Mayhaw Man

That's a really, really good story. Thanks for finding it.

Well, it might be a bit more complicated than I thought. Read down to "Half Baked Assessments"

I'm glad they plan on getting running again at least, something I hadn't taken for granted -- I almost left Hubig's out of my list, because I had googled them out of curiosity and that lagniappe page was the first thing I found. Every time I've been back to New Orleans since moving -- except the first time, when I realized how foolish I had been for leaving without any olive salad -- a Hubig's fried pie has been the first thing I've looked for, especially coconut or cherry. (Oh wait, or banana or lemon. Or sweet potato.) I doubt there's any storebought item I associate more with the city -- which is hard to explain to people who haven't had 'em, because it doesn't SOUND distinctive. ← Well, consider the Hubig's issue as a microcosm of what we all face here, everyday, when trying to do business. They can't get basic resources to operate their plant (in this case, gas) They don't have enough employees It's hard to get a steady source of supply/raw material And most importantly, Hubig's market, well, it ain't dere no mo. Think about it. Let's just say, for sake of estimate, that the population of New Orleans/St Bernard was 500,000 (this number is low, it's an estimate for example only) and that the post K population is 75,000 permanent residents (I live there-I actually think this number is high, but it's the one that they are using). That's a substancially smaller number of pie holes to fill. Couple that with the FACT that roughly 60% of the land mass of the city is deserted (literally, not figuratively) and that all of the convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, po boy shops, etc. that sold these things are gone, you might get a good idea of just how hard it is to get cranked up and operating or, worse yet, whether it is even worth it in the short run. Leidenheimer's is up and running, though, so that's a good sign. They are pretty much in the same boat as Hubig's, at least in terms of their customer base.

Pheasant. It is the most underrated of the birds, I think. I love pheasant. John Besh had some on the menu at August the other night in New Orleans and it was stupendously good. Pheasant confit, a pheasant breast, and some kind of nicely done sauce made from stock from the leftover bits. Delicious.

Good luck on the Hubig's. They didn't flood, apparently, but they have yet to have gas services repaired. It is my understanding that they have enough employees to work, though. Hopefully they will be up and running soon. I will make a few calls and see what I can find out. It will be a happy day when I bite into a baked custard pie or a fried lemon pie. Man, those lemon pies, warmed up a bit and buried under some good ice cream? That's some fine dining.

This space for rent.

Proving once again that this is a place where most of the time you can go right to the top and ask: It so happens that I am going to K-Paul's for a photo shoot for something I recently wrote about PP and I will ask him for you on Sat. afternoon. I just looked at the recipe and it all seemed roughly in proportion with what I use, though not exactly-although it's hard to be sure because as with most things that I have been cooking since I was a kid, well, I don't measure anything. It's all about the look, the taste, and the smell. My friend Pableaux Johnson does something that I don't think I have ever heard of with his beans. About the time his beans are starting to soften, he adds a pint or so of his last batch (thawed from the freezer, usually). It's kind of like using a sourdough starter, in a weird way. I don't know if it has any effect or not (I doubt it, but it makes for a great conversation starter-and I do live in a place where 6 people are more than happy to stand around a stove with a pot of beans on it and discuss the process and especially the results ), but he makes the best beans I have ever eaten. Had 'em last Monday night, as a matter of fact. Tasty beans, those. Edited to say that if you aren't using Camellia Brand Red Beans, well, you're just using beans. (Schweggman's used to be Camellia's as well, but Schweggmans has now gone the way of McKenzie's, K&B, and Maison Blanche. Dey ain't dere no mo)

Recipe Gullet? What's that?

They are good. I just ate about 6 of them and smooshed a bunch this morning for juice in order to construct a satsuma poundcake (that I am cooking in someone elses oven, dammit-though I am now the proud owner of some new refrigeration devices-seperate Kenmore Elite Freezer and Kenmore Elite Refrigerator. They are huge, shiny, and beautiful. I love them like I love my children. Now all I need is a kitchen to put them in (gotta get a roof first, and I'll be rolling, boy!)). I like them better when they are closer to green than orange. They are small and as they turn orange they tend to be not as juicy.

