New Orleans Magazine December 2016

DECEMBER 2016

WYES-TV presents NOVA: Secrets of Noah’s Ark

DECEMBER 2016 / VOLUME 51 / NUMBER 2 Editor-in-Chief Errol Laborde Managing Editor Morgan Packard Art Director Tiffani Reding Amedeo Contributing Editor Liz Scott Monaghan Food Edit­or Dale Curry Dining Edit­or Jay Forman Wine and Spirits Edit­or Tim McNally Restaurant Reporter Robert Peyton Home Editor Bonnie Warren web Editor Kelly Massicot Staff Writers Jessica DeBold, Melanie Warner Spencer Intern Marie Simoneaux Vice President of Sales Colleen Monaghan SALES MANAGER Kate Sanders (504) 830-7216 / Kate@MyNewOrleans.com Senior Account Executive Lisa Picone Love Account Executives Claire Cummings, Jessica Marasco, Veronica Ridgley

Production Manager Staci McCarty Senior Production Designer Ali Sullivan Production Designers Monique DiPietro traffic Coordinator Terra Durio Chief Executive Officer Todd Matherne President Alan Campell Executive VICE PRESIDENT Errol Laborde DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND EVENTS Cheryl Lemoine Event Coordinator Margaret Strahan Distribution Manager John Holzer Administrative Assistant Denise Dean Subscriptions Manager Sara Kelemencky SUBSCRIPTIONS Assistant Mallary Matherne WYES DIAL 12 STAFF (504) 486-5511 Executive Editor Beth Arroyo Utterback Managing Editor Aislinn Hinyup Associate Editor Robin Cooper Art Director Jenny Hronek NEW ORLEANS MAGAZINE Printed in USA A Publication of Renaissance Publishing 110 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Suite 123 Metairie, LA 70005 Subscriptions: (504) 830-7231

MyNewOrleans.com

New Orleans Magazine (ISSN 0897 8174) is published monthly by Renaissance Publishing, LLC., 110 Veterans Blvd., Suite 123, Metairie, LA 70005; (504) 828-1380.

Subscription rates: one year $19.95; Mexico, South America and Canada $48; Europe, Asia and Australia $75. An associate subscription to New Orleans Magazine is available by a contribution of $40 or more to WYES-TV/Channel 12, $10.00 of which is used to offset the cost of publication. Also available electronically, on CD-ROM and on-line. Periodicals postage paid at Metairie, LA, and additional entry offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to New Orleans Magazine, 110 Veterans Blvd., Suite 123, Metairie, LA 70005. Copyright 2016 New Orleans Magazine. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the consent of the publisher. The trademark New Orleans and New Orleans Magazine are registered. New Orleans Magazine is not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photos and artwork even if accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope.

The opinions expressed in New Orleans Magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the magazine managers or owners.

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contents

62 FEATURES

IN EVERY ISSUE

ON THE COVER

62

Best of dining

16

INSIDE

Our annual choice picks of the restaurant scene.

By Jay Forman, Tim McNally & Robert Peyton

“Best Poor Boy: The cause continues”

Our 2016 Best of Dining annual issue features 15 restaurants and personalities (including our Chef of the Year Mike Gulotta, pictured on our cover) to whet your appetite.

Find your next favorite place, starting on pg. 62.

22 speaking out

Editorial, plus a Mike Luckovich cartoon 24

JULIA STREET Questions and answers about our city

151 Try This

“Otter This World”

152 STREETCAR

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“Christmas of ’89”

Photographed by Marianna Massey

contents

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58

86

THE BEAT

LOCAL COLOR

THE MENU

28

MARQUEE

46

me again

84

table talk

Entertainment calendar

“I Rediscovered Armstrong Park”

“Special Sandwich”

30

PERSONA

48

MODINE’S NEW ORLEANS

86 restaurant insider

Rev. R. Rony Richard aka the “Holy Who Dat”

“The Fight Before Christmas”

Biz

Joie d’Eve

News From the Kitchens: Three Muses Maple, On The Coast & Toups South

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50

“At Last: Saints fans get it”

“Offshore Blues”

88

Food

34

education

“Christmas Creations: Desserts for the season”

90

LAST CALL

The Perfect Thyming

92

DINING GUIDE

52

IN TUNE

“The Bungalow Book Lady”

“Christmas Presents: Wrapped with a Bowie”

36

HEALTH

54

Read & Spin

“Hangover: Epidemiology of a New Orleans staple”

38

HEALTHBEAT

“Stick It to Me”

40

Crime Fighting

“What the crime fighters are reading”

42

CHRONICLES

“Dolls Through the Ages”

A look at the latest albums and books

56

JAZZ LIFE

“Dylan In Stockholm: To be or not to be”

58

HOME

“Glitz On the Ritz: Juli and Stewart Juneau’s Christmas at home”

DIAL 12 D1 WYES-TV/Channel 12, your local public television station, presents “Great Performances – Shakespeare Live! From the Royal Shakespeare Company” on Fri., Dec. 23 at 9 p.m. Viewers will enjoy a star-studded gala with David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch, Judi Dench, Joseph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, David Suchet and many more on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Visit WYES.org for all event and program details.

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inside

Best Poor Boy The cause continues

I

n this our annual best of dining issue, I present my pick for poor boy place of they year. That would be Parkway Bakery & Tavern off of Bayou St. John. Evangeline Restaurant on Decatur Street finishes a close second.

Parkway was also my choice last year and the year before, and, here’s a tip, will probably be next year, too.

There are two reasons why I select Parkway. First, and most importantly, is that the place makes a damn good poor boy. These include the classics, such as golden fried oysters as well as roast beef with gravy dripping off the edges; the throwbacks, such as the 1929 Potato Poor Boy; and the daring, including the Smoked Alligator Sausage poor boy.

There are also sides and salads, but this place is really all about the poor boy. And that leads me to my second reason. Unlike just about anyplace else that serves the sandwich, Parkway is historically correct making use of the name “poor boy” rather than the bastardized, but oh so common phrase, “po’boy.”

This magazine and its sister publications are the only news media we know of that use the proper term, which originated from a 1929 strike by streetcar conductors. A local cafe, Martins, began offering free sandwiches, which were made with lettuce and tomato on French bread, to the strikers. In honor of the workers Martins called the delicacy “Poor boys.” The word is one of the few food names that relates to its origin. The strikers were “poor” not “po.” We suspect that the shortened version originated with sign painters at corner grocery stores wanting to promote the sandwich, which was getting more popular. “Po’” was more space efficient than “poor.” Now practically every joint in town uses the latter name, as does an annual festival that celebrates the delicacy.

What separates Parkway from Evangeline is that the former is a pure poor boy place with (depending on the season) around 20 choices. Evangeline is more of a full menu restaurant; nevertheless there are four properly named poor boys on the selection.

Being culturally correct is often a lonely attribute, though that might apply only to guys who sit behind a keyboard for a living and not to those splashing mayo on a French bread slice for waiting customers. When done right, the experience can be rich.

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on the web

New Orleans Magazine is on the web, are you?

Follow New Orleans Magazine on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest for all of the latest in New Orleans cuisine, music and more.

Make sure to sign up for the daily MyNewOrleans.com newsletter, too. Be the first to read our blogs, get the 411 on top events around the city and see the features and columns from all seven of our publications all in one place.

Follow us:

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facebook.com/NewOrleansMagazine | twitter.com/neworleansmag | pinterest.com/neworleansmag

2016 Press Club of new orleans winners Lifetime Achievement Award: Errol Laborde Cartoon: Mike Luckovich Column: “Me Again,” Chris Rose Special Section – Writing: “People to Watch,” Tiffani Reding Amedeo and Morgan Packard 18

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meet our sales team

Kate Sanders Sales Manager (504) 830-7216 Kate@myneworleans.com

Lisa Picone Love Senior Account Executive (504) 830-7263 Lisa@myneworleans.com

Jessica Marasco Account Executive (504) 830-7220 JessicaM@myneworleans.com

claire cummings Account Executive (504) 830-7250 Claire@myneworleans.com

Veronica Ridgley Account Executive (504) 830-7257 Veronica@myneworleans.com

Colleen Monaghan Vice President of Sales (504) 830-7215 Colleen@myneworleans.com

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SPEAKING OUT

Taking a Chartered Path

O

n this past election night, while most of us sat stunned at the presidential election results, a littlewatched vote tally toward the bottom of the ballot had a big impact – at least in New Orleans – and could eventually influence other jurisdictions nationwide.

There were three contested elections for the Orleans Parish School Board. At issue were charter schools. The board will be taking over all the public schools that were transferred to the state-run Recovery School District after the Katrina disaster. During the past decade the concept of charter schools has become more popular, though not with unions, which have lost leverage with the more autonomous charter schools.

We support the charter concept because it gives individual schools more flexibility, and allowing freedom in school

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selection creates more competition among schools. Under a charter system a bad school cannot survive at a dead-end while special interests get rich at the expense of students.

One of the most incredible developments in the city over the past decade is that the Orleans Parish Public School System, once considered among the nation’s worst, has become a model for reform.

On election night, the pro-charter faction of the board emerged victorious with at least a four-vote majority on the seven-member board.

We remember when television coverage of Monday night school board meetings could have been the equivalent of the Monday night fights. We hope for a more enlightened school board now. And with that could come a more enlightened citizenry. n AN ORIGINAL ©MIKE LUCKOVICH CARTOON FOR NEW ORLEANS MAGAZINE

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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JULIA STREET /

WITH POYDRAS THE PARROT

TH E PUR S UIT TO AN S W E R E T E RNAL Q U E S TION S

Julia and Poydras, Recently I found a photo of streetcars on Canal Street. I am not sure which direction they’re traveling, but it seems the picture was taken from the river end of the line.

The reason I’m asking for your help is that there’s a large statue that looks like it could be from the Civil War. I am wondering who it is and what happened to it.

If it helps, it seems to be the late 1800s or early 1900s. Also on one of the streetcars I was able to make out St. Peter.

Since Poydras and his pals like to hang out on statues, maybe he could help.

Thanks to you both.

Lynn Becerra Melbourne, FL Lynn, Poydras doesn’t have any pals, not since the day he invited a group to a spot to watch a Carnival parade, and it turned out to be a power line. (No birds

were hurt in the telling of this story, though their pride was wounded.)

The statue in question depicts Whig statesman Henry Clay (1777-1852).

Kentucky sculptor Joel Tanner Hart (1810-1877) designed the memorial, which was unveiled April 12, 1860 at the intersection of Canal Street and St. Charles Avenue almost exactly one year before the Civil War began. In 1864, during his tenure as military Acting Mayor of New Orleans, Stephen Hoyt ordered the following inscription to be added to the Clay statue’s pedestal. It read: “If I could be instrumental in eradicating this deepest stain, slavery, from the character of our country, I would not exchange the proud satisfaction which I should enjoy for the honor of all the triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror.”

The inscription was misquoted from

Clay’s Jan. 1827 speech to the American Colonization Society. The original, which doesn’t include the word “slavery,” reads: “… If I could be instrumental in eradicating this deepest stain upon the character of our country, and removing all cause of reproach on account of it, by foreign nations – if I could only be instrumental in ridding of this foul blot that revered State that gave me birth, or that not less beloved State which kindly adopted me as her son, I would not exchange the proud satisfaction which I should enjoy for the honour of all the triumphs ever decreed to the most successful conqueror.”

The memorial’s location created a traffic hazard and, for decades, the city contemplated its removal. By 1900, as electric streetcars rounded the monument on tracks built for their narrower animal-powered predecessors, there was little space for pedestrians to safely stand.

Numerous accidents ensued and, in ’01, the city finally acted to mitigate the traffic hazard by moving the Clay Statue to Lafayette Square, where it still stands. The inscribed panel bearing the anti-slavery quote was not replaced or installed on the pedestal the statue has occupied since ’01.

Dear Julia and Poydras, I am from birth a citizen of New Orleans, seeking information about a group of seamstresses who produced costumes for various Mardi Gras groups. The group’s name was Stouse.

This had to be sometime before the 1950s. How long before, I don’t know. My

Win a restaurant gift certificate

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Here is a chance to eat, drink and have your curiosity satiated all at once. Send Julia a question. If we use it, you’ll be eligible for a monthly drawing for a tour and Creole breakfast for two at Degas House or a Jazz Brunch for two at The Court of Two Sisters. To take part, send your question to: Julia Street, c/o New Orleans Magazine, 110 Veterans Blvd., Suite 123, Metairie, LA 70005 or email: Errol@MyNewOrleans.com. This month’s winners are Larry Blanchard, New Orleans; and Laura Miller, New Orleans.

DECEMBER 2016 / myneworleans.com

photograph courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

mother continued on her own for several decades making costumes, sometimes mantels and usually fittings for the next ball.

For many years she did Osiris, and other times Alhambra and Babylon. I would appreciate any leads as to who they were, the extent, length of time of their business and where they operated.

Larry Blanchard New Orleans The seamstresses with whom your mother worked were unmarried siblings who collectively called themselves the Misses Stouse. Children of Fredrick Christian Stouse and Rita Forstall, Yvonne (18921970), Evelyn (1893-1983), Edith (1895-1868) and Claire Stouse (1900-’92), the Misses Stouse were nieces of renowned Carnival costume designer Ann Forstall.

As is the case with others employed by Carnival organizations, costume designers and seamstresses typically operate outside the public eye and are bound to secrecy about their projects. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that publicly available information about the full extent of the Misses Stouse’s professional portfolio is scant. Over the years, the Stouse siblings worked as seamstresses and costume designers for numerous Mari Gras krewes, especially Rex, for which sisters Claire and Edith are known to have worked from the early 1920s until around ’51.

Throughout the 1940s, the Misses Stouse ran a sewing business from their shared Uptown residence, but city directories identified only Yvonne as a Carnival costumer.

Interestingly, Yvonne had herself once reigned as Carnival royalty. In ’11, the eldest of the Misses Stouse ruled as queen of the Elves of Oberon.

Dear Julia, I first came to New Orleans on April 4, 1968, as a high school junior. I wanted to attend Sophie Newcomb and my dad brought me along on a business trip so I could interview and check it out in person.

That first day he left me on my own to have lunch downtown while he went to his business meeting. I remember walking down Canal Street and finding a fabulous restaurant with a spiral staircase. I had my very first shrimp remoulade, the most delicious thing I’d ever put in my mouth. (Now my “death row last meal” should it ever come to that.)

I believe it’s the place now doing business as the Palace Café (one of my favorites).

Could you tell me what it was then?

Thank you, Laura Miller New Orleans It would have been quite impossible, in 1968-’69, for you to have had a memorable seafood lunch in the building which now houses the Palace Café. At the time, 605 Canal St. was still home to Werlein’s music store.

Perhaps my own memory is a little foggy, but I don’t recall any Canal Street restaurant that was active in the late 1960s and featured a spiral staircase. Even though nearby department stores D. H. Holmes and Maison Blanche boasted popular lunch spots, neither restaurant had an upper level. I will keep looking, and if any readers have any recollections please let me know. Since Poydras is often too lazy to go to the post office to pick up the mail, its best e-mail me c/o of my manservant: errol@ myneworleans.com. n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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the beat MARQUEE / PERSONA / BIZ / EDUCATION / HEALTH / CRIME FIGHTING / CHRONICLES

persona pg. 30

“The best thing about living in New Orleans is definitely the people. We see family no matter where you’re from. Wherever you go, you’ll find ‘babies’ and ‘darlings’ because that’s who we are.”

