I’m a little tardy, reporting on this long-awaited trip. My sister and I went, for the first time, to New Orleans earlier this year – in April, a couple weeks after I started my new/old job. I’m a little ashamed to say that most of the “research” we did on NOLA for our first time there was bingeing the hit T.V. show “Treme.” We devoured that show, ate it up. Be assured, after the second season, it isn’t a great show, but no matter. We were entranced. We had to go!
Our high expectations were exceeded: we fell in love with the city; so much so that as soon as we got home we started planning our next trip back.
On that first visit, though, what my sister and I fell in love with was, of course, the cliche of what people fall in love with in New Orleans. But the cliche is real. The food is astounding. The music scene boggles. We fell in love with the people – the warmth, the way they all called us “baby,” and “sugar, ” in those lilting, dulcet tones. We loved how no one seemed to be judging how weird anyone was. People really did seem to be free to be whatever they wanted to be.
We reveled in the music scene, after we found out that there were shows playing at all hours – from two in the afternoon until two in the morning, and often later. We found our favorite musician (Russell Welch) and stalked him at every show we could.
We ate and ate and ate. Fried chicken, etouffee, jambalaya, red beans and rice, oysters, crawfish! Lather, rinse, repeat! We ate at old stalwarts (Commander’s Palace, Coop’s Place, Bon Ton Cafe, Willie Mae’s Scotch House) and at the newer kids on the block (Cochon Butcher, Coquette). We drank Sazeracs and bubbles and whisky sours. One night, our quirky waitress at Bon Ton Cafe came out with us to a show after her shift, partied with us until 4 a.m., and crashed at our Airbnb. And no one died. WE DID NOLA RIGHT.
So of course we wanted to come back! So many places left to try! Not a lot of touristy things left to do – we’d gone to the National World War II Museum, the Pharmacy museum, the Voodoo museum… nothing left but to eat and drink! This time, with a dear friend in tow.
We’d agonized over finding a cute AF place in Nola, one that would afford us easy walks to music and food…
These two (aka “Sisters Grim”) have been friends for something like 35 years. We hang out a lot together. We go to shows. We go to dinner. We make a good team. J brings us gritty intelligence and arcane knowledge. We bring her overeating. There’s a lot of laughter. A LOT.
Now, one of my goals on this trip was to eat at another famous institution, Galatoire’s. I’d read about it extensively, and how lunch on Fridays was the day to go, and to sit in the downstairs dining room. That dining room lunch on Fridays is a tradition that goes back decades. It’s an hours-long, festive lunch, with wine and cocktails and bubbly flowing, people celebrating birthdays, kicking off campaigns, making real estate deals, cheering each other on, singing, brass bands marching through… It sounded great! They take no reservations, you have to be a “VIP” – ostensibly from the tippy-top of New Orleans’ upper-crust society – you know, socialites, politicians, lawyers, judges, etc. Some of these folk have been attending this rarefied Friday soiree (albeit in the afternoon) so long they have their own waiters. But even these hoity-toities can’t get in without… a line sitter.
These disheveled men may look homeless, and yes they’re probably a little tipsy, but that’s because they’d been sitting outside the restaurant on Bourbon Street since 4 a.m. They’re paid line sitters, and they can make $100-200 on a Friday morning. I was SO EXCITED about this lunch, I’d even bought myself a little folding stool to go wait in line. Got myself up and joined these fine dudes at 8:30 a.m. the only Friday of our trip. The line guys eyed me a bit warily at first, but my pal here told me the maitre-d’ had already been outside once, that he’d come back out again and when he did, they’d make sure I got in and on the list. In the meantime he regaled me with tales of his life, and how he’d been doing this sitting gig for the last 15 years to augment a meager income. “You’re pretty,” he breathed boozily into my face, and I beamed at his kindness. Galatoire’s was on his bucket list of restaurants to go to someday; he’d been living in New Orleans for 30 years and had never stepped foot inside the establishment he helped so many others get into! I was already plotting in my head that as soon as I got on the list, if i had to keep waiting there I’d call my sister and have her bring me cash so I could tip my new friend.
Soon enough, though, some suit walked up to the door and the maitr-d’ opened it for him, and the line guys shoved me, “Go! Go now!” So in I went and before I knew it, my name was on the list for the 1 p.m. lunch. I WAS ON CLOUD 9.