With enough coffee, the shakes will be magically cured. Insufficient amounts of caffiene can be an issue, but once you ingest enough of that black magic, you will find that the shakes just magically disappear.

Good Lord, who has all that time to eat food when there's important paying work to be done? I had a deadline up last night. Turned it in two hours before I recieved that "you'll never work in this town again" email from the editor (who is a lovely woman and a kindhearted soul if there ever was one-thanks for your patience and kindness. May your house be blessed with many, many wonderful things-always). COFFEE, dammit! That's all you need to motivate you to finish anything. EVER! IT IS THE SUSTAINING LIQUID OF LIFE! IF YOU AREN'T GETTING YOUR STUFF DONE, YOU AREN'T DRINKING ENOUGH COFFEE! Need more calories? Put lots of SUGAR in it. Still need more? MILK. Milk has all kinds of life sustaining stuff in it. If you are really going down, that fake creamer stuff is chock full of CORN SYRUP SOLIDS which means that it's corn and it's solid, so it's FOOD. Edited to say: Ummm. I might have overdone it on the coffee tonight. Sorry

Nice piece by Ian McNulty in this week's Gambit (which just started publishing last week) concerning the oyster bidness in Louisiana How'd ya like dem ersters? Extra points for being able to identify the source of this quote.

I don't think that I have ever seen a package of duck tongues. I didn't know what I had been missing. Thanks! Those must have been some big ducks. Oh, sorry, I don't have any real helpful hints except that everything is better when it is fried in fat. It's almost impossible to go wrong. With the right batter, even an old tire can be made palatable. Good luck.

Well, we have the heat and the humidity. It was 88 here yesterday with 85% humidity. It was kind of like late May or something. RIght now, it's so foggy I can' see the building next door to my office (which is probably a good thing because it fell down and I am tired of looking at ti). But lagniappe still exists, just this morning as I was getting coffee on Frenchman St at the Rose Nicaud (only coffee shop open in the lower quarter/Marigny) the guy gave me a croissant (excellent, incidentally) just because he sees me every morning. Nice guys, those hippie coffee dudes.

Perrone and Sons (The Perrone family has owned Progress Grocery for about a zillion years), a large wholesale grocery company that deals primarily in imported Italian goods is up and running, though like everyone else here, they are having employee issues and dealing with the fact that many, most, of their customers are not open now (or will be ever). The problem with Progress Grocery online is that they can't get UPS to pick up even if they had someone to make the sandwiches (virtually no one can, there is a huge shortage of drivers-). They hope to be back online for the holiday season. Nothing says happy holidays like a big italian loaf covered in meat and olive mix. MMM. You know, muffelettas are a good question. I was right by Napoleon House last night and didn't go in (but I did have an excellent middle eastern repast at Mona's on Frenchman). I will go check this afternoon and see if they are even serving food.

Don't do it like this Or this Otherwise, you should be good. Just make sure that you do it outside and not under a low cover on anything, like a porch roof. Stuff starts burning down around this time of year when people get the frying bug. Sounds like fun, let us know how it turns out.

