I live in two of the country’s great food cities: Chicago and New Orleans. Neither is by birth, both are by choice. Chicago was easy: cooking professionally in my hometown of Indianapolis in the 1980’s was frustrating. No matter what culinary feats I was able to pull off in our New American restaurant, the overriding Hoosier feeling about food at that time was best summed up by the guest who commented, “I‘ve never heard of a restaurant where you can’t get a baked potato.” Chicago was full of independent restaurants as well as grocery stores where you didn’t get a blank stare when you asked for cilantro.
New Orleans is different. Drew and I fell in love with New Orleans in the early 1980’s. Was it the uneven, cobblestone streets? Was it the worn, slightly tawdry look of the town? Was it the 300 years of history on the street? Or was it the overall, absolute joy the natives took in eating? Yes, yes, yes and especially yes. For the next twenty years we vacationed in New Orleans as often as we could, sneaking in 3 days here and there. Three days, we reasoned, was enough in New Orleans. Who could eat and drink that much for any longer?
Eventually we purchased a tiny, 350 square foot pied de terre in the French Quarter. Tucked into the back of a charming, overgrown courtyard, with dark green shutters, French doors and squeaky floors it became our Chicago escape. We started frequenting locals-only places and made friends with our neighbors. We stopped using guide books and bought bicycles. We adopted the local dialect and started saying, “where y’at?” and “how’s your mama an’ ‘em”? correctly and without affectation. But it wasn’t until after Katrina that I started cooking.
Most New Orleanians I know think of life today as having two parts: pre storm and post storm. Storm is the word most people use for Katrina and it encompasses not only the hurricane itself but the levee breeches, the general governmental failure, hurricane Rita 3 weeks later as well as the flooding, FEMA trailers and the years of working with the insurance companies to set everything back to normal. But pre-storm normal was not possible. A new normal took its place: a normal that included the disappearance en masse of friends, homes, jobs and restaurants.
I experienced this only on the fringe. I watched the awful tragedy unfold on CNN (Anderson Cooper standing bravely on Canal Street). Communicating with our friends via text (cell phone was iffy and texting seemed to work better) I learned that they had stayed and watched as the water came in through the brick walls in their living room. Stayed as the electricity failed and the city was wrapped in the sticky, humid embrace of summer weather. Stayed as the city, in its usual joyous mode, opened all the wine, grilled all the steaks and ate all the shrimp, crab and oysters that were going to spoil anyway. From my dry, cool Chicago perch I felt a little jealous. For a minute.
A visitor to New Orleans today might not realize a massive storm had devastated the city recently. In their inimitable fashion the residents have rebuilt their lives and the city (with a tiny bit of federal help) has rebuilt its infrastructure. The restaurant scene is booming. Convention business is thriving. Music is back in the streets. The one thing that never really left is the residents’ spirit. This is the spirit that led us to New Orleans in the beginning and pulls us back so often. The spirit that someday may pull us back for good.