– Rev. R. Tony Ricard

greg miles PHOTOGRAPH

THE BEAT / MARQUEE

OUR TOP PICKS FOR DECEMBER EVENTS

cheryl gerber photo

Bryce Ell Photography

by Fritz Esker

LUNA Fête

Festival of the Bonfires

Running of the Santas

The Arts Council New Orleans started LUNA Fête in 2014 to use New Orleans’ iconic landscape as a canvas for outdoor public art. Dec. 7-10, 6-9 p.m., visitors can witness art created from light and technology. Illuminated installations, digital sculptures, video-mapping projections and animations are just some of the visual treats in store for viewers. The initiative is free and open to the public. Information, ArtsNewOrleans.org

For New Orleanians willing to travel a little further afield, the 26th Festival of the Bonfires will be held at Lutcher Recreational Park Fri., Dec. 9-Sun., Dec. 11. The fest features a mixture of food, crafts, live music and carnival rides. Kids also enjoy Santa’s Very Merry Forest and a gingerbread house contest. At the end of each night, a single bonfire is lit.

Information, FestivalOfTheBonfires.org

Part festival and part pub crawl, the Running of the Santas is a way for festively dressed New Orleanians to cut loose for a good cause. There are contests for best costume and cutest Santa. The pub crawl begins at Manning’s and finishes at Generations Hall, where Category 6 and Flow Tribe will provide live music.

Participants will be treated to drink specials throughout the day and proceeds will go to the That Others May Live Foundation.

Information, RunningOfTheSantas.com

CALENDAR Jan. 1: Celebration in the Oaks, City Park. Information, NewOrleansCityPark.com 1-31: Merriment on Magazine Street, Magazine Street.

Information, MagazineStreet.com 1-4: The Clock (a 24-hour video exhibition on the passage of time in cinema), Contemporary Arts Center. Information, ProspectNewOrleans.org 1-18: Preserving New Orleans Second Line Culture: A Photographic Exhibition, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation Gallery.

Information, JazzAndHeritage.org

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1-April 9: “Goods of Every Description: Shopping in New Orleans 1825-1925,” The Historic New Orleans Collection. Information, HNOC.org 2: John Prine, Saenger Theater. Information, SaengerNOLA.com 2, 9 & 16: Holiday Movies on the Mississippi, Spanish Plaza.

Information, DowntownNola.com 3: Krewe of Jingle Parade, Downtown. Information, DowntownNOLA.com 3: John Cleese and Eric Idle, Saenger Theater. Information, SaengerNOLA.com

SPOTLIGHT

has grown in size, ambition (an ice rink!) and fun.

How challenging is it to operate a functioning ice rink in New Orleans? It isn’t as

NOLA ChristmasFest

Bob Johnson, President of the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, discusses this year’s fest

T

he month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is typically slow for New Orleans tourism. To attract tourists and locals downtown, “Christmas in the District” was created in 2013, with live music and a musical lighting display on Convention Center Boulevard. Three years later it’s now NOLA ChristmasFest and

difficult as you might think, because NOLA ChristmasFest is indoors. … The key was finding suppliers for the rink, skates and even skating talent, but it took off immediately. Who knew that so many people in New Orleans were ice skaters? That actually became our challenge!

We learned a lot last year about resurfacing the ice, crowd control and how to make ice skating at NOLA ChristmasFest an enjoyable experience for everyone.

What’s the most popular attraction? The ice rink is

a big draw and will be even larger this year. People have memories of ice skating at the Plaza in Lake Forest, Elmwood or Chateau Estates in the (19)70s and ’80s, but many local children never had that experience until

last December. Some of the young people who came to New Orleans post-Katrina were anxious to get back on the ice.

Is there a part visitors overlook? Participating in all the

activities is easy. Children may gravitate to the ice skating rink, life-size maze, carnival rides, giant inflatables, climbing wall and snowball fight, while the adults might enjoy … the elaborate decorated “Hall of Trees” and the New Orleans-themed gingerbread creations.

What’s new at the fest?

We are getting a bigger ice rink for this December that measures 7,280 square feet, which is just under the size of a National Hockey League regulation rink.

NOLA ChristmasFest 2016 will also feature an ice slide … and private skating lessons will be available on a reservation basis.

Information, NOLAChristmasFest.com n

3: Professional Fire Fighters Benefit Concert Featuring The Spinners, Lakefront Arena. Information, Arena.UNO.edu

17: R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl, Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Information, NewOrleansBowl.org

5: Algiers Bonfire & Concert, Algiers Point. Information, AlgiersBonfire.com

18: Caroling in Jackson Square, Jackson Square. Information, PatioPlanters.org

7: Tony Bennett, Saenger Theater. Information, SaengerNOLA.com

23: Moscow Ballet’s “Great Russian Nutcracker,” Saenger Theater.

Information, SaengerNOLA.com

10: Jim Jefferies: The Unusual Punishment Tour, Joy Theater.

Information, TheJoyTheater.com 13-18: Jersey Boys, Saenger Theater. Information, SaengerNOLA.com

23: Disney Live! Mickey and Minnie’s Doorway to Magic, Lakefront Arena. Information, Arena.UNO.edu

16: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Theater. Information, TheJoyTheater.com

31: Amy Schumer Live, Smoothie King Center. Information, SmoothieKingCenter.com

Craig Mulcahy photograph

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / PERSONA

to God and to the students he teaches every year. The best part of working at his old high school, he says, “is realizing I can help change the life of the school as well as individual students just by being me and bringing my gift back to my alma mater.”

Q: Is preaching really your hobby?

That’s what I do for fun. I’ve traveled to 23 different countries because I preach.

Q: Were you always funny? My

entire life I was funny, but in the early years I was very shy. So only my family knew how foolish I was.

Q: What led you to the priesthood?

Rev. R. Tony Ricard Aka The “Holy Who Dat”

By Faith Dawson

I

f your idea of Catholic Mass involves a stern lecture and rock-hard pews, you’ll find neither at St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in Gentilly. The new pastor, Rev. R. Tony Ricard – he arrived there this summer – is more likely to crack wise than deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon to the congregation. Whether he jokes about the collection plate or the length of the homily, this priest is blessed with a sense of humor. But that’s only his weekend job. Day-to-day, Ricard is also on the faculty at St. Augustine High School, his alma mater. As a student there, he played bell lyre in the school’s well-known Marching 100 while he dreamed of being a doctor. His vocation would come later, both

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I transferred to Loyola [from Tulane] and went into elementary education.

After being a public schoolteacher in New Orleans for three years, the priesthood looked good. So I entered the seminary. Back when I was in high school, if someone would have told me that I was going to be a priest I would have told them that they were crazy.

Q: What do you do for the Saints?

Every year I write a new prayer for the newspaper, and folks all around the region will call and say that they’ve been saying the prayer. One lady said she holds it to her chest for at least the first quarter.

I do Mass with the players and coaches the night before every home game. I’ve also done almost all the sacraments: I’ve done weddings, I’ve done baptisms, I hear confessions. I get to do all the things that their pastor would do if they were at home. greg miles PHOTOGRAPH

Q: What’s on your Age: 52 Profession: Pastor, St. Gabriel the Archangel Church in Gentilly; campus minister and chair of theology, St. Augustine High School; chaplain, New Orleans Saints Resides: New Orleans Born/raised: Born on a U.S. Army base in Munich, Germany; raised in New Orleans.

Family: Father, Rodney; sister, Deidra; brother, Kevin; English bulldog, J.P. Deuce (after Pope John Paul II) Education: St. Augustine High School; (undergraduate) Loyola University; (master’s degree) Xavier University; (master’s degree) Notre Dame Seminary Favorite book: Bible Favorite movie: Oliver! Favorite TV show: “Empire” Favorite food: Red beans and rice Favorite restaurant: Dooky Chase Restaurant Hobby: “I preach.”

Q: Does your family have

special traditions around Christmas? We never open gifts until Christmas morning, as a family. As a child you woke up at 3 in the morning and you ran to see if Santa Claus had been there yet. We were in a shotgun house so you had to sneak through my mama and dad’s room to even get to the living room.

And then you sneak back and then you wake up at 5 o’clock and you hope that somebody is breathing so you can get up. As children it was always super exciting. To this day, we still all gather together and we exchange gifts after Christmas morning Mass.

Christmas list this year?

I really wouldn’t mind if someone were to give me a PlayStation 4.

Q: Are you already work-

ing on a special Christmas sermon? Now that I’m in a new parish, they have yet to experience a big holiday with me – my Christmas sermons always have something major. Like one year I wrapped myself in Christmas wrapping to talk about what kind of gifts we’re giving to God. Another year I had a young couple come down the aisle carrying their baby trying to find a seat in the church. This year I really haven’t thought much about where we’re going to go with it, but it’ll definitely involve something that will have the parishioners talking for decades.

Q: Favorite thing about New Orleans? The best thing about living in New Orleans is definitely the people.

We see family no matter where you’re from. Wherever you go, you’ll find “babies” and “darlings” because that’s who we are. n

True confession I really love country music. My first real date to a concert was with my mama, to the Lee Greenwood, Sawyer Brown, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers concert in the Louisiana Superdome.

When I want to punish my boys in class and really torture them, I turn on country music and walk around the classroom singing. They’re like, “We hate you so much.” myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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Offshore Blues An industry waits for the tide to turn

By Kathy Finn

F

or chairmen and CEOs of publicly traded companies, preparing for quarterly conference calls with investor representatives can be a breeze. Or it can be an exercise fraught with worry. Everything depends on how the company has fared during the previous three months.

Recently, one of New Orleans’ oldest and largest oil industry service companies faced one of the most difficult calls with investors in its 60-year history.

Tidewater Inc. is seen by some as the creator of the offshore “work boat” industry, a business that provides transportation for the people, equipment and supplies that enable Big Oil to operate far offshore in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea and dozens of other international locales that are the stomping grounds of the world’s largest exploration and production companies.

Founded in 1956 by members of oilfield innovators, the Laborde family of central Louisiana and chaired for years by John P. Laborde

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of New Orleans, Tidewater grew into the country’s first and largest offshore service vessel company, sporting a fleet of vessels operating in some 60 countries around the globe.

Through the decades, Tidewater adapted its fleet to the changing needs and evolving technology of the drilling and production business. The company also rode out wildly volatile periods in which the fortunes of the oil and gas industry ebbed and flowed. During industry downturns, the service sector is nearly always hit first and hardest in terms of job losses or outright business failures.

Right now, Tidewater is closer than it has ever been to such a low. Six months ago, Tidewater CEO Jeff Platt warned that the company could default on part of its debt, even though it had received extensions on payments that were due to some note holders.

For months the company struggled to right its plunging financial fortunes, and in late October Tidewater gave notice that a bankruptcy could lie ahead if it’s unable to come to terms

with lenders to whom it owes hundreds of millions of dollars. Management explained its plight to investors in early November.

Like every other company in every part of the oil and gas industry, Tidewater’s current woes stem from a prolonged depression in the price of oil.

After years of floating in the vicinity of $100 a barrel, the price of oil plunged when a glut developed in the worldwide market.

Middle Eastern producers, who in past downturns had reduced their production in order to support prices, refused to do so this time because such a step would benefit an increasingly competitive rival producer, the United States.

For many months, oil prices have struggled to climb anywhere close to $50 a barrel, a level that industry executives say would help many struggling businesses stay on their feet. And natural gas prices, which have

At a Glance Tidewater Inc. 601 Poydras St., Suite 1500 New Orleans, LA 70130 Founded: 1956 CEO: Jeffrey M. Platt Chairman of the board: Richard A. Pattarozzi The company’s fleet of offshore service vessels includes platform supply, anchor-handling towing supply vessels, fast crew supply, offshore tugs and specialty and utility vessels. Tidewater’s operations are focused in four geographic sectors: the Americas, Asia/Pacific Middle East/North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa/ Europe. The company had $980 million in revenue in fiscal 2016, down from $1.5 billion in the previous year.

languished for years due to the commodity’s easy availability, have remained at historic lows.

The situation has taken a big toll. Some 14,000 Louisiana jobs fell victim to the downturn during the past year, according to state sources, with the bulk of the layoffs occurring in the Lafayette and Houma areas, but with all parts of the state sharing in the pain.

Just weeks ago, Lafayettebased Stone Energy Corp. announced a reorganization plan that may allow the company to shed more than $800 million in debt.

Industry giant Shell last summer announced plans to

cut 2,200 positions across its global businesses, and some of its peers have been forced into even bigger cuts.

At Tidewater, which has long been headquartered in downtown New Orleans, the latest downturn spurred a round of cost cutting that has slashed some 3,000 jobs, about a third of the company’s worldwide work force.

About 180 of Tidewater’s 300 vessels currently are operating in various parts of the globe, according to statements from Tidewater management.

That contrasts with peak periods in the past when every one of the company’s boats was actively deployed.

With no short-term relief in sight, Tidewater may find protection in bankruptcy court. But as much as management may have hoped to avoid that step, it wouldn’t mark the demise of one of New Orleans’ oldest companies.

Under a reorganization plan, Tidewater likely would come to terms with its lenders that would allow for smaller repayments of debt over a longer period of time.

Lenders who work with the oil and gas industry know that the business will, at some point, recover to a more viable level, and they have no interest in shutting Tidewater down or foreclosing on a few hundred work boats.

The current downturn is one of the worst that Tidewater has ever faced, and it’s certain to cost the company, and New Orleans, more jobs in coming months. But the strength of the oil and gas industry lies in its ability to hold on through the dark times and be ready to spring into action at the first sign of light. Tidewater is more adept than many other oil service companies when it comes to riding out such big economic storms. n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / EDUCATION

The Bungalow Book Lady Spreading the cause in the 9th Ward

by Dawn ruth Wilson

A

few days before Halloween, the front door of Laurence Copel’s double bungalow in the 9th Ward bore a sign that read: “Street Library at 3:00 today.”

It was handwritten on orange paper along with a hand-drawn pumpkin. Inside, The Book Lady, the nickname bestowed on Copel by neighborhood children, sat reading a book about a ladybug to 3-year-old Iyinnia Amore.

The story was part book and part puppet show, via a black felt finger puppet embedded in the text.

It was a slow day for the 9th Ninth Ward Street Library (5445 Douglass St.), operated by Copel since 2013 when she bought the house.

Only Iyinnia and her sister Jhana visited Copel’s library, but Copel says other Saturdays, when it’s usually open 1-3 p.m., bring more than a dozen children. Many ride their bicycles from several blocks away. Copel sends them home

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with a book from an ever-evolving collection of 5,000 children’s books.

The red one-room library of about 120 square feet holds a chair, a plaid sofa and two wall units of coloring and regular books. Cardboard shipping boxes of unpacked books line one wall and another one sits on the porch. The collection grows via donors who share Copel’s view that early reading habits provide a pathway for productive lives for at-risk children.

When the house library isn’t open, bookhunting children can browse the titles in the always-open little library out front, which carries such classics as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. The books come and then they go. Wall art inside the house library carries the library’s central philosophy: “Read a Book, Pass It On.” “We have the dubious distinction of being the incarceration capital of the world,” Copel says.

“I just thought maybe giving books away to children early would be a way to keep them out of jail.”