I am working, right now, on a magazine piece about some of this stuff and what I am beginning to suspect, after talking to a number of operators and their reps is this: Some of the operators with high end, expense account dining establishments are, though they, to a man or woman, loathe to admit it, waiting around to see what happens with the convention business in New Orleans. Steak houses (with some New Orleans eccentric exception-which Ruth's on Broad might have been one were it reopening, and probably Mr John's and Charlie's-which catered primarily to locals) tend to depend of expense account dining as much as anything else and right now there isn't a whole lot of that going on. Certainly there are some examples of places that are operating in the high end that are doing well, but generally (and to be clear, I am generalizing here-totally) they are places with not so many seats that can be operated on one level or another with a reduced staff-often by the owner/chef his/herself. I believe that I am seeing, and a number of observers at a dinner I attended last night-virtually all of whom are in or write about New Orleans food, that there is a kind of "wait and see" attitude going on with some people that is being coupled with, in many cases, a tendency to come up with excuses involving damage that may not be quite as bad as it is being described (I am only talking about the parts of town that are open-clearly many places were catastrophically damaged) as it gives them an out other than just flat out saying that they are delaying until there is a core group of customers in town to whip out their AMEX cards. This phenomenon is not just in the Steakhouse world, as it seems to cut across many of the larger fine dining operations that would normally, on a regular preK night, be packed with people who are not locals. Obviously, places are opening up right and left, and things in the dining world are improving daily (I had a great New Orleans meal of Grav/Cheese Fries and a roast beef poboy (dressed, thanks) at Parasol last night. I can pretty much safely say that on a Thursday night on Constance St there were no tourists. They don't need them. This is exactly the kind of place that is flourishing right now. It is seriously comforting food in an atmosphere that to many of you would consider just short of unhealthy, but to us, well, it's almost as good as eating at your mama's house. Damn fine sandwich, the roast beef), but in reality, when you start driving around in the evening, you will see that there just aren't that many people around. You don't see many children at all. There are lots and lots of men here, some working from out of town and some holding down the fort while the rest of their family is somewhere else and the children are attending school. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem is the labor situation. There is a huge shortage and this is being compunded by the fact that guys putting on blue roofs or picking up refrigerators off of the curbside are pulling down some real money. I have a friend who had a take home check last week of just short of 2K for nailing blue tarps on roofs. I promise you he isn't thinking about going into a kitchen and washing your dishes after you eat. Who would be? This situation will change, slowly, as some of the work that is being done slowly tapers off-but really, some of it is going to go on for at least another year. On top of this, where are the people who formally held these jobs going to live. We're not talking about people who were in the highest income brackets. Many of them lived in areas outside of the parts of New Orleans that were not flooded (though, many people don't seem to realize, that much of unflooded New Orleans in the Uptown and Carrollton areas were low income areas-this city is truly mixed, block by block, sometimes house by house, in terms of income levels) and have no home to go to. And even if they do, is it worth coming back and taking a dishwashing job while your family is somewhere like Houston, Dallas or Atlanta? Probably not. If you just want to wash dishes or fry food, you can just as well do it in those places. There's alot to it. This whole thing is pretty much like one of those old fashioned children's toys that you whacked with a hammer. When you knock down one peg, another instantly shot up. The same thing is happening here. It's going to be a while. You know?

Well, how about an inexpert guess- Tin Aluminium and stainless didn't exist 100 years ago (I don't think so, anyway-at least I don't believe that they were being used in commercial products), so I'm thinking it's probably tin.

You should sign up and go to Oxford for the SFA conference next year. You might be forced to recant that statement (but only a little bit, you are, of course, mostly right)The Saturday Viking Lunch, which is served to about 250 folks, is pretty much as good as it gets. I have had many, many meals in many restaurants that didn't even come close to this meal. Last year Ann Cashion handled the work (insert "Ode to Caramel Cake made by a Beautiful Woman" here), and this year it was primarily led by Ken Smith, with help, as always, from John Currence and his crew. Check this out. There wasn't a clunker in the whole meal: Viking Range Luncheon Southern Foodways Symposium October 29, 2005 Ken Smith Upperline, New Orleans John Currence, City Grocery, Oxford Dana Logsdon, La Spiga Bakery, New Orleans Duck Etoufée with Pepper Jelly Bitter Greens with Bittersweet Plantation Dairy Bulgarian-Style Goat’s Milk Feta, Sugared Pecans, and Steen’s Cane Syrup Vinaigrette Cane River Country Shrimp Fancy Pants Banana Pudding To drink, Jerri Banks’ Verbena-Gilded Dragon Eyes Sweet Tea You could easily do worse at the average banquet meal at the White House or anywhere else. That Banana Pudding that Dana made, on the fly-she didn't know that she was doing it until a couple of days before) was really light, really, delicious. The fried grits that went with the shrimp were soft and delicious on the inside, and pleasantly crunchy on the outside. That duck etouffee with pepper jelly was a great idea. It was a thick etouffee, redolent with duck and fresh spice, served over a moist cornbread that had a schmeer of pepper jelly on top. It was right tasty. It can be done, but I think the main problem with banquet food is that the food is not the point, almost an afterthought. At this particular event in oxford, the food is THE thing. With the meal at the White House the other night, I would be ok with it, but it would be kind of hard to get excited about.

