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interview shorter menu for the hotel’s Burgundy Bar, and Stoltzfus will also handle room service and banquet catering at the hotel. Sweet Olive serves breakfast and dinner daily. The restaurant currently is accepting reservations only on its website.
Dijon debuts
The new Lower Garden District restaurant Dijon (1377 Annunciation St., 522-4712) opened last week. Housed in a historic former firehouse, Dijon is the first restaurant project from Kurt Brodtmann, and the chef is Chris Cody, who had a short but promising run at the now-shuttered Ristorante Pellicano in Kenner. Cody’s menu for Dijon is eclectic, mixing French, Italian and contemporary Creole flavors. Examples include smoked pork and poblano ravioli with goat cheese bechamel, sesame-crusted tuna with wasabi remoulade, and roasted duck with corn andouille relish and bourbon-fig glaze. One special feature of Dijon is a chef’s table with its own small kitchen so guests can watch and interact with the chef as their meals are prepared. “At a lot of chef’s tables, you don’t see the food being cooked and the chef sometimes just comes around to say hi, but this is going to be a different experience,” Cody says. Dijon’s building dates from 1914 and originally was used by the New Orleans Fire Department, which kept horse-drawn wagons there. It was empty from 1991 to 2003, when it was renovated into a restaurant space. Dijon serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday, lunch on Friday and brunch on Sunday.
LIzzy caStOn C o - F o u n D er o F n o L A F o o DT r u C kS .C o M A n D T h e S T r ee T FA r e D er By
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n economic and urban development consultant, Lizzy Caston has emerged as an advocate for street food in New Orleans (See “On the Move,” 1/31/12). Along with business partner Erica Normand Correa, Caston started NOLAFoodtrucks.com, which is based on a similar site she co-owns in Portland, Ore., a city with more than 600 food trucks. Last fall Caston and Correa introduced the Street Fare Derby, a food festival at the Fair Grounds Race Course that drew some 3,500 people. They plan to stage the event again this summer. It’s Carnival time, when New Orleans needs street food like nobody’s business. What are the chances we’ll see more homegrown food vendors here in the future? caston: I think you’ll see a lot more trucks in the next year. A lot of cities are realizing the potential of food trucks for community development, for small business development. I think there are people in City Hall who see this potential too, and the vendors here now are taking an active role — organizing and trying to make it easier to make some changes that they need to operate. What do you think is behind the new interest in street food? c: This city has a long history of street food; the whole country does. But then there was this push in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s to clean things up, more of a Disney vision of having everything orderly and nothing on the streets. But that’s changing now. People are moving back to their downtowns. The economy is different now, too, and food trucks are an entry point into business. I think it’s tied to the rise you see in home-based businesses and the craft movement. It’s just part of the continuum of a shift in small business in the U.S.
FIVE SPOtS FOr LatE-nIght SnackS
The Avenue Pub 1732 St. Charles Ave., 586-9243 www.theavenuepub.com Get breakfast and burgers, as well as a good selection of beer, until about 4 a.m.
Bouligny Tavern 3641 Magazine St., 891-1810 www.boulignytavern.com Elegant bar food is available until 2 a.m. on weekend nights, midnight otherwise.
Crepes a la Cart 1039 Broadway, 866-2362 www.crepecaterer.com The walk-up creperie is open around the clock from Friday to Ash Wednesday
Lost Love Lounge 2529 Dauphine St., 949-2009 www.lostlovelounge.com Pho and banh mi are served until midnight — even later on Fridays and Saturdays.
Yuki Izakaya 525 Frenchmen St., 943-1122 www.myspace.com/yukiizakaya The tavern offers Japanese-style small plates and sake into the wee hours.
Pancho’s lowers the flag
It’s the story of a buffet that burned twice as bright, made you twice as full but burned out very fast. Pancho’s Mexican Super Buffet (100 N. Labarre Road, Metairie) has closed, at least according to the signs posted to its chained and padlocked doors. The news comes almost three years after the restaurant reopened from a long post-Hurricane Katrina hiatus and was welcomed by throngs of fans, who eagerly lined up outside to get a table. To its devotees, the name Pancho’s was synonymous with an exuberant excess of flautas, tacos, chili rellenos, cheese enchiladas and sopapillas, with the option to pour chili and cheese sauce on just about anything. Miniature Mexican flags mounted at each table were a trademark of the place, and customers would ceremoniously raise the tiny banner up a flagpole to signal Pancho’s servers that they wanted more food. Pancho’s is a chain that started in El Paso, Texas in 1958. One of the early expansion sites was New Orleans, and this restaurant originally was located in the Central Business District. Back then, the influential New Orleans restaurant critic
Richard Collin described the restaurant as “a miracle,” and he listed its sopapilla as a “platonic dish,” signaling his highest praise. “Pancho’s food is excellent regardless of price,” he wrote in 1973, when the buffet cost $1.49. “At the price it is unbelievable.” Things evidently started slipping fast, however, and by 1976 the same critic wrote that “(t)he food is now gross, and large quantities simply underline the lack of delicacy.” Pancho’s later moved to Metairie, and despite Collin’s assessment it went on to win many new fans over the years until Katrina damage shuttered it in 2005. Prior to its reopening in 2009, thousands of people joined a Facebook group to share memories of their meals there and support the restaurant’s rumored return. No word yet from Pancho’s corporate office about future plans in the area, but the Baton Rouge location of Pancho’s closed in January, and a Pancho’s in Slidell closed last February.
Pairings and produce
Hollygrove Market and Farm (8301 Olive St., 483-7037; www.hollygrovemar-
ket.com) has developed a fast-growing distribution system since forming in 2008, and the latest link in that network is Swirl Wine Bar & Market (3143 Ponce de Leon St., 304-0635; www.swirlinthecity.com). Each Saturday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. the Mid-City wine shop serves as a pick-up site for Hollygrove’s produce boxes, while also serving tapas made from that week’s produce and pouring recommended wine pairings at its bar. Hollygrove assembles boxes containing roughly a dozen different items, which it sells for $25 each. Order through Hollygrove’s website ahead of time, and the boxes are delivered to your door or are available for pickup at Hollygrove’s distribution points, which include weekly sites in Algiers, the CBD, the French Quarter, Uptown and, now, Mid-City (visit the website for details). At Swirl, chef Richard Papier prepares dishes from that day’s Hollygrove haul during the pickup hours, which also coincide with Swirl’s happy hour, when wines by the glass are half price.
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Trends, notes, quirks and quotes from the world of food. “The ad was insensitive in its mention of pit bulls. We apologize. As soon as we learned of it, we tracked the source and had the local markets pull the ad immediately. We’ll do a better job next time.” — From a written statement issued by McDonald’s, regarding a short-lived radio ad campaign that said eating its new Chicken McBites product was less risky than petting a stray pit bull. The ad drew howls of protest from animal advocates and others. A 4.5 ounce serving of McBites has 470 calories, representing 43 percent of your recommended daily fat intake, according to nutritional analysis from McDonald’s.
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > february 14 > 2012
Do you think food trucks hurt restaurants? c: This is always the argument against trucks, but I’ve never seen empirical evidence proving that trucks take away business. If you have someone parking in front of a restaurant’s door, that’s unfair. But if you have four things on your menu and you’re serving people coming out of bars from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. I don’t think that’s taking away business. I want a university to run a study on this so we can have some data. I don’t want public policy based on hearsay and fear. — IAN MCNULTY
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