During the many years of her career as a professional librarian, Copel says she repeatedly heard from struggling teenagers that books were absent from their homes and that they never had been read to as children.

She has been trying to rectify that lack of home-based learning for years. For much of a decade, she was an outreach librarian for the lofty New York Public Library. But when that position ended and she got stuck in a library cheryl gerber photograph

desk job, she decided to move to New Orleans and start over. Before long, her passion for distributing books took a personal, out-on-the road path. The usual quiet environment of impersonal library buildings and metal book racks shifted to a tiny apartment in the Holy Cross section of the 9th Ward, and a spot in a community garden where she read to the neighborhood kids surrounded by the varying growing stages of nutritious plants.

Soon she had found a part-time librarian position at a West Bank school and started her own grassroots outreach program.

When she wasn’t pedaling a bicycle to the ferry to get to the West Bank, she was expanding her literacy ideals. A program called Books to Kids donated books on the condition she gave them away to the children, a no-brainer for a woman who promotes book love.

To expand her reach, she began carrying books by bicycle to nearby neighborhoods. Later, she bought a sturdy threewheeler bicycle that allowed her to carry an entire tray of books to children further afield.

She developed “legs of steel,” she says, and the whole adventure brought her a 2014 Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity. The $3,000 prize sponsored by children’s author Daniel Handler and the American Library Association also brought media exposure and more donations.

At one point, a donor gave her a Mercedes-Benz van to develop a roomier traveling library. Artist friends painted it with folksy images of children

reading books and her son brushed on her own image.

It was called the NOLA Book Bus. For a while she had a bus, but no driver’s license. She had to learn to drive. She was so roundly identified by it in the neighborhood that the bus “had become my alter ego,” Copel says.

The next step was to install a sound system to announce the van’s arrival like an old-style ice-cream truck, but that never came about. The key broke and the cost of towing it to a Baton Rouge MercedesBenz dealer for a high-tech repair proved too expensive. She traded it for a conventional Toyota SUV, which gets her to a new, paid, full-time outreach librarian position at Kingsley House, but it doesn’t deliver books to children with the same flair.

While pondering how to get back on the road in kid-friendly style, Copel ran across internet images of an Italian bookmobile powered by a motored three-wheeler. Inspired, she found a similar vehicle in Arizona, which she got for free and transported to her driveway. Now it’s parked in front of the wooden, sixshelved float that carries books in a street parade she produces every year.

The loss of the book bus slowed down her giveaway programs this year, she says, but as soon as she gets the money to spruce up the three-wheeler, the library will be on the road again.

The van’s breakdown came at a difficult time for Copel. She says she suffered a string of personal tragedies this year, including the death of her mother.

“I’m so sad,” she says, “a year of death. It was just too much.” n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / health

Hangover Epidemiology of a New Orleans staple

By Brobson Lutz M.D.

M

y goal was to investigate the epidemiology of New Orleans hangovers.

Data-driven epidemiologists seek out group diagnoses, outbreaks, transmission modes, etiologies, time patterns and preventive measures. My first call was to a liquor and wine store.

“People come here to buy liquor. They don’t share their hangover tales with us,” says Ben Lazich, owner of The Wine Seller at 5000 Prytania St. “As far as sales go, August is the deadest month of all; too hot and everyone out of town. Sales really start picking up in October, and November brings Thanksgiving. December, with gift baskets, is our busiest month.”

My investigation then shifted from purveyors to what restaurateurs call the back of house. Kitchen staff are rarely non-drinking Baptists. The only exception that comes to mind was “the Rev” at the old Ruth’s Chris on Broad Street and Orleans Avenue. The Rev broiled steaks by night and attended the Baptist Seminary by day.

Caesar, Jonathan and Nick (real first names

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only by request) are a formidable gastronomic triumvirate representing Coquette, Patois and Primitivo. These are big guys cooking some of the best food in New Orleans. I think it’s fair to say that they, like many kitchen staff, enjoy a drink or two or more after long, hot nights in restaurant kitchens.

“The now three good friends were just getting to know each other when the power of a hangover cemented their friendship forever in 2014,” reports hangover detective Joel Hitchcock Tilton, an urban gardener and concert promoter at Paradigm Gardeners.

“These three were at a New Year’s Eve party heavy on overly tattooed ‘industry’ folk where liquor flowed. Caesar peeled off with a prearranged first date leaving Jonathan and Nick as mutual wingmen to prowl for ‘top talent.’

“Nick quickly zeroed in on a beautiful brunette. Jonathan met an equally ravishing lady and the chemistry sparked. After a few worn one-liners and numerous drinks, both newly minted couples left to ring in the New Year and follow their biological impulses in the guys’

separate apartments figuring Caesar had left with his date as well.

“Actually, Caesar with his new date had decamped in a back booth. After knocking back a few too many his eyes shut, his head tilted back and he was out. His date began to smack him, Jesus style, on both cheeks. But nothing, he wouldn’t come to. She enlisted the aid of a massive security guard to carry Caesar to her car and drove straight to a nearby hospital.

A nurse suggested that the date needed to go home and assured her that Caesar was in good hands.

“Meanwhile, Nick and his new friend checked out his bedroom. ‘Wow, is that an axe?’ she inquired. ‘Yeah, I’ve never been a gun type of guy so it’s mainly for self-defense. You know what they say about guys with big axes,’ Nick joked. Soft giggles turned to loud moans to a raucous roller-coaster ride of sorts. Off the bed they rolled and then thud. Nick totally passed out and awoke the next day in an empty bed.

He saw a near empty bottle of tequila on his nightstand next to a needle and thread and a handwritten note that read ‘You’re a wild man. I enjoyed last night. Take care of yourself and call me when you heal.’ “‘Heal?’ Nick thought to himself as he stepped out of the bed. ‘Well that’s odd. …

Ahhhhh’ he screamed, his foot opening up like the fractured London Canal. Nick’s foot was

Epidemiology of the New Orleans hangover In a drinking city like New Orleans, the hangover is a staple embedded in our DNA, just like red beans and rice.

The chemistry and physiology of the hangover are still poorly understood.

Somehow excess alcohol triggers increased levels of toxic chemicals and cellular messages called cytokines leading to dizziness, throbbing headaches, rapid heart rates, nausea, vomiting, a relative dehydration and increased sensitivity to light and sound.

The incidence likely peaks in the late teen years and early 20s. Younger visitors to our city are probably at higher risk than locals.

And hangover incidence falls with increasing age, with wisdom emerging as the most effective immunization against recurrent attacks.

Favorite hangover cures abound, but the New Orleans go-to hangover aide in my opinion remains YaKa-Mein, aka Old Sober.

In addition: check MyNewOrleans.com for hangover cures from the three chefs featured in this article. spewing blood, like a crimson BP oil spill with seemingly no end in sight. Crawling, he headed to the bathroom, leading a trail of blood as he began to feel faint. He tied a towel around his foot, slinked to his car just outside and

speed off to the hospital, leaving his car on the ER ramp. “‘Wow, you really did yourself a number. But good work with those sutures on the bottom of your foot,’ said the ER physician a few minutes later. “‘Sutures?’ Nick thought.

He hadn’t seen the bottom of his foot or the sutures. Now he remembered rolling out of bed the night before. He had slammed into the dresser, knocked his battle-axe to the floor, and gouged his foot. His inebriated, lustful state had erased all other aftermath memories of the injury. His New Year’s Eve date must’ve had some medical training.

The large laceration had been sutured with sewing thread from his travel kit.

“As Nick and Caesar slept off their discretions on hospital gurneys clothed in hospital gowns several rooms apart, Jonathan woke up with a thundering headache and distant memories of an evening with a fantabulous woman.

Rubbing his eyes crusted with yellow boogies, he saw a note: ‘Hey big guy. Wonderful night but I had to go to work early.

Come by the ER at (hospital name undisclosed) and we can get coffee.’”

“Jonathan threw on his clothes and sped to the ER. His date from the night before, now in a nursing uniform, ushered him in just as Caesar was rolling back from radiology. As he and Caesar loudly recounted their evening, they heard a muffled cry from another ER cubicle. It was Nick. The three musketeers, two in hospital gowns and one in street clothes, were now reunited in a post-inebriated state of throbbing headaches and assorted injuries.”

Brobson Lutz M.D. with investigative assistance by Joel Hitchcock Tilton n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / HEALTHBEAT

Stick It to Me IV infusion treatments

I

t has taken me six years of being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease to be at least tolerable of needles. Nothing, however, hits you like the news you’re going to have to start an IV infusion treatment as your new medicine plan.

You mean I have to sit there with a needle in my arm for however long as medicine dripped into my body? To say I was nervous would be an extreme understatement.

How would I prepare for this moment? Was I going to lose my hair? Would I be sick after or not be able to function? All of these and other horrible thoughts raced through my brain and I immediately began to look up how to prepare myself.

After lots of research, the following three things seemed to be the consensus: Army of warriors: It is nice to know you have a posse or backup for whatever emotions you may feel, especially on the day of the first treatment.

Blanket, Cap or Head Scarf: It can definitely get chilly in any doctor’s office. Better to be comfortable and bring any extra blankets to make sure you’re comfortable in the moment.

Book, Magazine or Electronics: Distraction is the best for certain situations. Bringing something to read, a game to play or your favorite Netflix show to help pass the time. Just sitting and thinking about the situation will make your anxiety skyrocket.

My first infusion was definitely easier than I had prepared myself for, but it was still nice to feel ready and in control of the situation. Remember to ask your doctor for any issues they’ve seen their patients experience and if there are any other necessities needed to have a smooth treatment day. It is also good to remember to note any changes between treatments. Your doctor will want to know any and everything happening to your body in between treatments. I write down anything odd that happens, no matter what. I am sure my doctor loves the “TMI” that comes her way, but better safe than sorry.

I would love to hear your infusion therapy stories or how you better prepared for your treatment. Email me your story or suggestions at Kelly@MyNewOrleans.com.

– Kelly Massicot

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myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / CRIME FIGHTING

The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case by Michael A. Ross “It is a page-turning crime story that takes place in Reconstruction New Orleans, when the New Orleans Police Department and juries were both integrated and there was real hope of racial progress. It is fascinating and spellbinding.”

Crime Booking What the crime fighters are reading

By Allen Johnson Jr.

T

he holidays are good time to give the gift of books. Here is what some of the people in the business of crime fighting are reading:

Kenneth Allen Polite Jr., United States Attorney, Eastern District of Louisiana

1. Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans,

by Gary Krist 2. The Gardens of Democracy, by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer 3. The Second Amendment: A Biography,

by Michael Waldman 4. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, by Joseph Ellis Mr. Polite travels extensively as a U.S. Attorney General-appointee to a panel representing the nation’s 93 U.S. Attorneys, a spokesperson says. He couldn’t be reached for elaboration on his choices of leisure reading.

Of the four books recommended above, Empire of Sin offers the most provocative title. It is an oft-mentioned choice of other criminal justice professionals. Criminologist Heidi Unter Ph.D., last year in this space recommended Empire of Sin to our readers as “a fascinating and dramatic his-

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tory of the Storyville Era.” Krist’s book isn’t just another colorful history of the city’s notorious red-light district and its jazz artists, according to Walter Isaacson, a native New Orleanian and author who reviewed Empire of Sin for The New York Times (Nov. 6, 2014): “Krist’s underlying theme is the uncomfortable relationship of civic reform to class prejudice. Leaders of the Uptown business establishment and social elite were opposed to the tolerance that defined Storyville. But Krist shows that their intolerance went deeper. They were repelled by racial intermingling, and some were involved in notorious lynchings of both blacks and Italians. An integral part of their moralistic crusade was support for Jim Crow laws that attempted to re-segregate the city and reverse a public tolerance of blacks, Italians and jazz.

The book’s most important lesson, Isaacson says: “Rooting out sin may be worthy, but beware the unsavory motives that can lurk in the hearts of moral crusaders.”

Tania C. Tetlow, Tulane University law school professor and former federal prosecutor

Peter Scharf, criminologist, LSU Health Sciences Center School of Public Health

1. Getting Off at Elysian Fields: Obituaries from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, by John Pope 2. Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the “Jeff Davis 8,” by Ethan Brown “I love Pope’s book. All the notables of New Orleans are here, from [reputed Mafia boss] Carlos Marcello to Dr. Alton Ochsner. I just hope when I die, Pope puts me in the next edition.

“He gives little details of life like Eudora Welty. New Orleans radiates throughout the book and it’s written totally without judgment. There’s no false praise. He lets the person’s life tell the story.

“It’s very multi-racial, multi-political – a total ménage. People who haven’t been to New Orleans will like it – but only if they like people.”

And Ethan Brown’s nonfiction narrative centers on eight sex workers found murdered between 2005 and ’09 in Jennings, a small town in Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana.

Murder in the Bayou “shows the banality of sleaze” in rural Louisiana, Scharf says. “It’s more about the culture of compromise in a small town” where “sex knows no boundaries” – not race and not class.

“The theme of the book crosses into political control. It took tremendous courage for the author to go into Jennings. I’m amazed he came out in one piece.”

Writer’s choice

Ghettoside, by Jill Leovy I haven’t read this book yet, but it has a lot of buzz among people in local criminal justice circles who aren’t too burned out to read about cops and crime in their leisure hours.

Reported before police brutality became a national issue in 2014, Los Angeles Police Homicide Detective John Skaggs manages to win the trust of minorities in the tough Watts section “despite his white skin,” Jennifer Gonnerman writes in a book review in The New York Times (Jan. 21, 2015) The focus of Ghettoside isn’t police misconduct, but the fact that so many people who commit murder in minority communities nationwide are never punished.

According to Ghettoside, it isn’t a street code against snitching that’s the primary reason so many killers roam free but a “very real fear” that witnesses who testify in court will be injured or killed in retaliation.

Leovy, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, faults top cops at the LAPD and the nation’s criminal justice system for failing to make the murders of black males a higher priority.

African-American males are “just 6 percent of the country’s population but nearly 40 percent of those murdered,” Leovy says.

When “a highly respected African-American detective” of the LAPD must tell his wife and family at the hospital that their 18-year-old son has been murdered, the Times reviewer writes, “I actually felt physically sick.”

The “true scope of our nation’s homicide problem – the extraordinary pain and trauma and despair” that follows murder is indeed sickening. “Homicide remains the leading cause of death

among black males, ages 15 to 34 – and solving these crimes should be a top priority for any police force.”

Ghettoside is a crucial 366page reminder that “black lives matter” and the failure of society to prosecute their killers makes black lives “cheap,” Gonnerman writes U.S. Attorney Polite’s review of Ghettoside might prove insightful to New Orleanians.

Polite, a federal prosecutor who was born in New Orleans to teenaged parents in 1976 is the son of an NOPD officer, and he lost a brother to violence.

On Aug. 8, 1977, his father, Kenneth Polite Sr., joined the NOPD as a patrolman; there were fewer than 100 blacks on a majority-white police force often accused of police brutality.

In Nov. 1977, Ernest “Dutch” Morial was elected as the city’s first African-American mayor, (a seat later won by son Marc Morial). On May 1, ’78, Dutch Morial took the oath office, replacing termlimited Mayor Moon Landrieu (the father of current Mayor Mitch Landrieu).

Violent crime soared with the advent of crack cocaine in the late 1980s. New Orleans has been among the nation’s leaders in homicides per capita most years since then.