Great minds, Jason. Great minds.

Well, all of you soup snobs should know that I, Mr Homemade, will eat one canned soup, but only in one circumstance. And, I found out on Friday at lunch that Julia Reed, ace pimento cheese reporter, agrees with me-unprompted, when I mentioned that grilled pimento cheese was best when served with tomato soup-she pointed out, in an instant, that only Campbell's Tomato would do. She was right. Thomas Keller has yet to come up with a combination as sublime as homemade pimento cheese on white bread, toasted on a flat griddle until the cheese is gooey and the bread is golden brown and a big, steaming bowl of C-Red. Just thought you would want to know this vital information. There is no need to improve on Cambells Tomato IF you have good pimento cheese. Carry on.

If I ever get a kitchen, I will be so happy that I might install an old mainframe IBM to keep it warm. In the past, when I had, like, well, a kitchen, I usually had a laptop on the kitchen counter connnected by wifi.

After this highly emotional and highly charged discussion, some of us were so wound up from sitting on our hands that we retired to the steps of the building we were working in to discuss it further. I can't name who was there-it wasn't official and is not reportable, but Apple continued leading the discussion-which was all folks from here-and much of the tone of this piece came from that discussion. He's a pretty interesting guy to talk to. Continually at these things, because they are so small and filled with so many luminaries, the opportunity arises to meet and talk in depth to people that you might not otherwise have a chance to meet. That discussion out on the steps was, hands down, the longest and most interesting, honest discussion that I have been involved in since the storm. We care deeply about this place and about the Gulf Coast. We all share a level of abject blind love for this place and true, visceral frustration about what's happening to our culture. This is not really the place for a discussion beyond restaurants, and I won't go further, but what was clear to all of us is that food and the arts are part of the culture that are being, to a large degree, ignored by the powers that are putting together all of these commissions (there are so many I can't even tell you how many there are). Without our food culture, and our art culture, this place will cease to exist as it is or was. Surely there is room for improvement in many areas, but these are two that were just fine and took a long time to evolve. I hope that they can be put back right, to whatever degree that is possible. Many of us are working in whatever way we can, and using all of the tools and the platforms available to us, to make it happen. It's not going to fail for lack of trying or caring-that's the one true fact in all of this. Other than that, it's all pretty much up in the air.

Dude, take the time to do a careful count of businesses that are open, and then, in the evening, drive all round uptown and tell me how many houses are actually occupied. You might be suprised. It's not dead, and it's slowly coming back up there, but it is hardly normal. I sat on a porch last night for an hour on Constance, and the only thing that passed, the only thing, was a humvee full of national guard guys driving very slowly. They were bored and stopped and chatted for a while. Nice guys from Lafayette.It was pretty busy downtown though. Really fun seeing everyone out in costume. A number of places are opening up, foodwise though. Restaurants are doing booming business right now. It's kind of nice to go out to eat after all of this, and people are making that choice though many of them could be cooking at home-though that's kind of complicated as grocery shopping sucks-crowded, complicated, and not enough of what you want if you go at the end of the day.

They are. I saw Joanne this weekend at the SFA conference in Oxford. She reported the same. Best of all, Chef Ken prepared parts of our delicious Viking Range Lunch on Saturday. Man, that guy can cook.