experience having lunch at the San Diego International Airport might have been that, if we hadn’t come with lowered expectations. As it happened, the burger I had The Counter was decent enough.
The Counter is a small gourmet burger chain that has a smattering of locations across the US – including at three different airports. I used to visit the Fremont location back in the day, before gourmet burgers were even a thing, and I was a fan of their fare. So I was happy to see they had a branch near the Southwest gates in Terminal 1 at the San Diego airport, where we stopped on our way to New Orleans. For better or worse, our plane was late, which gave us time to eat before we embarked.
I had the blue cheese burger. On its website, The Corner describes the Beef & Blue burger as having “danish blue cheese, organic mixed greens, tomatoes, bacon onion jam, garlic aioli, brioche bun” and it might, indeed, have had all that, though I don’t remember the tomatoes. The burger was fairly good. The beef patty itself was dry and overcooked, but the blue cheese sauce was fantastic, it almost made up for any deficiencies on the meat. The burger was expensive, I think upwards of $16, but it was quite large, I had trouble finishing it. For an airport burger it was as good as it gets.
Mike ordered a salad. He doesn’t remember what salad it was, but you can see it in the photo. He thought it was OK. He didn’t rave about it at the time, but I don’t remember him complaining either. It was just an unmemorable salad.
Still, for an airport dining experience, this was fine.
The Counter San Diego International Airport 13225 N Harbor Dr Terminal 1 San Diego, CA
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