A graduate of Harvard with a law degree from Georgetown University, Polite is among a new generation of criminal justice professionals tackling old problems: drugs, crime and police-community relations.

Nominated by President Barack Obama, Polite replaced fellow De La Salle High School graduate Jim Letten as local U.S Attorney in 2013.

Polite will need public support in the New Year. A good book now and again might help, too.

Happy holidays. n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE BEAT / Chronicles

Dolls Through the Ages

Caring for collectibles

BY CAROLYN KOLB

“B

aby Betty,” beloved childhood toy and treasured possession of Karen Perschall, “is a china-headed babydoll, the size of a real baby. I think she’s one of the German ones, with the open mouth and teeth, and a wood composite body, probably from around 1913.” The doll was originally her mother’s.

“My grandchildren can touch her – but only with one finger,” she admits – and Baby Betty is a prized, if not very accessible, resident of Perschall’s doll and toy room,

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equipped for her grandchildren.

Perschall isn’t the only one who still treasures her dolls. Flo Schornstein had a fondness for Madame Alexander “Storybook” characters, and she has the dolls still.

“Every time I had an occasion – a birthday, say – I got another one.

Each doll was dressed like a character in a nursery rhyme, like ‘Little Bo-Peep.’” Schornstein kept them for her children. Like most much-loved Madame Alexander dolls, hers had their hair combed by little hands and never recovered from the attention.

In the past, when New Orleans dolls were broken, they were taken to the Doll Hospital. As advertised in the Daily Picayune, a Mrs. Wehrmann had a Doll Hospital on Baronne Street in 1900. By ’13, the Doll Hospital was located at 513 Bourbon St., and “The Original Doll Hospital” was located at 2320 Magazine St. by ’21.

According to The Times-Picayune obituary of Mrs. Emile F. Voitier in 1952, as Clementine Wehrmann she had continued to operate the Doll Hospital that had been begun by her mother on Baronne Street and lived for 40 years at the Magazine Street location. She “did most of the doll repair work herself, although she was assisted at times by her husband, a retired employee of New Orleans Public Service, Inc.” Mrs. Voitier was survived, appropriately, by five daughters.

While there is no Doll Hospital today in New Orleans, there’s one in Slidell: Treasured Collectibles – Doll Hospital where Kristy Neal offers “professional restoration and repair of all types of dolls” (TreasuredCollectibles.com).

New Orleans has also been home to some major doll collectors.

According to Ann Masson, board member at the Beauregard & Keyes House and Garden Museum, Frances Parkinson Keyes’ extensive doll collection (depicting various countries’ costumes and a variety of nuns’ habits) has been carefully conserved, awaiting later restoration – “But we keep a few dolls out, and we do have a tea party for them,” she says.

Children are always invited to bring their own dolls to the tea party.

Author Anne Rice’s large doll collection was housed in the St. Elizabeth’s building on Napoleon Avenue at Prytania Street for many years.

(Included among Rice’s china-headed antique beauties was a Barbie doll dressed in motorcycle leathers.)

Rice’s dolls figured in her books, as in the novel Taltos, where the main character, Ashlar’s, doll was actually one of Rice’s rare French antiques, a Bru bébé. Rice’s doll collection was sold at an auction in 2010 in Chicago – and the Bru bébé went for $40,000.

New Orleans’ Cabrini Doll Museum was operated by the New Orleans Recreation Department in a cottage at 1218 Burgundy St. – the building was bought in 2006 and lovingly restored by John Reed and Jon Kemp, for which they, and architects Frank Masson and Rick Fifield, received a Vieux Carré Commission award.

The doll museum, in the years around the 1970s, housed the Haspel doll collection. Harry and Rosine Haspel began acquiring dolls during a trip around the world in ’38, as gifts for their new granddaughter, Barbara Haspel Galey, daughter of Leo and Muriel Haspel.

In the late 1930s, items from the Haspel doll collection, which were on view in the New Orleans Public Library building on Lee Circle, went to Godchaux’s Department Store for their ’40s centennial, and were displayed at Le Petit Théâtre and at the Cabildo in the French Quarter, and at Metairie Park Country Day School while grandchild Barbara was a student.

Galey still has African dolls from the collection, and her son has Balinese puppets that have been fully restored. The hundreds of items in the Haspel collection included wax figures of New Orleans street venders from the Vargas-Resado family, dolls dressed in native costumes and antique French fashion dolls.

Galey’s grandparents can rest assured that, through the years, those dolls gave pleasure to many New Orleans children. n

photo courtesy of louisiana division/city archive, New Orleans public library

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR ME AGAIN / MODINE GUNCH / JOIE D’EVE / in tune / READ+SPIN / JAZZ LIFE / HOME

John Prine, who will be performing at the Saenger Dec. 2, is widely regarded as one of the best songwriters of all time. ... The intimate nature of the Saenger should make for a wonderful event.

in tune pg. 52

LOCAL COLOR / ME AGAIN

I Rediscovered Armstrong Park So should you

BY CHRIS ROSE

W

hat I’m about to say is heretical, hysterical, nonsensical, irrational and nearly tyrannical: Former Mayor Ray Nagin left a beautiful legacy to the city of New Orleans.

Pause.

Now, after you’ve wiped up the coffee, beer or whatever else you may have coughed out your nose onto the pages of this magazine, hear me out. I am admittedly talking about a relatively minor beautiful legacy. A tiny, little beautiful thing from an otherwise very ugly, tarnished, disgraced and damaging tenure as our chief executive.

I am talking about Armstrong Park.

There is nothing else that I can think of that Sugar Ray did over eight years worthy of merit, other than providing occasional and sorely needed comic relief in the days, weeks and months after the Federal Levee Failure of 2005.

The cussing on the radio. The shower on Air Force One. Chocolate City. Words and actions so terribly unfunny

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that they were hilarious.

It is a complicated world.

So yeah, I know, I know, I know.

He messed this place up badly; made us a laughing stock; added layers upon layers of trial, tribulation, trouble and tears to the damage already wrought by the flood.

But have you been to Armstrong Park lately? In fact, have you ever been there at all?

I give walking tours in the French Quarter that end near the park, and the most consistently shocking comment I receive, repeatedly, comes from locals. I have lost count of people from New Orleans and surrounding communities who tell me they have never been there before.

Never.

Now, I know full well that for a long time, there were legit reasons to steer clear of the place. For the first few decades I lived in the city, Armstrong Park’s reputation was as a dark, dank, dirty and dangerous place. The murder of a tourist there in mid-1980s seemed to solidify the park’s disreputable appeal. People gave up on it. Hell, even the city gave up on it.

It overgrew. The serpentine waterways were fouled. Trash was everywhere. It was scary, depressing and shameful.

And then Ray Nagin. After Katrina he put resources into the park, got it cleaned up and kept it clean.

Then came that really bizarre statue debacle.

Do you remember that? Nagin allotted discretionary mayoral funding to install a sculpture garden in the park, depicting mostly New Orleans cultural iconography, including a second-line parade, Congo Square revelry and famous musicians.

Lots of folks complained about Nagin’s unilateral spending of more than $1 million at a time when the city was still struggling to find its post-disaster footing.

And then a whole lot more folks

nearly lost their minds when it turned out that all of the statues had been mounted on faulty concrete and were in danger of toppling over.

In fact, all of the park’s new concrete turned out to be flawed. The whole damn project had to be dug up and done all over again from scratch. More money spent. The park was closed down for months.

That was so perfectly Ray. Even what he did right, he did wrong.

But here’s the thing: Those statues are beautiful; the park remains consistently manicured; danger concerns are alleviated by a new police substation inside the park gates.

That murder was more than 30 years ago. And the park, day by day, is a clean, bright, happy, safe, tranquil and beautiful place.

New Orleans’ own Tivoli Gardens.

But it’s woefully under-appreciated and sadly under-visited. Attended mostly by out-of-towners, tourists and foreigners. Although the Thursday night outdoor concert series draws legions of local adventurous urban culture vultures, by and large the park remains a non-entity – nearly invisible – to so many folks who grew up here and live here still.

Although the fate of the hulking and still dormant Municipal Auditorium remains a vexing problem, likely still years in the fixing, the rest of the place is as charming and romantic as anywhere in the city.

So do yourself a favor this holiday season: Take a stroll through Armstrong Park. A slow stroll over the bridges, around the lagoons, through the gardens. Bring a blanket and a bottle of wine. Take a deep breath and look around you.

And then, safely out of earshot of anyone whose friendship and respect you wish to retain, whisper very quietly: Nice, Ray; it looks good.

Too bad you can’t see it. n jason raish illustration

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR / MODINE’S NEW ORLEANS

The Fright Before Christmas Hard times hiding presents

BY MODINE GUNCH

M

y gentleman friend Lust bought me a new Apple wristwatch for Christmas, and I got it early because I found it in his glove compartment when I happened to root through there, not looking for a present or nothing.

You can make phone calls with this watch. (You can also make phone calls with your car steering wheel. Pretty soon you’ll be able to make phone calls with your underarm deodorant.)

Anyway, I start worrying about where to hide my presents – once I buy them.

Then I get a brilliant idea: I’ll stash them in my mother-in-law’s Ms. Larda’s garage in Chalmette.

So I hit the Big Lots, get a bunch of things, grab lunch at Popeyes and pull up at Ms. Larda’s. She is at the Beau Rivage Casino for the Altar Society Christmas outing, but she gave me the key. And I saved some fried chicken skin for Chopsley, her guard Chihuahua, who’s trying to act fierce while wearing a Christmas elf sweater.

I give him the chicken, hustle across

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the kitchen into the garage and kick the door shut. But Chopsley manages to scoot in before it closes.

Worse, the door locks itself.

Worst, my keys and cell phone are on the kitchen table.

Thank God I got my watch.

Unfortunately, the watch has to be in “close proximity” to the phone. (Which makes no sense. If my phone was in close proximity I would use it, instead of looking like Dick Tracy.)

So I got to get my watch into close proximity with the kitchen table. So me and Chopsley run out the overhead door and around to the kitchen window. Unfortunately, this is a raised house, and even when I stretch out my hand over my head, it ain’t close enough to the phone. But there’s a hose water faucet sticking out there, and if I balance on that I can press my arm up against the glass. So I do, and I tell my watch to call Ms. Larda. Miracle of miracles, it does. Ms. Larda’s voice squawks “Modine? We got a bad connection. Call back.” She hangs up.

So I got to do the whole thing over again and yell that, “No! I’m not in a well; I’m locked out.” And she bellows that the spare key is with Melba next door, but Melba never answers her door unarmed unless she knows who’s there, so Ms. Larda will call and warn her I’m coming.

I climb down; my wrist rings again; I climb back up; and Ms. Larda roars that Melba got five keys on her ring and she don’t know which is mine, so she’s dropping them out her front window.

And don’t ring the bell, because she’s watching Dr. Oz. I clamp Chopsley under my arm, because I know once he decides I ain’t giving him no more chicken he’ll run off and get himself lost.

And together we get the keys, which are on Melba’s key chain along with her car door opener and a little squeezable trinket shaped like a frog, which squeaks.

Chopsley growls at it.

It ain’t easy trying five keys in the door with a growling chihuahua under one arm.

When I finally get in, Chopsley snaps the key ring out my hand and zips under the couch. He wants to kill that frog.

Just then a car alarm goes off. I look out and a police car is pulling up by Melba’s house. I see Melba’s eyes peering over her windowsill.

My watch rings. It is Ms. Larda. Melba called to say I got her deadbolt key and she can’t get out of the house, since her back steps fell off years ago. Also, the panic button on her car door opener has activated her car alarm. Oh. I take my last piece of chicken skin and wave it under the couch. When Chopsley slinks out, I snatch it away and throw him in the bathroom. Then I fish the keys out with a big plastic candy cane.

I step outside and approach the police car, waving the keys over my head. The cop, by the name of Larry, heaves a sigh. Third time this month, he says. We unlock Melba.

I really want to go straight home. But no. I go back and I let Chopsley out of the bathroom and give him his chicken skin. Because it’s Christmas. I hope Santa seen me. n LORI OSIECKI ILLUSTRATION

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR / JOIE D’EVE

At Last Saints fans get it

BY EVE CRAWFORD PEYTON

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like baseball. Now that I’m not in St. Louis or married to a St. Louis fan, I’m not really as into it as I used to be, but I’m absolutely still a baseball person. Seriously, after that Game 7, I dare you to tell me that baseball is boring to watch.

But having grown up in a town without a home baseball team, I now have the luxury of pulling for whomever I want. I still root for the Cardinals and despise the Yankees as a general rule, but with neither of them in the Series and the Cubs poised to break a 108-year curse, it was an easy choice. Having seen what a Saints win did for this city, I can’t not be thrilled for Cubs fans – and especially thrilled for Alex.

Alex and I met just a month or so after Sept. 11 – I was 21; he was 20 – on a trip with mutual friends to Six Flags to ride roller coasters. We rode together in the backseat of my friend Chase’s car from Columbia to St. Louis, and to be honest, he actually annoyed the crap out of me for those two hours. He talked about jazz in what I thought was an obnoxiously pretentious way. He talked about improv comedy, which I can’t stand because it gives me vicarious anxiety. He talked a lot about the Cubs, and I

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really didn’t care about the Cubs.

But then, right as we were about to get on the Mr. Freeze at Six Flags, I freaked out. “Hold my hand,” I demanded, and he did. I don’t know if the roller coaster released some chemical in our brains or what, but we held hands in the backseat on the whole ride home, driving past dead brown late October Missouri corn fields while Chase played Radiohead.

My whole chest hurt as we drove home in without speaking.

“Come see me tomorrow,” he whispered when we dropped him off.

“I have a boyfriend,” I whispered back.

“I know,” he said. “Come see me anyway.”

And I did. We watched the World Series – Diamondbacks vs. Yankees – and ate bad college town pizza and tried to impress each other.

“This can’t happen,” I told him when he tried to kiss me. “I have a boyfriend. We’re going to get married.” (We did. We are divorced now.)

“Anything can happen,” he said (the true mindset of a Cubs fan).

“We’re going to break each other’s hearts,” I said because I was an overdramatic 21-year-old girl who actually said things like that.

“I think it’s already starting,” he said.

It was ridiculous, melodramatic, tortured college romance at its best/ worst, and it hurt in the absolute best/worst way, and it really played itself out not long after that. We met for coffee a few times, ran into each other at the student union every so often, sent very fraught glances at each other across the room at a concert we both happened to go to. And then we both graduated.

I still thought of him sometimes, in a kind of wistful “what if” way, as I got married and bought a house and had a baby and moved to New Orleans, particularly around the World Series, particularly if the Cubs were doing

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well. Sometimes I’d stalk him on whatever social media site was relevant at the time or read his baseball blog. And then one day, in the late summer of 2008, I went to do my biennial Facebook recon when a page popped up that said, “Remembering Alex.”

My brain resisted processing this for a few long moments, the way brains always try to protect you. “‘Remembering?’” I thought. “But that … that’s so dumb. That makes it sound like he’s dead.”

Numbly, I clicked through. He had died in late May in possibly the most unfair way ever: driving to L.A. just after finishing graduate school, on the way to start the rest of his life, killed by a drunk driver driving on the wrong side of the Interstate.

