NOLA Food & Bevvies 002 - Cooter Brown's

509 S. Carrollton Ave. New Orleans, LA
http://www.cooterbrowns.com
Dress: casual to slovenly

Right where the St. Charles Street Car turns from St. Charles to S. Carrolton, Cooter Brown's is one of those places that stock 4000 beers (bottle & tap) and serves great greasy bar food. The best feature is the oyster shucker at the end of the bar. Oyster shuckers are damn-near celebrities in New Orleans. They usually have a minor performance schtick (for instance, a unique way to call out when an order is completed) and they have their own tip jars that are often better-stuffed than the bartender's. The inside decor of CB's is your standard pool-table, neon sign, sports television thing. The picnic tables outside are painted in LSU colors and sit unshaded in the sun. What you do is, you get a big, plastic cafeteria-style tray piled with freshly shucked oysters and a fancy bottle of beer (like Orval, or Whitstable Oyster Stout) and make a sloppy afternoon of it. At least until the sun gets high.

There is always art in New Orleans restaurants. CB's has caricature statues (bas reliefs?) of celebrities holding beer made by artist Scott Conary. It also has a bathroom that opens to the dining room with very little cover. If someone else comes in, you can stand at the urinal and look out at the people in the dining room (and they, you). Modesty is not a virtue in New Orleans.




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NOLA 2005 Tri-State Shutter Swap 010 - Food Certificate

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Before re-opening after Katrina, all food service-type places had to be given certification by the Department of Health & Hospitals. This one was given to Le Crepe Nanou, which is my favorite restaurant anywhere. It's just a modest neighborhood crepe joint, and it's the first place we go every time we go back. It's also the only restaurant we go to every time we go back.

As you can imagine, much of Katrina recovery was a bureaucratic, red tape nightmare. One restaurant that did not fare as well is the beloved Gabrielle in Mid-city. If you're interested in such a story, you may read it here. To hear their side of it, they were run out of town on a rail. But I'm happy as Hell to see that they have returned and now have a new business in the French Quarter.
Commanders Palace Renovation

The Brennan family, who own many high-profile restaurants in New Orleans, immediately created a link to a bulletin board on the Commanders Palace website for displaced restaurant employees (not only for their own restaurants, but any restaurant employees) to let each other know of their safety and plans to return or calls for help. You can hear a great podcast interview with one of the owners, Ti Martin, right after they re-opened at New Orleans Podcasting.com.You will often hear of the "restaurant culture" in New Orleans. It is true that it is a world within a world, both for those who dine frequently and casually as well as those who work in the service industry. I think there are more restaurants than cats in New Orleans.

It was my impression that New Orleans is inhabited by the richest people in the world and the poorest people in the world. There isn't much of a middle class. The middle class that is there is made up almost entirely of transient service industry folks and rich college kids, rounded out by the non-skank portion of the arts community. But that was just my narrow little world.