New Orleans

Bunny Young's Crawbabies LLC: Creole, Delivered

Bunny Young, clad in a bright red chef’s coat and matching hat, stands in the galley kitchen of her New Orleans East home slowly stirring a pot of butter beans. She has done this thousands of times, but each time is a prayer offered to her ancestors, the generations of New Orleans 7th Ward Creole women who guided Young in the kitchen. Young is not for the faint of heart. Her bold flavors, bold personality and bold sartorial choices are reminiscent of Leah Chase, another legendary Creole chef. Young has a lot on her mind at all times, and she isn’t afraid to tell you, either. But these days, she lets her food do most of the talking, and it, too, has a lot to say.

New Orleans

Beat Blue Monday with New Orleans Red Beans

“Blue Monday,” the tune made famous by New Orleans legend Fats Domino and written by the equally legendary Dave Bartholomew, sums up how most of us feel at the beginning of the week after the giddiness of the weekend has worn off and reality beckons.  “Blue Monday, how I hate Blue Monday,” Domino sings, while the piano trills underneath his rich baritone voice. And who could blame him? Monday is a a day of toil, even in carefree New Orleans, where Monday traditionally meant laundry day. But from this toil, one of our most recognizable and renowned dishes was born: red beans and rice. Every Monday in restaurants and homes throughout the city, the slow-simmered-until-they-fall-apart, creamy beans, loaded with smoked sausage and pickled meat, are served over a bed of fragrant Louisiana long grain rice, often with a piece of fried chicken or a pork chop.

New Orleans

Best Bites 2022: New Orleans

We savor things a little differently in New Orleans. The city itself has been in a constant existential crisis from its inception. Tattered by hurricanes, floods, and land loss due to climate change, we realize how precarious and precious life is. Our famous joie de vivre is rooted in this – we know it can all be gone tomorrow. So we might linger over a meal a little longer, or have one more drink, or stay for the second set even when we have an early day at work. In crawfish terms, we suck the heads and pinch the tails and make sure we get all the meat out of life.

New Orleans

Roux the Day: How to Make the Humble Base of Louisiana Cuisine

Marcelle Bienvenue, the renowned Cajun food writer, wrote a cookbook called Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux? These questions embody so much of life in Southern Louisiana, where kin, Catholicism, and cooking dominate the discourse. And while kin and religion are largely birthrights, making a roux is a learned skill, and one that often causes great trepidation. We cook our roux a little differently down here, and the worst thing you can do is burn it.

New Orleans

Jack Dempsey’s: Still in the Fight

We were surprised to learn that Jack Dempsey’s restaurant was named after Richard “Jack” Dempsey, a straw hat wearing, cigar chomping former police reporter for the defunct States-Item newspaper, and not after the professional boxer Jack Dempsey, famously known as the Manassa Mauler. Dempsey’s, which occupies a white, converted double shotgun house across from the now deserted F. Edward Hebert Defense Complex, is a throwback to a different era of New Orleans, when neighborhood restaurants dominated the landscape, and you never had to walk too far to get a good meal.

New Orleans

2NP: Barroom By Night, Café By Day

Mercedes Gibson arrived in New Orleans in 1969 with, as she puts it, “ten dollars, ten children and a tank of gas.” The Franklin, Louisiana native’s eyes light up as she recounts the story while we sit at Mercedes Place, the working-class barroom she has owned and operated in the Lower 9th Ward’s Holy Cross neighborhood for thirty-two years. The neighborhood, named for the all-boys Catholic high school a few blocks away that has been left to molder since Hurricane Katrina, is starting to see signs of bloom. A flower shop has opened a few blocks away, a glimmer of hope in a section of the city too often underserved.

New Orleans

Jamaican Jerk House: Bringing the Heat

New Orleans is arguably one of the most Afro-Caribbean cities in the United States. In the minds of some, we don’t even qualify as a US city, but rather the northernmost outpost of the Caribbean. From our architecture to our food and our rhythms, we sit apart from the rest of the South. We love spice and deep flavors, cooking that is evocative of people and place. Jamaican food would seem like a natural fit here, and it is, though it is not nearly as commonplace as it should be, all things considered. But Richard Rose and his wife Jackie Diaz are looking to change that with their new Upper 9th Ward restaurant on St. Claude Avenue, Jamaican Jerk House.