Gradually, the shock wore off and the sadness set in, and then the sadness wore off too, mostly. Alex had never really been part of my daily life, so it wasn’t like there was a hole to fill. It was just this hard-todefine lingering sadness for a life cut too short, a life that had briefly but intensely intersected with mine.

I have processed it now and am happily remarried with two incredibly perfect daughters I wouldn’t trade for the world. In the current chaos of my life as a working mom, Alex rarely enters my mind.

Still, watching the Cubs win in the most insane Game 7 I’ve ever seen, it was impossible not to think of him.

I don’t know what I actually believe, but I would love to think that Buddy D and Harry Caray are celebrating in heaven, Buddy D in a red dress and Harry Caray eating a green apple (or something … I don’t really know the Cubs mythology).

Most of all, I’d love to think of all the Cubs fans finally getting to know how amazing a championship win feels.

Saints fans would be cheering them on loudest of all because we understand more than anyone. n

Excerpted from Eve Crawford Peyton’s blog, Joie d’Eve, which appears each Friday on MyNewOrleans.com.

jane sanders ILLUSTRATION

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR / IN TUNE

New Year’s

The Afghan Whigs

Christmas Presents Wrapped with a Bowie BY mike griffith

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his month the holiday season has brought in several truly excellent shows. The month begins with the legendary Ms. Lauryn Hill at the Saenger Theater Dec. 1. This show is the part of the MLH Caravan: A Diaspora Calling Concert Series. Based around her Inaugural Diaspora Calling! performance at The Kings Theater in Brooklyn, each stop on this tour will feature guest performances from artists throughout the African diaspora.

The legends continue the next night, Dec. 2, with John Prine at the Saenger.

Prine is widely regarded as one of the best songwriters of all time. There is a great bridge between the private and the profane in Prine’s work. He is able to build links between the devastating nature of personal tragedy and the often bleak humor that perspective can add to these moments. The intimate nature of the Saenger should make for a wonderful event. Prine will be accompanied by the folk duo Shovels and Rope. A perennial favorite on the folk scene, they should set the stage perfectly for the main event.

A few nights later on Dec. 6, Seu

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Jorge will be at the Civic Theater. Jorge came to prominence when his David Bowie covers were featured as part of Wes Anderson’s film The Life Aquatic.

As a tribute to Bowie’s recent passing, Jorge will perform his covers of Bowie’s classic songs on a set that mirrors the environments of Anderson’s film.

If you’re looking for something a bit more experimental, the instrumental prog rock ensemble Animals as Leader will be at Republic Dec. 8. The DC-based group have just released their fantastic new record The Madness of Many.

There are two classic alt rock shows this month. First, The Afghan Whigs will play their classic record Black Love in its entirety on Dec. 10 at The Civic.

This show is a benefit for guitarist Dave Rosser, and will feature a slew of special guests including Ani DiFranco and Morning 40 Federation. Just a few nights later, The Jesus and Mary Chain will visit the Joy Theater on the 16th. The Scottish post-punk visionaries have visited us a couple of times since their reformation in 2007. This time they’re supposedly working on new material. This is a show that you don’t want to miss. The group is

As usual there’s a ton of great music to be had on and around New Year’s Eve. Start off the holiday early with a two-night stand by Dr. John at Tipitina’s Dec. 27-28. On the big night, Dec. 31, Tip’s will have Galactic supported by Boyfriend. You never know who will show up to join them for this show. Also this night you can catch Amy Schumer at the Smoothie King Center for what I assume will be a very entertaining evening of comedy. Over at the Maple Leaf, Johnny Vidacovich will be hanging out with Monk Boudreaux, June Yamagishi and the Charlie Wooton Project.

Finally, the Orpheum will be ringing in the New Year with the homecoming of the Revivalists who will be supported by the Seratones. There is no better place to start the new year off right.

still as hard-hitting as ever.

On Dec. 17, head over to the Maple Leaf for Walter “Wolfman” Washington’s Birthday Bash. You can expect a fair number of special guests to sit in with the Roadmasters that night. If you’re looking for something a bit more on the post-punk side that night, you can catch Merchandise over at Siberia.

Also on the 17th, Jim James will step back from his role at the front of My Morning Jacket to bring his solo show to the Civic.

James just released his second solo album Eternally Even to a great deal of critical acclaim. With his penchant for collaboration and longstanding friendships in New Orleans, it should be fairly safe to expect some surprises from this show. James has the outstanding Louisville group Twin Limb supporting him on this tour.

Note: Dates are subject to change. Playlist of mentioned bands available at: bit.ly/ InTune12-16 n

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To contact Mike about music news, upcoming performances and recordings, email Mike@MyNewOrleans.com or contact him through Twitter @Minima.

LOCAL COLOR / READ+SPIN

Cookbook: There are few things I love more than a holiday spent eating Cajun and Creole food in a Louisianian’s dwelling.

However, I’m usually New England-bound and away from these special occasions and spicy feasts. This year, however, my Yankee family is in for quite a treat with the recently released publication by our sister publication, Louisiana Life, titled The Essential Louisiana Seafood Cookbook.

This year, I’m packing up my favorite Louisiana sausages (in ice packs, of course), hot sauce and seasoning to bring home.

We haven’t decided which of the piquant and savory recipes we are going to cook from this gorgeous, minimalistic hardcover cookbook, but I’m deliberating between the mini crawfish pies and the crab cakes with lemon mayonnaise, or even the sizzling pecan crusted trout. The crawfish with white wine, lemon and capers are absolutely on the appetizer menu.

Regardless, I’m definitely bringing a copy of cookbook to my friends and family at home as a great gift – and to remind them of all the culinary delights awaiting them when they come to visit me in New Orleans.

You can order your copy and send copies to your loved ones by visiting LouisianaSeafoodCookbook.com.

Coffee Table Book: One of the most recognized artists in New Orleans, Simon Hardeveld’s work (better known by just the name “Simon”) can be seen in assorted businesses and eclectic homes across the city. An October-release brightly colored hardcover table book, Simon of New Orleans is rich in authentic, quirky stories. The book gives context and history to the many pieces made by Simon. A great coffee table book to give as a holiday gift for the eclectic New Orleans household.

Rhythm & Soul: A great independent release, Billie Davies featuring Iris P.’s On Hollywood Boulevard is a smooth album with jazzy piano riffs and soulful intentions. I love listening to it while I’m cooking something decadent, wine glass in hand. You can stream the entire album at BillieDavies.com.

Rock-N-Roll: Just coming off their most recent tour, Sexy Dex & the Fresh are back in New Orleans about to drop a new album. They have been killing it on stage around the city, including at Voodoo Music + Arts Experience. I love their highenergy groove. Purchase their new album, Plus One Edition and preview it on CommunityRecords.org.

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by jessica debold Please send submissions for consideration, attention: Jessica DeBold, 110 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Suite 123, Metairie, LA 70005.

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR / JAZZ LIFE

Dylan in Stockholm To be or not to be

BY JASON BERRY

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here’s a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better,” Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles, Volume 1, his inimitable 2004 memoir (with no Vol. 2 as yet). He reflects on a long stretch when he made a record here: “There’s a thousand different angles at any moment. Any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. ... No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem.”

“Everything in New Orleans is a good idea,” he continues. “Chronic melancholia hangs from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs. ... A great place to live vicariously. Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing.”

In October came the news that Dylan, whose revolutionary lyrics form a soundtrack of our time, had won the

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2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. He said nothing in response. I thought of Louise Erdrich, whose novels have a grace and skill deserving of such a prize. Literary experts opined on the rock singer getting literature’s highest honor. “Bob is embarrassed by the prize,” Garrison Keillor wrote in the Washington Post. “He’s from Minnesota, he has a conscience. He has written a few good love songs and some memorable phrases and the Swedes have embraced him as if he were Homer, which he is not.”

But then, from Stephen King, “I am ecstatic that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel. A great and good thing in a season of sleaze and sadness.”

A season indeed. As Donald Trump’s scandals produced a pornographic campaign, a nation turned its lonely eyes to Bob. Would he go to Stockholm and give an acceptance speech?

Rodger Kamenetz, a distinguished poet in a city that’s one very long poem, says he wouldn’t care, that “his silence

would be poetic.”

Kamenetz assessed Dylan for Tikkun Magazine’s daily blog: “His talent is and was much bigger than that of so many of us. It encompassed multitudes, as Whitman would say.

And that’s a worthy aspiration of a songwriter. Does that make him a pure poet of the page? Do I have to choose? I like Dylan’s political ballads and in their time they served me well.

Auden’s ballad, ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ has aged better; I’ve been reading it for 30 years and it has something I need from poetry. I still love to read and memorize poems but I also can’t keep Dylan’s lyrics out of my head, in part because they helped to shape it. His achievement does nothing to diminish my pleasure in reading but I suspect many more people learned to love poetry because of Bob Dylan than almost any poet of my generation.”

He continues, “In his early protest songs he aligned himself with the major movements of his time; in his more adventurous songs that followed he created whole mythic landscapes. His love songs are true and sincere, and his hymns, like ‘I Shall Be Released,’ lift us into a longing for liberation that opens to spiritual depth. He has read deeply into the American songbook – blues, country, folk – and reinvigorated it. He has lived up to the ideal Whitman set in his preface to Leaves of Grass: ‘The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.’”

When Alice Munro, the Canadian writer, won the 2013 Nobel, she declined to make the trip, citing her age: 82. People nodded. Dylan, 75 and still a troubadour, stirred weeks of speculation before saying that he would probably be in Stockholm in December and accept the big prize.

After so many concerts where aging baby-boomers pluck down $100 a ticket, seize the global moment, Bob, and speak to the world. n

myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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LOCAL COLOR / HOME

Glitz On the Ritz Juli and Stewart Juneau’s Christmas at home

BY BONNIE WARREN

PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHERYL GERBER

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ocated high atop the treasured historic building that was originally the Maison Blanche Department Store, the penthouse of Juli and Stewart Juneau is a magical world during the holiday season. Decked out in myriad glass ornaments and objects handcrafted by Juli, a skilled professional blown-glass artist, each room of their unique home

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takes on a special holiday glow. “My breath goes into everything I make, and I find it exciting to breathe life into each glass object to create the colors, patterns and swirls of my holiday decorations,” Juli says.

Stewart, a real estate developer, purchased the building in 1995 and spent five years converting it to the Ritz-Carlton

Facing page: The 1872 piano, made by Hazelwood Brothers of New York, takes center stage in the large formal space; a small Christmas tree filled with Juli’s hand-blown ornaments decorates the small tree on the piano, with additional ornaments and decorations added the tree. Left: Fairy lights are intertwined with Juli’s hand-blown glass ornaments cover the small tree on the antique piano. Right: Stewart and Juli Juneau

Hotel and creating the unique penthouse. They enjoy their comfortable home with its wall of windows that overlooks the terrace and the mighty Mississippi River, Stewart says. “We especially enjoy living here during the holiday season, when Juli does an amazing job of decorating, and we have the opportunity of sharing our home with family and friends.”

Filled with fine antiques, Juli’s talent as a glass artist is especially showcased in their penthouse. During the holiday season, “My glass creations hang from chandeliers, cover our large and small Christmas trees and create colorful displays in glass bowls

and even on top of our grand piano,” she says. She adds that she takes pleasure in making new glass ornaments each year to add to her already large collection. “I love how the ornaments reflect the light from the antique chandelier in the dining room to give everything a special glow.”

The couple always places a natural fir tree in the corner of the large room that incorporates the living and dining rooms. The tree is decorated with peacock feathers, glass balls and heirloom ornaments. The feathers are all from the peacocks at the couple’s nonprofit safari resort in central Louisiana, near Marksville. They carefully save every feather the peacocks shed for their special Christmas tree.

The 1872 antique piano, made by Hazelton Brothers of New York, a famous piano maker of the day, is always the setting for a large display of Juli’s ornaments. “We discovered the piano in San Francisco on one of our many trips to wine country. It had been in the same family since it was built and the last person to own it was a jazz musician. He personally delivered it to New Orleans myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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Facing page: Top, left: The large fir Christmas tree is decorated with peacock feathers, glass balls and heirloom ornaments; the feathers are from the peacocks at the Juneau’s nonprofit safari resort in central Louisiana, near Marksville. Top, right: A tiny sequined hat adorns the head of the taxidermied ostrich in the living room.

Bottom, left: An antique chandelier in the dining room is decorated with various hand-blown ornaments; while a collection of jewel-tone goblets is displayed in the center of the dining room table. Bottom, right: Adorned with heirloom ornaments and hand-blown balls, the Christmas tree has special meaning to Juli and Stewart. This page: Furnished with fine antiques, the living room’s holiday mood is enhanced with Juli’s hand-blown glass vases, bowls and ornaments.

and then sat down and played it.”

One of the couple’s interesting annual holiday decorations is the small tree filled with glass balls on the piano. “I fill it with my hand-blown glass balls in all colors, and I think it instantly says that it’s holiday time when you walk down the hall and into our living room and get your first glimpse of the decorations.”

Juli’s large glass balls hang from the elaborately carved antique canopy bed in the master bedroom, and even the adjoining master bathroom has its share of holiday ornaments on display.

“Although we both love to share our home to help promote social

and philanthropic causes throughout the year, it’s the Christmas season with family and friends that’s one of the most special times of the year for both of us,” she says.

Built in 1908 at the corner of Canal and Dauphine streets, the 13-story building that now accommodates the Juneau’s home was the largest structure of its kind in the city when it was completed. Maison Blanche Department Store occupied the first five floors, according to historian Edward J. Branley, a former employee of the store and a history teacher, with professional offices on the upper floors. Press clippings from the time recorded that Maison Blanche was considered one the finest department stores in the country. “The building has a rich and varied history that has touched many lives,” Stewart says.

Juli quickly points out “Mr. Bingle,” a Christmas snowman was created for Maison Blanche in 1947 as a helper for Santa Claus. “The store was famous for its elaborate Christmas windows and huge sculpture of Mr. Bingle hanging on the front of the building,” she says.

Today Mr. Bingle no longer hangs from the building, however, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel is still aglow with holiday decorations, and high atop the building there’s a secret Christmas fairyland. Julia adds, “I feel we’re keeping the joyous spirit of Christmas that has always been associated with the building alive with our festive decorations for our family and friends to enjoy.” n myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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Best of

Gulf Coast Select Oysters at Seaworthy

Dining photographed by marianna massey photography assistant scott williams

Mike Gulotta Native son Mike Gulotta seems to making a habit of surprising people. Zigging when a zag is anticipated by everyone else.

Early on in a chef’s career, the expected path would be to rise to the top of the kitchen staff of a famous establishment and then settle in to mentor and create, which is the way so many

Chef of the Year of our chefs work.

Not everyone can be a Marquee Chef, and while Gulotta had “Going Places” written all over his career as a major cooking force in a star-power New Orleans restaurant, that just wasn’t what he had in mind.

Gulotta’s stint climbing up the trellis of the

John Besh organization even had the Maestro paying particular attention to what this young man was turning out. Gulotta’s talent and let’s-dazzle attitude won him a coveted under-the-wing spot and a secure future in the business he loved.

Part of his reputation is that he has always been a major proponent of the agricultural and aquacultural products from this area. There is no question that fresh products available here are in Gulotta’s wheelhouse and on his plates.

After six years, Gulotta left the Besh group to open his own establishment in a part of town not previously renowned for fine-dining restaurants, City Park.

