Cajun and Creole cuisine set fire to good intentions
There is so much to see, experience and know in New Orleans. This bloglet is an expose of my, the strangers, ignorance- of cuisine, and of culture both apparent and occult.
I did try, but New Orleans is a place of richness and hidden treasures. I’ll start with carnal appetites…
There are some brilliant articles about the difference between Cajun and Creole history and culture. Here’s one https://www.hnoc.org/publications/first-draft/whats-difference-between-cajun-and-creole-or-there-one
After limited research via the Internet and my book on the History of New Orleans, its ghosts and vampires I can confidently say that I am none the wiser. Especially as regards to the difference between Cajun and Creole food and music. So here’s what may or may not be true.
Cajun is derived from the French. Cajuns like spicy crayfish. Creole is derived from Caribbean- European (of the non-French variety) . Creoles like shrimp. Both are partial to Oysters.
Before coming to US I had only had fresh oysters, naked as the day they were scooped from the sea tasting of white horse seas chased to shore. At most, enhanced with a drop of freshly squeezed lemon.
In the US they have them every which way- raw, cooked, blackened, rockafella, served on plates of ice, or burning hot lumps of sea salt or deep fried and tossed into salads… I am genuinely surprised you can’t get oyster breakfast cereal.
All of the food we have had in the States has been tastebud blowing delicious. New Orleans? well, set fire to the good intentions to eat moderately and sensibly.
I don’t know if we ate Cajun or Creole food in New Orleans but we ate ‘gator bites, fried blackened catfish, baked oysters a million different ways, gumbo, jambalaya, turtle soup with a dash of sherry, bread pudding and pecan pie. We ate in street bars, fine restaurants and a paddle steamer. I ate more Caesar salads than ever in my life and stole handfuls of GS’s chips (he says I’m worse than a seagull) Although I cannot say what is Cajun and what is Creole, I can safely say- New Orleans is a gourmands heaven.
Our favourite spots:
The Gazebo Cafe for jazz and great gumbo dolloped onto fat chips and topped with cheese. https://gazebocafenola.com
The Court of Two Sisters for Bloody Marys to knock you off your feet, turtle soup with a trickle of Sherry, then the full monty for the breakfast brunch – delicious. Jazz? Of course https://www.courtoftwosisters.com
Snappers for blackened baked oysters, and gator bites.- https://snappernola.com
The bit of a mouthful (no pun intended) Superior seafood and oyster bar on Napoleon Elegant romantic dinner venue. The baked oyster apple salad is wonderful.
https://www.superiorseafoodnola.com
But really, you can’t go wrong.
Jazz, on the streets, in the bars, halls and Natchez Paddlesteamer.
We were there for the music and music was everywhere. The first time we walked up Bourbon Street was like walking up a radio dial when you are trying to tune into a station. Deafening live music escaped from open doors, two steps later and another deafening performance escaped from next door. New Orleans is all about the jazz but on Bourbon street you can take your pick of rock, jazz or blues- loud, brash, with a pier arcade vibe that contrasts with the ruined lace filigree of ornate iron balustrades.
Bourbon St was rough, becoming more rougher at the Canal end. Royal Street was more elegant. But at the calmer end of Bourbon we found a spot we liked- Fritzels – and there we stuck.
Jazz bands on street corners, soloists playing and dancing on street corners, bands at Friztels, scatting at The Spotted Cat, sitting on benches at Preservation Hall for an intimate performance, sunset band on the paddle steamer. Old time jazz, modern jazz, country classics turned into Jazz. Music, music everywhere.
For me the street musicians had the most intensity, the bigger, sadder perhaps stories to tell, true artists selling their soul in melodies. Fritzels was the halfway house- tight, confident bands, old time jazz and humour. Preservation Hall was a slick performance in an old hall that looked like a death trap; one errant spark and the place would incinerate faster than a crooked pub recently purchased by a developer.
Here they are: Friztel’s: http://Fritzelsjazz.com
Friztle’s was our firm favourite- no fee to enter, cool bar with fairylights and old photographs and bands in the corner. On the bar was a beautiful old absinthe urn with taps, that simply refused to be photographed.
We loved it. I cannot believe we got so close to its secret and didn’t discover it…
Preservation Hall: https://www.preservationhall.com
You need to get tickets in advance, the performance is is tight. It’s in a place which is in definite need of Preservation but has an intimate, time traveling, slick feel.
