I recently visited the city of New Orleans for the first time, with my two brothers-in-law as guides. They lived there many years ago, so no better fellas than them to show us the best places to eat and drink in the city!
We drove from South West Florida for thirteen hours to get there (well, Colin did the driving, the rest of us sat around eating crisps and checking out the architecture along the way) – we even crossed a time zone to get there! But after a quick pit stop in Mobile we finally reached New Orleans.
We visited just a few weeks after the truck attack on Bourbon Street, when a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd celebrating the New Year and then engaged police in a shoot out before being fatally shot. Fifteen people were killed and at least fifty-seven others were injured, including two police officers who were shot.
There was a temporary memorial put up on Bourbon Street when we were there, so we stopped for a moment to pay our respects.
Memorial to victims of the New Year’s Day attack on Bourbon Street
Then we walked around the city, taking in the sights and sounds. Bourbon Street these days is a bit like Temple Bar in Dublin – it’s all about the tourists. But if you are lucky enough to have people who know New Orleans well taking you round, there’s plenty to see and do a bit off the beaten track. And once you’ve soaked up some atmosphere, it’s time to get something good to eat. Because New Orleans has some of the best food in the USA.
Oh my God, the food
We tried all the traditional favourites that the city has to offer – beignets (which wouldn’t be out of place in a Belfast home bakery), fried chicken, gumbo, jambalaya and Sazerac cocktails – but the highlight for me was the Po’ Boy, which is a wide baguette filled with delicious things. The best ones we had were a shrimp one at Frady’s in the Bywater area and the magnificent James Brown Po’ Boy from the Parkway Bakery and Tavern in Mid City.
The Parkway describes the James Brown as “Layered with slow cooked BBQ beef, Louisiana fried shrimp, melted pepper jack cheese, and topped with a hot sauce mayo.” which sounds like it absolutely shouldn’t work. But it really, really does.
The origin of the Po’ Boy
The Parkway has been going since 1911, and in those days every neighborhood in New Orleans had a bakery on the corner. Over the years, the Parkway established a reputation for delicious, fresh bread.
The Parkway Bakery in New Orleans
Then in 1929, the Amalgamated Association of Electric Street Railway Employees went on strike, sending 1,800 unionized streetcar drivers off the job and onto the picket line.
Bennie and Clovis Martin, two brothers who owned Martin Bros restaurant and were former streetcar operators, came up with a simple but hearty sandwich which served as a full meal.
The brothers gave away these sandwiches to the strikers, and the story goes that when a striking union member walked into their restaurant, Benny would call to Clovis, “Here comes another poor boy!”
In solidarity with the Martin brothers, the Parkway Bakery set up a “Poor Boy” shop the same year and also fed union members and conductors for free.
So the Po’ Boy originated as a filling meal invented in response to a social crisis – which struck me as being very similar to the origin of the Belfast Bap, developed by Barney Hughes in the middle of the 19th Century.
Barney Hughes and the Belfast Bap
Barney Hughes
Barney Hughes arrived in Belfast from Armagh in 1827 and got work in the city’s bakeries. By 1840 he had set up the “Railway and Model Bakeries”, a very successful bakery and mill in Donegall Street. He opened a second bakery in Donegall Place in 1846, then a third on the Falls Road in 1850.
By 1870 he owned the largest baking and milling business in Ireland, with two ships to import his own grain and a fleet of horse drawn carts to deliver his bread throughout the city.
In the mid 19th century, many poor people from rural areas depended on potato crops to sell and to eat. However during the Great Famine in the 1840s, the failure of the potato crop caused food prices to rise, forcing many to move to Belfast to try and find work and feed their families.
The population of Belfast grew rapidly during this period, but many of the workers living there had little in the way of cooking and storage facilities, so it was difficult for them to prepare food of their own.
Bread was an ideal meal, as it was easy to store, kept well and didn’t need cooking. During the Great Famine, Barney created a cheap but filling bread bap which became known as the Belfast bap.
To keep the bread as low in price as possible, he substituted normal flour with a blend made from peas and beans. Although this was very nutritious, it had an unfortunate but inevitable side effect, leading to the popular rhyme:
“ Barney Hughes’s bread,
Sticks to your belly like lead,
Not a bit of wonder,
You fart like thunder,
Barney Hughes’s Bread!”
As well as keeping his bread prices low, Barney Hughes distributed free bread to the poorest in Belfast at Christmas and was the largest single donor to the Belfast Relief Committee during the Famine.
The Big Easy and the Big Smoke
This wasn’t the only similarity between New Orleans and Belfast that I noticed on my trip. It’s an unpretentious and friendly city, with an authenticity that shines through.
There’s music everywhere – I can thoroughly recommend Kermit Ruffin’s Mother in Law Lounge in Treme, where you can listen to great musicians and eat red beans and rice cooked by Kermit himself!
Kermit Ruffin’s Mother in Law Lounge
There’s also a great art scene – I really enjoyed Dr. Bob’s Folk Art Shop in Bywater, well worth a visit if you like outsider art. And the New Orleans Sculpture Garden in the City Park was a real surprise – it was packed with sculptures by Rodin, Henry Moore and even an Elisabeth Frink (she also created the old Draft and Overdraft sculptures that used to be on display on the old Ulster Bank at Shaftesbury Square).
This lot reminded me of the Yard Workers sculpture on the Lower Newtownards Road, except of course they are in the nip!
Riace Warriors by Elisabeth Frink
One of my favourite bits of the trip was hanging round the many dive bars in the city – the drink is cheap and the atmosphere is great! Every bartender was more than happy to chat and very forthcoming with recommendations on the coolest things to see and do nearby.
In one place I even found myself having an Abita beer at the very bar where Lee Harvey Oswald took his last drink before he set off to assassinate JFK.
Naturally, they have a little plaque to commemorate it.
“Lee Harvey Oswald sat here”
There were a couple of sights I really wanted to see – Touchdown Jesus and Nicholas Cage’s tomb!
Touchdown Jesus stands in the grounds of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter. It got its name when, the night before the Saints’ Super Bowl win in 2010, the then-Archbishop of New Orleans delivered a special prayer for the Saints. Of course they won, and the statue got its name. The best time to see it is at night, when it throws its shadow over the cathedral.
Nicholas Cage’s tomb is in the No. 1 Cemetery and I saw it as part of an excellent guided tour. Cage bought two plots in the cemetery (which also holds the tomb of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau) and built a nine-foot-tall stone pyramid tomb on them. There is no name on it yet, only the Latin maxim, “Omnia Ab Uno,” which translates to “Everything From One.”
New Orleans is packed with great places to eat and drink, there’s great music everywhere and you’re never too far from a costume shop or a voodoo themed art gallery.
But the highlight of the trip for me was visiting my brother in laws’ friends Curtis and Lana Dantone’s home, where they served us up a Cajun feast of catfish, gumbo, jambalaya and King Cake, followed by a few rounds of darts.
I’ve never eaten food like it, and the warmth and hospitality made me feel like like I’d known them for years. Big thanks to the Dantones and my brothers in law for an amazing trip and I hope to get back to New Orleans soon!