To further add to the gear-jamming style of his career, Gulotta opened a Vietnamese-directional casual dining emporium, MoPho, and his Creole roots, ingrained since childhood and groomed at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, play a key role. Did not see the Vietnamese turn coming, did you?

Neither did anyone else with the possible exception of his brother, Jeff, who plays a key role in MoPho’s front of house operations.

The project has drawn a lot of national and international accolades and attention, but most treasured is the support of the hometown crowd.

“New Orleanians are very knowledgeable diners. Many of our clientele are terrific home chefs in their own right,” Gulotta notes. “And to have them come into our place multiple times, ordering all over the menu, gives us an amazing feeling. Affirming our original plan, which has always been a plan-in-motion, but more importantly recognizing our soul, is the best.”

MayPop, 611 O’Keefe Ave., number forthcoming /// MoPho, 514 City Park Ave., 482-6845, MoPhoNola.com

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Gulf Shrimp in Fresh Turmeric Curry

Banh Xeo Crepe with House Smoked Tasso

It also appears that New Orleans has “elected” an unofficial ambassador of our city, our cuisines, and our lifestyle. Gulotta has been named by Bon Appetit Magazine as a Best New Restaurant; a Star Chefs Rising Stars Award Chef; MoPho was previously named by this publication as one of the Best New Restaurants; Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Chef; and now New Orleans Magazine’s Chef of the Year.

Gulotta is no stranger to airports. Besides traveling all over the U.S., he has ap-

peared at guest gigs in Spielwig, Germany; Brooklyn, New York; and Liguria, Italy, among many others.

He has joined the team at Trèo Restaurant and opened TANA, devoted to the further development and marriage of New Orleans’ Italian flavors and this area’s Creole heritage. The name is what the Gulotta family calls their grandmother.

In a very short while, MayPop will be in operation (plans call for the restaurant to open any moment now), located in the

South Market Street Development, in the space formerly occupied by Ursa Major.

MayPop is another name for a variety of passionflowers.

Just when you have chef Michael Gulotta pigeonholed, he flies away and does something with a different culture in a completely different way in a different place. What holds true is that once the dining public finds out where he is, they now know to follow.

– Tim McNally

Trèo & TANA, 3835 Tulane Ave., 304-4878, TreoNola.com

New Orleans BBQ Lobster

Brennan’s

Restaurant of the Year

Brennan’s is an icon in the New Orleans dining scene. It may not have quite as many years as Antoine’s, Tujague’s, Galatoire’s or Arnaud’s, but since opening in 1946, it has been one of the stalwarts of elegant Creole dining in general, and in the French Quarter in particular. Brennan’s is as much a part of the fabric of the French Quarter as any establishment, and while all restaurants have their ups and downs, Brennan’s is decidedly on the “up” end of the spectrum these days.

Brennan’s was first opened by Owen Brennan on Bourbon Street, and in the mid-1950s moved to its current location at 417 Royal St. The building, which dates from 1795, has always been beautiful, but when current owners Ralph Brennan and Terry White purchased it in 2013, they began a renovation that, while lengthy and expen-

sive, brought the space to new heights.

The work didn’t change the essential character of the place – the pink stucco façade remains and the bones of the original structure are intact. Indeed, the point of the renovation was to reveal some of the glorious details that had been hidden, whether by necessity or choice, through the past several decades. Whether it’s the beautifully restored rooms on the second floor, or the newly refreshed dining rooms, bar and patio downstairs, every part of the public areas was improved.

Behind the scenes, too, the restaurant got a makeover. While work done in the kitchen and other production areas was important, perhaps the most critical addition was the naming of Slade Rushing as executive chef. The move was brilliant and is emblematic of the approach Brennan and

White have taken. Rushing is a classically trained, experienced chef who has worked in fine-dining restaurants in New York and New Orleans. He is from Mississippi, and his cooking has been grounded in the flavors of the region, including Creole.

But at the same time he’s an inventive and imaginative cook, able to use modern techniques to re-work traditional dishes with flair. The classics we all remember from the Brennan’s of years past, such as turtle soup, eggs Hussarde and Gulf fish amandine are still on the menu and essentially unchanged.

Rushing has also updated a few Brennan’s recipes that were not as featured in recent years. These include soft shell crab Chartres: crabs fried in an almondtempura batter and served with coffeecured Canadian bacon, poached eggs and

Brennan’s /// 417 Royal St. /// 525-9711 /// BrennansNewOrleans.com

Eggs Hussarde

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a caper-dill hollandaise; and poisson blange: baked Gulf fish with butter poached crab, oysters and shrimp, served with a fennel-potato purée and an herbsaint nage.

Chef Rushing’s influence can certainly be seen in his updates to those classics, and also in dishes he brought to the restaurant, such as oysters roasted in the shell with smoked chili butter and a crust of Manchego cheese, or his take on blue crab remoulade with cucumber gelée, preserved lemon and mustard oil.

Service has, since Katrina, been an issue for some restaurants in New Orleans. It is excellent at Brennan’s. From bussers to servers, the folks behind the bar and in the front of the house, the staff at Brennan’s are affable, knowledgeable and attentive without being intrusive; they exemplify what fine dining service in New Orleans should be. Brennan’s also has an excellent wine list and cocktail program, including pitch-perfect renditions of traditional drinks as well as more modern originals.

Brennan’s renaissance has been one of the best stories in New Orleans in recent memory, and at this moment it’s a restaurant at the top of its game. That’s why we’re proud to name Brennan’s Restaurant of the Year for 2016.

- Robert Peyton

Emeril Lagasse Restauranteur of the Year No chef has burst out of New Orleans with more cultural force then Emeril Lagasse. His rise helped promulgate chefdom as not just a legitimate career path but an iconoclastic one; in his wake chefs would become rock stars, and the industry has never been the same.

But we know all this, right? So why is he Restauranteur of this Year? Firstly, through his tireless work with the Emeril Lagasse Foundation, he has given over $7 million to

children’s education programs both locally and nationwide. Places close to home include NOCCA, Liberty’s Kitchen and Café Reconcile. Then there’s Meril, which opened its doors in October. At a recent visit there, a group of excited NOCCA culinary students were gathered and working on plans for the upcoming blow-out gala Carnival du Vin, while the kitchen was staffed with former students of Liberty’s Kitchen and Café Reconcile. “I’m not do-

ing this because I’m looking for awards or recognition,” Emeril says. “I’m doing it because I care about these kids. They need to have mentors – not necessarily me, but any chef they work for.”

Meril is named for Emeril’s daughter (her drawings are part of the décor – see if you can find them) and show that Emeril’s investment in this project isn’t just professional but deeply personal. The kitchen is framed like a portrait in motion showcas-

EmerilsRestaurants.com /// Emeril’s Delmonico, 1300 St. Charles Ave., 525-4937 /// Emeril’s New Orleans, 800 Tchoupitoulas St., 528-9393

State of the Market

By Jay Forman, Tim McNally & Robert Peyton

Fettuccine Nero

the Warehouse District, helped to pioneer the neighborhood 27 years ago with his flagship restaurant. (“They didn’t even have streetlights down here back then,” he says.) Now it’s one of the hottest places in town, and Meril is an elegant expression of how he has come full circle.

As with his culinary wards that have graduated into successful careers, Lagasse now has the joy of watching the seeds he planted so long ago bear fruit.

- Jay Forman

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ing its bustle and flow – a detail that Emeril helped to popularize. For the menu, Emeril draws on experience gleaned during the filming of his recent Amazon series “Eat the World.” The inspiration is global and focuses on authentic dishes rather than fusion-type mashups, with artfully composed small plates intended to be shared. One of the tastiest is the Five-Spice Pork Ribs with their caramelized, fall-of-the-bone tenderness.

Lagasse, a longtime resident of

From its very founding 300 years ago, New Orleans has been a dining, drinking and good-time town. It has welcomed people from all over the world who knew the kind of town it was: a port city, with ships from everywhere docking, unloading, loading and then heading down the river from which they just came up.

With all the freight movement activities, there was time to carouse, put feet on dry land and spend some of that hard-earned pay on fine food, decent wines and spirits, as well as enjoy some companionship that was for sale in the area.

While we cannot attest to the quality of the companionship, we can attest to New Orleans gaining a reputation as a fine-dining destination.

Tim believes that lately, some of New Orleans directions have come under question: With all the new restaurants opening, of so many different types, is the Classic New Orleans Dining Experience about to be torn asunder?

Can New Orleans successfully sustain and assimilate the incredible expansion of the numbers of restaurants that have opened over the past 10 years, with many more yet to join the fray?

Can the New Orleans style of dining – slower than in most other places in the America, more leisurely, with staff that understands and respects those traditions – remain as it has been given the high number of staff who aren’t from New Orleans and have no background in this style of service?

Will we experience a change in New Orleans dining because the clientele no longer desires to spend time over a grand meal with multiple courses?

While every meal cannot be a Grand Dining Event, at least every meal enjoyed at one of this community’s dining empo-

NOLA, 534 St. Louis St., 522-6652 /// Meril, 424 Girod St., 526-374

Tujague’s

Honor Roll

As we celebrate Tujague’s, we might do well to remember how close we came to losing it. In 2013, the fate of New Orleans’s second-oldest restaurant seemed sealed.

Following the unexpected death of coowner Stephen Latter, who had stewarded the establishment since 1982, his brother was set on selling out to a developer who intended to close it down. But a last-ditch effort, sparked through a conversation with local food personality Poppy Tooker and Stephen’s son Mark, generated such a groundswell of support that the brother agreed to lease the business back to Mark.

Tujague’s, an irreplaceable piece of the fabric of New Orleans, was saved.

But the story doesn’t end there. Mark Latter didn’t just carry on business as usual, he doubled down. A long-overdue remodeling transformed the main dining room. Out went the clutter and paneling, and in came the mirrors and light. The restrooms were overhauled, and the video poker machines got jettisoned to make room for a vastly improved wine cellar. (“Our list went from about 28 bottles with stuff like Kendell Jackson to the hundreds we offer now,” Latter says.) But his efforts didn’t stop there. The restrictive table d’hôtel menu was replaced with – gasp – à la carte options, though legacy dishes like the beef brisket were preserved, and

following a quick succession of chefs Guy Sockrider, formerly of Tomas Bistro, settled into the role of Executive Chef.

Not-to-miss dishes include chicken bonne femme – not formally on the menu, but just ask your server – a mélange of crisp pan-fried chicken, thin slices of potatoes and the signature garlicy persillade. The residual heat partially cooks the persillade, releasing an intoxicating aroma. Other signature dishes include the brisket: succulent cubes of salty boiled beef that can be raked apart with a fork and dragged through the piquant red horseradish sauce.

On firm footing now with a new chef, committed ownership and revamped envi-

Tujague’s /// 823 Decatur St. /// 525-8676 /// TajaguesRestaurant.com

Chicken Bonne Femme

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Acalli Chocolate Chocolatier of the Year You might not know it, but New Orleans now has a bean-to-bar chocolate maker. Acalli Chocolate is a labor of love by owner Carol Morse, whose interest in the craft was kindled in part by her journeys through Guatemala and Peru with her archeologist husband.

“A few years back I was working for a micro-finance nonprofit and went to visit him in Guatemala. I met some cacao growers and this just seemed like a great way to bring together complementary interests that I’d had for a long time,” Morse says.

Equal parts MacGyver – the roasting box is a retro-fitted rotisserie oven with a drum for holding the beans – and specialty gear – like the stainless and natural stone conching unit – her operation is a sophis-

ticated chocolate factory in miniature tucked into a handful of tidy rooms in a Gretna commissary. The cacao beans, sourced from a farmers’ cooperative in Peru, are roasted, cracked, winnowed and then mixed for three days to produce the chocolate bars presented on shelves in coffee shops and groceries around town.

With cacao percentages ranging from 65 percent in the dark milk chocolate to an intense 81 percent, the bars are a treat for lovers of dark chocolate. In addition, Morse has begun phasing in the use of Louisiana sugar sourced from 3 Brothers Farm. Buy them online or check out the list of purveyors on her website AcalliChocolate.com.

- Jay Forman

rons, Tujague’s looks ready to carry its tradition into the future. “It is an honor to own such a historic restaurant,” Latter says.

“I’ve worked in a lot of other places and things are definitely different here.”

Among its many unique quirks, Tujague’s offers service on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, making it a local holiday dining tradition.

- Jay Forman

Assorted Chocolate Bars

Acalli Chocolate /// AcalliChocolate.com

t Lamb Chops, Citrus Crepinette, Sweet Potatoes

Caribbean Room Readers of a certain age will recall the Pontchartrain Hotel in its heyday.

With its clubby Bayou Bar and fine-dining jewel the Caribbean Room, the hotel was a set-piece on the social scene. The children of readers of a certain age might scratch their heads, however; after the Caribbean Room closed in the mid-1990s and the property languished, this former grande dame seemed destined to join the ranks of lost New Orleans treasures.

But then a funny thing happened. A

Rebirth of the Year

fellow named Cooper Manning become the local face of AJ Capital in a $10 million push to restore the hotel to its former grandeur. Manning tapped another guy by the name of John Besh to oversee food service operations. “Cooper grew up near the hotel – the Caribbean Room in particular held a lot of memories for him,” Besh says. “He’s not alone. People here have a lot of really strong memories about this place.”

The result isn’t a facelift but a full-on

revelation. The Pontchartrain roared back to life with everything it once had and more – like Hot Tin, the rooftop bar that became an overnight hit. The Silver Whistle’s blueberry muffins await, the woodsy warren of the Bayou Bar beckons and the granny-chic feel of the Caribbean Room’s parlor is now counter-pointed with a statement portrait of Lil Wayne by local artist Ashley Longshore. Like the Dude’s carpet from The Big Lebowski, that portrait really ties the room together.

Caribbean Room /// 2031 St. Charles Ave. (in the Pontchartrain Hotel) /// 323-1500 /// TheCaribbeanRoom.com

Besh tapped Chris Lusk, formerly of R’evolution, to be Executive Chef of the Caribbean Room. Lusk retains a clutch of the restaurant’s classic dishes, such as crab Remick, but shows contemporary takes on plenty of new items. It is a fine line. “Half our clientele has vivid memories of a dish the way that it was and for the other half it is brand new,” Besh says. “The key is to evolve while respecting guests’ memories and

feedback.” Case in point – the Mile High Pie. The first reboot, arranged in a cylindrical tower, caused a flurry of blowback. The classic wedge is back in action, upgraded with quality ice cream, yet still finished tableside with chocolate sauce poured from a silver pitcher.

Like the Billy Reid loaner jackets for men, sometimes classics become the new style.

- Jay Forman

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Mile High Pie

riums can be a relaxing, pleasurable experience. And yet, there seems to be the first sounds of change in the New Orleans style of dining. Restaurants, at least lately, are louder, more frenzied, not as personal and happy to rush patrons just a bit more than was previously done.

That may be an unfair observation – and we sincerely hope it is.

What New Orleans has done for dining and cuisine in America is historic and unparalleled. It not something we should lose – ever.

Jay says that restaurateurs around town share a lot of similar concerns these days. The concerns are not about sexy things, like where to store the liquid nitrogen for that made-to-order ice cream bar, but – sorry – more practical things.

One major issue is that the ongoing and unprecedented restaurant boom is putting severe pressure on the labor pool. Staffing leads the list of fears we hear operators talk about most often. Rent has also gone up significantly around town, making it harder for employees to afford the same standard of living that they could have even just five years ago.