The Spotted Cat https://www.spottedcatmusicclub.com
There was a small entry fee which is hard to justify when there is so much free Jazz. There was no available seating and the band who were scatting or rather attempting to. But charmingly, more than any of the other venues, it had the feel of the Jazz party in a ruined Parisienne mansion in the film The Aristocrats.
Voodoo and Vampires
Fritzel’s was calling. We meandered back, past the tarot card readers, browsing the voodoo shops.
Any brush with Voodoo and you know this is not for the faint of heart nor is it put on for the tourists. None the less I was tempted to get stocking fillers for the kids- glow in the dark miniature Virgin Marys’, voodoo dolls, spells, and lines of beads. The shops were dark, pokey with an aroma part josh stick, part death. I thought about a long strand of navy blue beads but something about them was unpleasantly… sticky. The longer I stayed in the dark, smelly and slightly menancing shops the longer I thought that perhaps I didn’t want any Voodoo paraphernalia after all. I don’t believe in black magic, spells and all that stuff. All it does is play on the human mind. But anyone who has suffered or witnessed a panic attack will know that the human mind is a strange and powerful thing, not to be messed with.
We were once more in Friztels. Once more it was pelting down, keeping the tourists, pirates, and tarot card readers pinned in their locations. We sat watching a band. At one point I nipped to the loo in the garden court yard. The door was to the side of the band- what with pelting rain no one had passed through. So of course the garden had to be empty. I went through the doors, the jazz suddenly muted as the door shut behind me. I froze and the hairs on my neck stood up. For a second I thought to back up, wished GS was behind me and I could slip my hand in his.
The courtyard was narrow, its lamp lit ochre walls shiny with rain. Drenched ferns hung dripping from the walls. There was a small table I hadn’t noticed it before. Ontop of it was a lit candelabra, maybe eight lit candles?. Its candles flickered like fireflies in the damp darkness, they drooled wax. Sat behind them still, part lost in shadow was a man dressed in black. He had long black curls, and lime green neon eyes. He stared looking ahead looking right through me without smile or greeting.
Of course he wasn’t an apparition or a vampire. But I inched past him, grateful that I wasn’t a virgin.
‘Did you see him’ I hissed at GS who had previously nipped to the loo.
‘No, who?’ he said.
The next day, back at Friztels.
‘Your man is there again’ GS said.
This time Fritzel’s was busier. A posse of Australian girls on a hen night piled into the courtyard garden. Emboldened I followed them out.
Neon-eyed Vamp was there, with his candles. But his time, followed by the Australians , and without word nor murmur, he led them through a door secreted in the walls.
‘They must be on some vampire ghost tour’ I said to GS, climbing back on my bar seat where I could listen to the music and watch the staff make cocktails. How I wrong I was, how I wish I had known….
It’s a secret location.
You have to go to one of the Boutique de Vampire, there you get a code. And only with this code can you be let into the Vampire’s Speakeasy- a glamorous ornate bar with a balcony looking over Bourbon street where you can drink potions laced with absinthe.
OOOO definitely next time…
I love this poem about the Vampire Speakeasy, I love the interiors, I would have loved to taste the wicked potions and given into carnal cravings…. We only glimpsed the outside, the vampire and the secret door…if only we had known…
On Saturday night, after a day touring the jazz haunts we made our way down Bourbon Street to Canal and Magazine. It was later than usual and the violet sky was darkening fast. As we quickly walked down Bourbon Street, night fell, so the vibe, already rough and lawless, started to change.
Large groups of raucous women armed with boom-boxes were bent double bouncing up and down in eye-popping penis-snapping moves. Crikey. I snapped my jaw shut, did my best to stop my eyes widening, I didn’t want to be stabbed for disrespecting anyone but, Crikey.
Back on Canal we were disorientated trying to find our bus.
There was lone woman on the corner. If we were looking out of place, she was more so -petite, immaculate and alone. Two drug addled drunks jostled around.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked instantly wanting to protect her.
‘I’m doing a circular street car tour’ she said
One of the druggie chaps lurched into us, full of bonhomie and waving a can of Stella Artois.
‘Estella! Estella!’ he screamed into our faces. ‘What film is that from?’
‘A streetcar called desire’ said I automatically. His face a picture of drunken delight fell. I had not meant to puncture his spirit and spoil his game. He backed off.
