Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

My husband and I have just returned from a 3-day getaway to New Orleans. Neither of us had been before, and we were looking forward to an "eat, drink, and be merry" vacation that we hoped was well timed between two times we'd never want to be in New Orleans: the raucous congestion of Mardi Gras, and the stifling heat of summer. We got just what we were looking for.

After an early afternoon arrival and checking in at our hotel, we got right to it with lunch at Olde Nola Cookery on Bourbon Street. We had kind of a long list of foods "you have to try," and we checked one off right away with authentically messy shrimp po' boys that oozed everywhere. It was the first of many times we ate shrimp on the trip... and why not? You have to eat as much seafood as you can stand when you're in a place where it will be reliably good.

From there, the afternoon consisted of zig-zagging on and off Bourbon Street to various locations. Our first stop was at Crescent City Brewhouse, a place with German-style beers good enough to impress a couple of jaded Denverites who've been to more craft breweries than they can (should?) count. There wasn't a bad beer in a flight of six.

The next stop was Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar. This place is billed as "the oldest structure used as a bar in the United States." And if that statement feels a bit precisely worked to you, it did to me too. That wording elides the fact that Louisiana wasn't part of the U.S. when it was built, obscures that it's the building that's old (not necessarily the bar), and perhaps a few other details besides. The drink selection was pretty slight, actually... so we ordered what was easy: a Voodoo Daiquiri -- some kind of frozen, liquified Grimace in a styrofoam cup that tasted like grape Kool-Aid and too much rum.

This is a good moment to pause to voice my agreement with both the prevailing wisdom online and advice I got from friends who knew where I was going: if you go to New Orleans, you have to at least see Bourbon Street -- but it's probably not where you'll want to spend most of your time. If you've never been, you might have an image of endless bars serving endless cocktails to the accompaniment of endless live jazz groups; but Bourbon Street isn't actually that. (On a post about another day, I'll get to a place that is.)

Bourbon Street is basically spring break, 24/7. The sickeningly sweet alcoholic Slurpee we got at Lafitte's was typical of the drinks most accessible on Bourbon Street. And I'm not sure I heard any jazz there the entire weekend. We got plenty of bands both decent (one doing Fleetwood Mac and other covers) and bad (one screeching Are You Gonna Be My Girl worse than my friends sound on a drunken Rock Band night) -- but none of the music New Orleans is known for.

We wound up dumping the half-finished daiquiris on our way to a short walk back along the Mississippi River, before a series of quick stops at a series of random places. There was Chartres House -- a place playing nice (non-live) music but with drinks served by a comically disinterested bartender. There was Bourbon Street Drinkery, where we sat outside on our first of many hidden patio areas in New Orleans. Then there was Cafe Beignet -- where we actually didn't get beignets, but did enjoy our first of several sazeracs while listening to a live trio.

We closed out the night with a late dinner reservation at GW Fins. This is the kind of restaurant that won't post the entirety of their menu in the morning because they don't know what's been caught until the boat brings it back in the afternoon. It's the kind of place that made me exchange my ID for a collared shirt to wear in the dining room. (Taking an ID from the average drunken New Orleans tourist and relying on them to remember to retrieve it later seems like a dicey proposition to me -- but I at least pulled it off.)

The meal was everything we'd hoped for and more. My husband had perfectly seared fresh tuna; I enjoyed a shrimp pesto dish. We shared a bread pudding dessert... and a couple of after dinner drinks that it seems were about the right time to quit for the night, as I couldn't recall them the next morning.

I'll have a couple more posts recounting a couple more days of the trip... but to spoil the ending, the "eat, drink, and be merry" goal of the weekend was met in full. It was a lovely long weekend getaway, with more highlights in store.