Some people think that raising the minimum wage is an answer to this, but tell that to a restaurateur and watch their head explode. Profit margins for a successful restaurant are slim – if you make 10 percent you are doing well – and labor makes up the largest percentage of their operating expenses; usually 30-40 percent of their gross revenue.

People often don’t realize that other expenses, like payroll taxes and unemployment insurance, are pegged to a restaurant’s gross payroll, so a $1 per hour raise actually translates into a cost of about $1.30 more per hour for the business owner. So if gross payroll jumps 15 percent, you’re underwater and the business fails. The only real option is to raise prices, but that’s a tough sell – literally. Most restaurateurs want to pay their employees more, but they

Tchoup Yard

Concept of the Year

If you’ve recently been speeding down Tchopitoulas Street, illegally passing trucks, you might have noticed an odd sight tucked away a half-block down the light industrial corridor of Third Street – the blaze of crisscrossed string lights that heralds good cheer. Pull around the corner to enter the oasis of Tchoup Yard, the gathering spot and brainchild of F&M Patio Bar owner Trevor Palmer.

With its expanse of crushed gravel punctuated by food trucks, picnic tables and beckoning outdoor bar, this is Uptown’s answer to Bacchanal – an indoor/outdoor watering hole with a more collegiate vibe. Tchoup Yard’s Concept of the Year award springs from the clever accommodation of rotating food trucks, which function as plug-and-play dining options. Recent trucks included Cleaver & Co., serving pimento cheeseburgers and pulled pork tacos. Bar options include a frozen Bushwhacker, a broad range of specialty beers, wines and more. As of press time, there was no pool table to dance on, but look for an indoor expansion phase going into next year.

- Jay Forman Tchoup Yard /// 405 Third St. /// 895-6747

Korean food is vibrant and bold; flavors of chile, garlic and fermented products predominate, but there are subtle tastes as well. When Joyce Park relocated her family’s restaurant from a building that formerly housed a fast-food restaurant to its current location, she not only expanded the seating available, but also added the table-top, charcoal grills that are a hallmark of Korean cuisine.

The grills at Little Korea BBQ are a marvel. There’s nothing to compare to the taste of food cooked over real charcoal, and at Little Korea BBQ, diners can cook marinated, thinly sliced pork and beef themselves. The banchan, or small dishes that accompany a Korean meal, are also outstanding, as are the soups and noodle dishes.

Dining with friends around a real charcoal grill is a wonderful experience, and it’s just one of the reasons we’re happy to name Little Korea BBQ our Korean restaurant of the year.

- Robert Peyton

Spicy Oxtail Stew: Vegetable Dolsot Bibimbap, ADD BulGoGi served with various Banchan (pickled/fermented accoutrements)

Little Korea BBQ

Korean Restaurant of the Year

Little Korea BBQ /// 2240 Magazine St. /// 821-5006 /// LittleKoreaBBQ.flavorplate.com

New Orleans Cake Café & Bakery Bakery & Beyond of the Year After a successful career in the music industry, Steve Himelfarb realized that he was as passionate about food as music. He started selling cakes door to door, and about a year before Katrina, opened a shop in the French Quarter.

He came back after a brief exile and ultimately signed a lease for the space formerly occupied by La Spiga at 2440 Chartres St. on Aug. 29, 2007; he opened New Orleans Cake Café & Bakery a couple of weeks later.

The place is a classic neighborhood restaurant. Himelfarb knows a lot of the customers by name, and while it’s become

popular enough to draw a sizable tourist crowd, he and his staff (including his wife, Becky, who runs the front of house) make sure to take care of regulars. “It’s about building a community,” he told me, and that’s clearly the case.

The place wouldn’t be successful, of course, if Himelfarb and his staff didn’t turn out fantastic baked goods and delicious savory items for breakfast, brunch and lunch. For all of these reasons, we’re happy to honor New Orleans Cake Café & Bakery as Bakery & Beyond for 2016.

- Robert Peyton

Club Sandwich

New Orleans Cake Café & Bakery /// 2440 Chartres St. /// 943-0010 /// NolaCakes.com

Paul Gustings There are not many endeavors in life where balance is so important and necessary as in the hospitality industry.

Paul Gustings has been “exceeding expectations” for a long time. Whether “behind the stick” at Broussard’s Empire Bar in the heart of the French Quarter, or serving adult beverages at a festival, Gustings takes immense pride in providing what the client wishes.

Gustings went into the business for the same reason a lot of people get into their life’s work: He needed money and a bartender position was available. But then came the happy revelation that he liked the work. So he focused on doing the educa-

Mixologist of the Year

tion and on what the customers wanted, even when it wasn’t authentic or historically correct.

“It isn’t my place to tell someone that what they like is wrong, or even could be better, “Gustings says. “If they ask, I’m happy to suggest and I’m happiest when creating drinks that originated in New Orleans.”

Gustings makes a proper Sazerac, both classic way with absinthe and cognac, and the more modern iteration using the core ingredients of rye and Herbsaint. He has discovered a shortcut to the technique for a proper Ramos Gin Fizz, which takes nothing away from the recipe except preparation

time. And he makes a terrific Roffignac, Grasshopper, Pimm’s Cup, French 75 and Vieux Carrè.

He has been a full participant in the craft cocktail movement, even making many of his own elixirs and syrups to insure proper quality. And since so many of his clients are also into their own fully-stocked bars at their homes, he’s always pleased to share recipes or techniques.

Gustings put in many years at Tujague’s and at Napoleon House, and he has reached new levels of excellence at Broussard’s. The surroundings and the clientele suit him. His goal of balance is achieved.

- Tim McNally

Broussard’s Empire Bar /// 819 Conti St. /// 581-3866 /// Broussards.com

The Company Burger Adam Biderman upped the local burger game when he opened The Company Burger on Freret Street back in 2011, which was an immediate hit. Then in ’15, Biderman opened his second location in the Paramount, establishing a new position in the booming South Market District.

Both sell drinks, but the Uptown restaurant is popular with families and college kids, while the downtown location draws the professional and after-work crowd thanks in part to its terrific bar. Yet, the common thread is the

Burger of the Year

burgers, ground daily from a blend of Creekstone Farms chuck and brisket seasoned simply with salt. Patties go atop griddled buns baked fresh daily and the “Mayo Bar” offers a panoply of ways for you to customize your order.

So whether you crave a Steen’s malted vanilla milkshake or a Yuengling lager on tap to accompany your doublestack with bread and butter pickles, red onions and American cheese, Biderman has you covered.

- Jay Forman

The Company Burger with Onion Rings

The Company Burger /// 4600 Freret St. /// 267-0320 /// 611 O’Keefe Ave. /// C7, 309-9422 /// TheCompanyBurger.com

Grand Banks Lobster Roll with French Fries

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Seaworthy Seafood Restaurant of the Year

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The ability of New Orleans to serve great seafood is beyond discussion.

So to come into a town like this one, that not only knows seafood itself but also delivers incredible preparations, you have to be very brave – or very local yourself. The investors, Alex and Miles Pincus,, are from New Orleans. They come by their seafood culinary chops through heritage and proximity. While Seaworthy (located in the Ace hotel) bills itself as an oyster bar, it isn’t one that we’ve seen before. Oysters from the Gulf are only the beginning. Murder Point, Malpeque, Kumamoto, Wellfleet, Blue Point and other oysters raised off the sea floor are in evidence. The seafood itself is the freshest, again, from many other points of origin. Chef Dan Causegrove has been preparing excellent dishes in this town for years. Between the investors and the chef, we have a tacit promise that good things from the sea will continue to flow.

- Tim McNally

simply cannot afford to give the regulatory requirements of the traditional model. Unless an increased minimum wage is offset by some kind of tax break, the numbers simply don’t add up.

Robert has been hearing from restaurateurs for the last several years that the city can’t support the current number of restaurants. The logic adds up; as Jay notes, rents are higher both for commercial and residential properties, and our population, while larger than the first few years after Katrina, still isn’t what it once was. Yet we have many, many more restaurants than we did when more people lived here.

We have a lot of visitors, but there’s a limit based, in part, on the number of rooms available to the business generated by tourists and conventioneers.

We also, apparently, have a younger and somewhat more affluent population than we did a decade or so ago, and that may explain the stability of the customer base relative to the decline in overall population. It may also explain why a high percentage of new restaurants, even from chefs with finedining credentials, are casual affairs.

There has to be a limit, but we don’t know if we’ve reached it yet. More restaurants (and food trucks and the like) open than close, even now. We won’t know for a few years whether the current number of restaurants represents a true bubble.

One thing Robert isn’t particularly concerned about is that new restaurants will dilute our native cuisine.

Many of the new restaurants are, it’s true, not serving traditional “New Orleans” food, but most of the chefs opening restaurants do have at least some background in Creole, Cajun and Southern cooking. The fact that some of the new places serving poor boys are approaching the sandwich from a new perspective doesn’t mean that the classic venues are going away, and until he stops seeing red beans and rice on Monday menus all over town, he’s not going to worry about that great strength of our city disappearing.

Seaworthy /// 630 Carondelet St. (inside Ace Hotel) /// 930-3071 /// SeaworthyNola.com

Chef Duke's Meatballs & Spaghetti

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Café Giovanni

Italian Restaurant of the Year There are very few activities so rewarding and enjoyable as watching a talented person ply their craft with an obvious joy at a high level of passion. Since 1991, that’s exactly what New Orleans has witnessed in the person of Duke LoCicero at his Café Giovanni.

“When we opened, this was a pretty rough neighborhood, the 100 block of Decatur. The idea of an upscale Italian cuisine establishment among all the bars devoted to sailors who just arrived at the port wasn’t exactly the recipe for success.” But it was the classic Northern and Southern Italian recipes, with a touch of Creole influence, that brought long lines of food lovers and visitors. Then, a year down the road, came professional opera performers. Italian arias and creative, modern Italian dishes proved an irresistible combination.

Today, chef Duke watches over the restaurant with the same devotion that he used when he speaks out about protecting the French Quarter. Meanwhile his son, Nick, is mastering the kitchen, providing hope that the menus and the music will continue.

– Tim McNally

Café Giovanni /// 117 Decatur St. /// 529-2154 /// CafeGiovanni.com

The “truism” is that New Orleans isn’t a good barbecue town. It is best not to believe that, and don’t even mention it around Neil McClure, who’s turning out some of the best barbecue available anywhere in America and drawing tremendous crowds at his eponymous barbecue stand within NOLA Brewing Company. “I like the Texas style of slowly cooking meat all night long with whole pieces of firewood,” McClure says, “but I can see all sides of the eternal barbecue debate, so I offer sauces to define a style – Midwest, East Coast mustardbased, Texas Red and Kansas City.” McClure’s was located Uptown on Magazine Street, but when the offer came to bunk in at the NOLA Brewing facility, well, it isn’t often something comes along that just feels so right. Craft beer and barbecue, mais ya’. New Orleans not a barbecue town?

Bite your brisket.

– Tim McNally

McClure’s Barbecue

Barbecue Restaurant of the Year

All Meats All Sides Platter

McClure’s Barbecue /// 3001 Tchoupitoulas St. /// 301-2367 /// McCluresBarbecue.com

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DINING LISTINGS

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Rebel Restaurant Group, the home base of chef Phillip Lopez’s growing clutch of forward-looking eateries, recently entered the sandwich game with his charcuterie-focused shop Part & Parcel located in the Paramount Building.

Lopez tapped chef Michael Mericle, who has worked with him since his Rambla days, to take the reins at this progressive deli.

jeffery johnston PHOTOGRAPH

THE MENU / TABLE TALK

T.A.S.T.E sandwich at Part & Parcel

Special Sandwich New Concepts Between the Slices

By Jay Forman

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rtful sandwich options are on the rise, with several new shops that rethink both the bun and what’s between it. The days when poor boys were the default option, with the muffuletta standing out as the outlier alternative, are over; it’s refreshing to see the evolution of this most fundamental of lunch options keep pace with the ongoing restaurant boom in New Orleans.

Rebel Restaurant Group, the home base of chef Phillip Lopez’s growing clutch of forward-looking eateries, recently entered

the sandwich game with his charcuteriefocused shop Part & Parcel located in the Paramount Building. Lopez tapped chef Michael Mericle, who has worked with him since his Rambla days and who also spent the last several years at Root, to take the reins at this progressive deli.

Lopez has a reputation for a modernist cooking style, which might seem out of sync with a deli restaurant concept. And while Part & Parcel employs some of these tricks, including sous vide and cold smoking techniques, they’re done in the service

of a more accessible menu. Cured meats have always been a prominent part of Lopez’s menus, but here they figure in a central role.

It is a shrewd move and one that’s likely to bring his style of cooking to a broader audience.

The buildout is contemporary, with more of an urban downtime vibe thanks to the dark palette and the striking mural by Tim Morgan and Jake Lebas. A galley kitchen and bar runs along one side of the space with a curing room toward the back, where you can view charcuterie-in-progress. For Mericle, a big part of the impetus for Part & Parcel came from a trip to New York where he cooked for a James Beard dinner. “I was impressed by a lot of charcuterie shops up there, in particular the classic Jewish delis,” Mericle recalls. “I love the style of those techniques and the flavors that could be brought out with curing and the seasoning.”

The menu pulls in Italian, Jewish and regional influences brought together with a composed, modernist twist. The T.A.S.T.E., fried turkey and avocado with sprouts, tomato and fried egg is punched up with chipotle aioli and served on ciabatta. “People can’t seem to get enough of that one,” Mericle says. “It’s been selling like crazy.”

Shop a Sandwich Cochon Butcher 930 Tchoupitoulas St. 588-2123 CochonButcher.com

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Fat Boy Pantry 1032 Magazine St. 239-9514

Part & Parcel 611 O’Keefe Ave. 827-1090

Turkey and the Wolf 739 Jackson Ave. 218-7428 TurkeyAndTheWolf.com

jeffery johnston PHOTOGRAPH

Piggy Piggy It isn’t exactly new, but it’s delicious: Cochon Butcher has been turning out excellent sandwiches for years now, but a recent renovation has greatly expanded the seating and lessened the wait time for this noreservations offshoot of Cochon. Consider the Le Pig Mac, with its two all-pork patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onion on a sesame seed bun.

And the description “fried turkey” is somewhat misleading – the turkey is actually cooked sous vide to keep it juicy and tender, then splash-fried to order to crisp the exterior.

The sandwich presents a mix of textures, techniques and flavors – a nice expression of the overall sensibility of Part & Parcel.

Other good bets include the Hot P on rye, where the in-house pastrami is sliced paper-thin and whose carawayspiked sauerkraut gets a twist from juniper. Remoulade sauce is a creative stand-in for the traditional Russian dressing.

Along with the sandwiches, charcuteire can be purchased deli-style by the pound. There is a full bar with craft cocktails and a marathon happy hour.

“It runs from 3 to 8 p.m. – one of the longest in the city,” Mericle says.