A car came around the corner pulling a cage full of women. At one end was a bar, at the other a portaloo. Inside gumbo and jambalaya fattened girls shook their booties, and bent over, bouncing. As it drew alongside pedestrians, so the women they passed joined in, bending double, waggling legging clad posteriors in solidarity, with surprising fluidity and skill. To me, the dances did seemed both provocative and defiant with somehow any latent aggression directed as us, the outsiders.
‘Are you sure you are ok?
‘Yes’ she doesn’t sound sure. ‘Its just a circular street car. New Orleans is safe’
‘Just an excessive party vibe?’
‘Yes, my friends love it. Except one.’
The second drugged up guy lurched away, bored. She continued
‘He said he had never been somewhere so close to the devil’
Every one in New Orleans ( bar the Vampire) was friendly – striking up a conversation in an instant. The dress code was predominantly tattoos and cotton shorts and tops. Me, I was in my usual floaty ensembles, every day someone would stop to compliment me on my dresses or even my hair. All of the US has been incredibly friendly, New Orleans the same. But as Saturday night descended the mood changed. Or maybe I’ve never been a city girl and maybe that’s why I felt we needed to leave. But the streets were becoming out of control. GS and I were in the wrong skin, the wrong accent, the wrong culture. I knew exactly what she meant. It felt that it could switch from debauchered to dangerous in the flip of a coin, in a misperceived glance. My sixth sense was tingling again. It felt as if old scores, histories and voodoo were bubbling up from the cracks in the pavement.
Time to return to the aircon of the number 11 bus and the lazy leafy calm of the Garden district. Time to drink cocktails on the veranda, accompanied by the Cardinal bird, and go to sleep listening to the long, haunting sound of ships horns from the muddy Mississippi.
I did not know that New Orleans is the birth place of twerking. Nor did I know that these dances had roots going all the way back to Africa. I did not know that these dances were banned during the antebellum slavery but were nevertheless vectors through which enslaved peoples could reconnect to their Central African roots. I cannot believe that having taken away their liberty, their names, the oppressors tried to take away their dance too.
Culture is expressed in so many ways- its beliefs, literature and arts, and of course, in its dance.
We, not enslaved, with a climate that didn’t spend its whole time trying to kill us, have Morris Dancing with handkerchiefs and jingle bells strapped to mens legs. These people, ripped from their homelands, have that ripple with sexuality, and echo defiance, seams strong enough to survive generations of slavery.
Something in me celebrates the defiance of women celebrating the power of their bodies, their sexuality and their connection to albeit distant ancestry.
https://www.popsugar.com/fitness/history-twerking-49231442
Next, we spent the morning in the aircon of the Aquarium admiring the albino ‘gator and colourful fish.
Then we took the Natchez paddle-steamer for a jazz subset dinner. https://www.steamboatnatchez.com/cruises/ Approaching the boat along the promenade an organist was playing the ships pipes, the sound spookily-comically distorted by the distance and the soft Mississippi winds. Then we were boarding, first another delicious dinner, then we watched the high rise version of New Orleans city shrink over the water.
It was so romantic- the shush of blades chopping water sending up cooling spray, the sun slinking slow then fast in a blaze of lingering sunset colours. Iconic, classic, silly and so much fun. https://www.steamboatnatchez.com/cruises/evening-jazz-cruise-with-dinner-option.html
New Orleans-steamy, hot, intense, romantic, delicious, intriguing and unique.
I hope you have enjoyed my little bloglet on New Orleans. There is so much to see and do we barely scratched the surface.- If you have any thoughts or comments I would love to hear them. With love, from GS and me.
5 Comments
Thank you for sharing this incredible experience! I felt as if I was along for the ride! You write so evocatively. The simmering heat and danger just below the surface drew me in. It’s on my bucket list!
Thank you Carol, I’m so glad you enjoyed it. ! We loved NOLA- it’s well worth it even out of Mardis Gras season when it goes mad- but the heat can be hard on us used to gentler climes!
I have never been to New Orleans but now I feel like I have been! And suddenly hungry for a thick, spicy bowl of gumbo with some chilled fresh oysters on the side!
❤ Jelaine, you should go! You & Tom would love it! Just don’t go in the terrible heat of summer!
Thank you Jelaine! You’ll love it!