Let’s make a long story short (haha)…. Even with our names on the list, we waited an hour to get our table. The scene inside was utter cacophony – men in suits and women in their finest literally screaming at each other to be heard. At the table behind us, a woman was celebrating her birthday, and all the women around us were wearing little cat ears. It felt weird, and I wasn’t immediately sure why…
Strangely, I was suddenly struck by a vision that Orwell’s words had conjured up for me, so many years ago: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
The longer we sat, the weirder it started to feel. “It feels like they’re all yelling, “YAY US, WE’RE ALL WHITE!” I looked around, and the only people of color in that room were the bussers – not even the waiters. The black people in this restaurant could take away your dirty plates, or bring you bread, but that was it. This was certainly not the demographic of the city we’d been experiencing. On average, we’d run into, sat next to, eaten with, talked to, been driven, waited on, and “Baby’ed” by African Americans 80% of the time. But not here.
At one point, a brass band came through, snaking its way through the crowd, all black musicians, making a joyous noise. But their faces were somber, there was no joy in their being there, surrounded by a shrieking crowd of people for whom the lack of diversity of this place, their place, seemed to be the whole point. They didn’t look to be enjoying this gig, although I’m sure they were being well paid. It just felt creepy.
The class separation, the racial divide, was just so incredibly obvious, in a way i hadn’t experienced yet in this city. Or maybe anywhere?? And yeah, I’m a newbie. and yeah, for all intents and purposes, I’m pretty close to being white too, economically, culturally, etc. And yes, I live in a bubble.
And it’s not lost on me how privileged I am. I was there – my second time in a year! – spending money on food and booze and hopping in Lyfts everywhere, to and from our lovely Airbnb. Yes, I earn my money, but that’s because I’m lucky enough to be somewhat educated, (upper?)middle class, and for whatever reason, not perceived to be as brown as I could be.
It just all left a very bad taste in my mouth, in all our mouths. It wasn’t just me – my sister and friend instantly felt it too, and it sickened us. In a way that Commander’s Palace had not. In a way that so many other fine food emporiums, here, and elsewhere, have not.
And to add culinary insult to privileged injury? The food was BAD. I mean, none of it was inedible; I mean, we ate it all (hungry because we had saved ourselves for this, our first meal of the day, at 3:00 p.m.) And I had read about the food – it isn’t the point here! It’s the atmosphere! It’s the experience! It’s the service! But, STILL. It’s still a RESTAURANT.
Our Oysters Rockefeller, inexplicably covered with black goo, were mushy, and not at all flavorful. The famed souffle potatoes, which should have been a dream, were cold, a bit stale, along with an insipid, too-sweet sauce. Oysters en brochette – bacon wrapped, breaded and fried – would have been tasty but the breading tasted like pancake batter. Plus they needed salt. Everything needed salt. A foie gras and toast dish, with something sweet, needed salt. Shrimp remoulade was probably the best thing we had, next to the excellent bread and butter. Crabmeat Sardou – actually not terribly bad – crab, spinach, artichoke hearts, Hollandaise… was ok in comparison. But the trout meuniere was like a big dry fish stick with NO FUCKING SAUCE. No meuniere! Night and day from the dreamy redfish meuniere we’d had the night before at humble, down-and-dirty Coop’s Place.
And the service actually sucked. I mean, REALLY. FUCK THIS SHIT.
I don’t completely regret going, though I felt bad about wasting money, stomach real estate, and afternoon (actually, our entire evening, because, as my sister said, it took a lot of booze to get that taste of entitlement out of our mouths.) But, I needed to know, I needed to see. And now I know, and I never have to go again.
Because blatant celebration of inequality, however unintended, PLUS crap-AF-food? Again, a VERY bad taste in our mouths.
When I told the BF about our experience that evening on the phone, he said, “Yep, that’s the South for you.”
I have a love/hate relationship with having my prejudices confirmed.
But, I’m coming back to New Orleans – we all are. Because the good has far outweighed the bad. Because the people we met on both trips – the second just last month — the Second Line crowd we followed through Treme – walking, dancing, hugging their neighbors, because they were all neighbors; every Lyft driver that proudly told they us they were “born and raised” in this storied city; the old woman cooking our grits and eggs with care at L’il Dizzy’s, over an open, make-shift kitchen smack-dab in the middle of the dining room (and where I had the best fried chicken yet); the waiter at Coop’s who sounded like a cross-between Harvey Fierstein and your old Jewish Aunt Sylvie, who rasped at us to put our phones down at the table and talk to each other; the natty gay boy who runs the Pharmacy Museum, who takes such pride in its story, who revels in the history, and shared it with such humor and grace — these are the people who we’ll remember, who we want to see again, who we like to believe make up the actual soul of this city.
Plus, the food is STILL FUCKING AWESOME….
And there’s more good music to find…
There’s always more good music to find, if you only listen.
My Existential Moment 
What a read! Thank you!
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Thank you for sharing this story here in your evocative writing style. I feel blessed (though very much saddened) to have heard it twice now since we were lucky enough to share a meal with you just two weeks ago. NOLA is on our list of targets and that hasn’t changed but Galatoire’s wasn’t and now will never be.
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