Down in the Irish Channel Mason Hereford’s new sandwich shop Turkey and the Wolf has been generating buzz since its opening in late summer. The dazed and confused menu – think fried bologna with hot English mustard, potato chips, lettuce and American cheese on white bread – has proved divisive to some, but don’t let the slacker vibe throw you, Hereford was

formerly Chef de Cuisine at Coquette and knows what he’s doing. Follow his bliss into items like the wedge salad, where the flavor gets turned up to 11 with the inclusion of seasonings such as Everything Bagel Crunchy Stuff, a slathering of addictive blue cheese dressing and fresh dill. The Crab Boil Roll is legit, loaded with lumps of claw meat on an open face roll with a tangy sauce redolent of celery and crab boil. The vibe is friendly and relaxed and a full bar is offered as well, staking out a comfortable nook in the space formerly occupied by Smokehouse BBQ. In the Lower Garden District, Fat Boy Pantry is serving up belly-busting sandwiches with unique twists. The business, owned by Hillary Barq of the Barq’s Root Beer family, showcases a contemporary buildout that’s equal parts contemporary and relaxed.

A communal table runs the length of the dining room, with cubbies for retail along the wall opposite the galley kitchen. Fixtures and furnishing are well-considered and top-notch, including a Slayer espresso machine, an eye-candy contraption from a highly regarded company out of Seattle.

Sandwiches here hew a bit closer to the New Orleans poor boy proportions but with more esoteric options.

For example, the fried lobster poor boy comes dressed with remoulade and drawn butter. The Havana sandwich is a take on the Cuban, with Gruyère cheese and a black garlic mustard amping up its punch. But while the menu here is unique, Fat Boy sets itself apart with a full case of quirky homemade ice cream, including flavors such as buttermilk salted lime and Zapp’s potato chips, to name a few of the oft-rotating choices. n

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News From the Kitchens

Three Muses Maple, On The Coast & Toups South

BY ROBERT PEYTON

Three Muses Maple Three Muses started as a venue where music was as important as the food and drinks.

That formula has made the original location on Frenchman Street a huge success, and it’s a formula that seems likely to succeed at Three Muses Maple, the new location at 7537 Maple St., too, though with a few tweaks here and there.

The original muses were chef Daniel Esses, singer Sophie Lee and bartender Kimberly Patton-Bragg; and they’re also behind the new venture, where chef Marcus Woodham (recently of Tujague’s) is the chef de cuisine. Esses told me that as of November, the music is less of a draw than at the Frenchmen location; that makes sense, given the different nature of the neighborhoods.

Esses and his partners aren’t trying to force anything; he told me they’re going to let their customers drive the direction the restaurant takes, at least to some extent.

There is a lot more space at the Uptown outlet, and while there are a lot of the same items on the menu, Woodham has been given freedom to add his own touches, such as oxtail ya ka mein, which adds kimchi to the classic and uses fresh bucatini pasta.

Like the original location, there are ample vegetarian options available.

Three Muses Maple is open WednesdaysSaturdays, 5-10 p.m., and for brunch Saturdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Call 510-2749 to learn more.

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On The Coast

Toups South

On The Coast: Mississippi Tales and Recipes is a cookbook written by Troy Gilbert and Matthew Mayfield, with illustrations by Billy Solitario. The book features recipes from the authors, their family, friends and local chefs that all tie into life on the Gulf Coast.

For the most part, these are not “fancy” dishes; or at least not the sort of thing you’d find in many fine-dining restaurants. Rather, the recipes are, in many cases, documents of life on and near the water. Pickled shrimp, fried and grilled Gulf fish and oysters in multiple guises are all included in this decidedly seafood-heavy tome. It isn’t all fish and crustaceans; there are recipes for venison, beef, pork and poultry as well as drinks in the section titled “Hooch.”

Many of the recipes come with a brief story or description of the connection between the dish and the coast, and longer narrative sections on topics such as sailing, Gulf island restoration and the region’s indigenous ingredients are interspersed between sections.

The recipes are written clearly, and the prose sections, particularly the longer ones, are lyrical in places. Solitario’s illustrations are beautiful accompaniments. I doubt I’m the only one who will be checking out his gallery, Studio Solitario, on Magazine Street.

The book is published by Pelican, and it’s available in local outlets as well as from the major online retailers.

Toups South recently took over the space in the Southern Food and Beverage Museum that was formerly occupied by Purloo. Chef Isaac Toups and his wife Amanda are two of my favorite humans, so when I head they would be taking over the space, I knew it would be in good hands.

Toups is from Rayne, Louisiana, and his cooking is grounded in the robust food of Acadiana.

As viewers of Season 13 of “Top Chef” know, he’s also a skilled and imaginative chef. At Toups South, the chef branches out – though honestly it isn’t that much of a stretch from his work at Toups’ Meatery – to include dishes from all over the southern states. So far, it’s been a success.

You will still find boudin on the menu, as well as cracklins and Louisiana Gulf stew, but you’ll also see a barbecued beef deckle steak with baked beans, pickled mustard and red onion; beer-battered fried fish with cabbage slaw, fried and a malt vinegar aioli; and sourdough biscuits with crab fat butter.

The best seat in the house is still at the bar that wraps around the open kitchen, and overall the look of the place hasn’t changed all that much – chalkboard art featuring dishes and ingredients on offer are new, but the layout is essentially the same.

Toups South is open for brunch only on Sundays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., and every day but Tuesday for lunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m., and dinner 5-10 p.m. (11 Fridays-Saturdays). The address is 1504 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., and you can call 304-2147 to make a reservation.

SARA ESSEX BRADLEY PHOTOGRAPHS

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THE MENU / FOOD

Christmas Creations

Desserts for the season

by Dale Curry

PHOTOGRAPHed and styled EUGENIA UHL

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Snow-Swept Lemon Tart

A 9-inch tart pastry, homemade or store-bought refrigerated pie crust Curd: ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter 2 cups sugar 1 ½ cups lemon juice 2 Tablespoons freshly grated lemon zest Pinch of salt 5 eggs, whisked until mixed Topping: Confectioners’ sugar Roll pastry to 1/8-inch thickness. Place in a 9-inch tart pan, pressing sides into flutes and trimming around the top. Fork holes in the crust and sides about 1-inch apart. Place a piece of tin foil or parchment paper on the bottom of and partly up the sides of the crust, and cover with pie weights or 2 cups of dried beans. Place in a 400-degree oven, or at the temperature recommended if using a store-bought refrigerated pie crust, and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool pastry before filling.

Curd: Melt butter in the top of a double boiler over medium heat. Remove pot from heat and whisk in sugar, lemon juice, zest and salt.

Whisk in eggs gradually until smooth. Return pot to medium heat and whisk or stir constantly until mixture thickens.

Continue to cook for about 15 minutes, whisking occasionally. Pour mixture though a medal strainer into a bowl.

When cool, pour into pie crust.

To serve: Cover the curd with a sprinkling of confectioners’ sugar. For best results, use a hand sifter to distribute sugar evenly.

Optional decorations: Whipped cream around the edges of tart; dollops of whipped cream over the face of the tart with berries placed on top of the whipped cream.

Serves 8

I

f your Christmas dinner is at midday like ours, finding room for dessert is never easy.

Because our family loves to make showy, mouth-watering finales for the big day, we simply save our sweets for dinner time. Then you can fully enjoy every fattening, delicious morsel when it doesn’t have to compete with turkey or tenderloin and a buffet of sides.

All grandchildren love cheesecake, and my friend Barbara’s New York cheesecake is the best. This time I’m crowning it with a praline sauce to bring it closer to home.

We don’t know anyone who doesn’t like

Cheesecake With Praline Sauce Crust:

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, about 27 graham crackers 6 Tablespoons butter, melted 1/3 cup sugar ½ teaspoon cinnamon Filling: 2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature 2/3 cup sugar 2 eggs

chocolate, and this three-layer chocolate cake isn’t as daunting as you might think. Filled with raspberry sauce, it’s blanketed with ganache and ornamented with raspberries on top. I use three disposable cake pans and make the cake a day ahead.

For lemon lovers, a tart filled with lemon curd never fails to please. All of these recipes can be made a day ahead and refrigerated, leaving time for a relaxing, fun-filled Christmas Day. They also make nice take-alongs or showcase desserts for a party any time during the holidays.

beginning to brown and smelling fragrant. In a small heavy saucepan stir together the cornstarch and water. When thoroughly mixed, add the brown sugar and corn syrup, and bring the mixture barely to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes. Add pecans and praline liqueur. Cool completely and pour over chilled cheesecake.

RaspberryFilled Chocolate Layer Cake

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cake:

Juice of ½ lemon

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Praline topping: 1 cup chopped pecans, roasted 2 Tablespoons cornstarch 1/3 cup water 1/3 cup light brown sugar 1 cup light corn syrup

2 cups self-rising flour ¼ teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 stick plus 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, softened 1 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon praline liqueur

3 extra-large eggs, beaten

Grease or spray an 8- or 9-inch springform pan. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Crust: Place graham crackers in a food processor and process until finely crumbled. Combine butter and sugar in a medium bowl. Add graham cracker crumbs and cinnamon, and stir until completely mixed. Spread on the bottom and 1-inch up the sides of the pan, pressing down with a spoon.

Filling: Place all ingredients in an electric mixer and beat on high speed for 5 minutes. Pour filling in crust. Bake for 35 minutes. Cool and refrigerate.

Topping: Roast pecans on a cookie sheet in a 350-degree oven for about 10 minutes or until

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup milk Filling: 1 12-ounce package frozen raspberries, thawed 2 Tablespoons cornstarch 3 Tablespoons water 1 Tablespoon lemon juice 1/3 cup sugar Ganache: 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate such as Ghirardelli 1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup heavy cream 1 ½ teaspoons cognac or brandy Cake: Sift cocoa into a bowl.

Add ½-cup boiling water and mix well to form a paste. Cool.

Sift flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Butter and flour three 8-inch cake pans.

Whip butter in an electric mixer.

Gradually beat in sugar, then 1 egg at a time and then vanilla extract.

Gradually mix in the cooled cocoa, followed by alternating additions of flour mixture and milk. When mixed well, pour evenly into 3 pans and bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cakes comes out clean. Place on wire racks for 5 minutes in the pans. Run a knife around edges of pans, invert cakes onto wire racks and cool.

Filling: Place berries and juice into a small saucepan, reserving several whole berries for garnish.

Mix water and cornstarch in a bowl and add to saucepan. Add sugar and mix well. Add lemon juice and berries and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring. Cook until mixture thickens, about 3 minutes. Cool before spreading.

Ganache: Break chocolate into the bowl of a food processor. Process until very fine. Heat cream to boiling point and gradually pour cream through the feed tube with the processor running.

Continue for several seconds until very smooth. Pour into a bowl and cool completely. Gently stir in cognac or brandy.

To complete: Cover the first two layers with filling, adding a spoonful to reserved berries. Spread ganache on top and sides, either dripping over sides or covered completely. Garnish with reserved berries. Refrigerate.

Serves 8 to 10 myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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THE MENU / LAST CALL

Sipping for the Season A proper celebration New Orleans-style BY tim mcnally

T

he end of the year with all that goes on, and has to be done, is easily the most stressful part of the calendar. No need to enumerate here all the tasks that fall on our respective shoulders in a very short period of time as Earth completes the annual trip around the sun, 2016 version.

The keys to maintaining individual sanity are to keep a sense of humor, to prioritize and to remember that timing is the art of fitting in all activities that matter, along with many that truly don’t.

Ferrel Dugas “gets it,” and assists us in keeping matters in perspective, which in New Orleans almost always includes a well-made drink very close at hand. Not only is the drink offered here a calm break in a sea of too many must-do tasks, but the seasonality of the ingredients puts us in the proper frame of mind.

Perfect Thyming 1 ½ ounces Benchmark bourbon ½ ounce praline liqueur 1 ounce sour mix (homemade) 1 ½ sticks of thyme Champagne Muddle the thyme. Add the first four ingredients to a shaker with ice.

Shake and double strain into a coup glass.

Top with Champagne.

Garnish with a spring of fresh thyme.

By Ferrel Dugas, Commander’s Palace, 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221, CommandersPalace.com

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Shawn fink PHOTOGRAPH

THE MENU / DINING GUIDE H= New Orleans Magazine award winner / $ = Average entrée price. $ = $5-10 / $$ = $11-15 / $$$ = $16-20 / $$$$ = $21-25 / $$$$$ = $25 and up.

American

nightly. Jazz Brunch on Sunday. $$$$$

Zea’s Rotisserie and Grill Multiple Locations, ZeaRestaurants.com. L, D daily. Drawing from a wide range of worldly influences, this popular restaurant serves a variety of grilled items as well as appetizers, salads, side dishes, seafood, pasta and other entrées. Also offers catering services. $$$

Manning’s 519 Fulton St., 593-8118. L, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Born of a partnership between New Orleans’ First Family of Football and Harrah’s Casino, Manning’s offers sports bar fans a step up in terms of comfort and quality. With a menu that draws on both New Orleans and the Deep South, traditional dishes get punched up with inspired but accessible twists in surroundings accented by both memorabilia and local art. $$$

Bywater Elizabeth’s 601 Gallier St., 944-9272, ElizabethsRestaurantNola.com. B, L MonFri, D Mon-Sat, Br Sat-Sun. This eclectic local restaurant draws rave reviews for its praline bacon and distinctive Southern-inspired brunch specials. $$$

H Maurepas 3200 Burgundy St., 2670072, MaurepasFoods.com. D Thu-Tue, Br Sat-Sun. Pioneering farm-to-table restaurant with an ingredient-driven menu that changes daily. Clever cocktails a plus as well. $$ Satsuma Café 3218 Dauphine St., 3045962, SatsumaCafe.com. B, L daily (until 5 p.m.). Offers healthy, inspired breakfast and lunch fare, along with freshly squeezed juices. $

carrollton Bourré 1510 S. Carrollton Ave., 5104040. L, D Tue-Sun. “Elevated” street food along with quality daiquiris and reconsidered wings are the draw at this newcomer from the team behind Boucherie. $$

CITY PARK Café NOMA 1 Collins Diboll Circle, NO Museum of Art, City Park, 482-1264, CafeNoma.com. L, (snacks) Tue-Sun. Sleek bar and café in the ground floor of museum offers a thoughtful array of snacks, sandwiches and small plates that are sure to enchant, with a kids’ menu to boot. $$

CBD/Warehouse District The Grill Room Windsor Court Hotel, 300 Gravier St., 522-1992, GrillRoomNewOrleans.com. B, L, D daily, Br Sun. Featuring modern American cuisine with a distinctive New Orleans flair, the adjacent Polo Club Lounge offers live music

Pete’s Pub Intercontinental Hotel, 444 St. Charles Ave., 585-5401, IcNewOrleans.com/dining/petes_pub. D Mon-Fri. Casual fare and adult beverages are served in this pub on the ground floor. $$ Q&C Hotel/Bar 344 Camp St., (866) 247-7936, QandC.com. B, D daily. Newly renovated boutique hotel offering a small plates menu with tempting choices such as a Short Rib Poor Boy and Lobster Mac and Cheese to complement their sophisticated craft cocktails. $$

H Root 200 Julia St., 252-9480, RootNola.com. L Mon-Fri, D daily. Chef Philip Lopez opened Root in November 2011 and has garnered a loyal following for his modernist, eclectic cuisine. Try the country fried chicken wings and the Cohiba-smoked scallops crusted with chorizo. $$$$

H Restaurant August 301 Tchoupitoulas St., 299-9777, RestaurantAugust.com. L Fri, D daily. James Beard Award-winning chef John Besh’s menu is based on classical techniques of Louisiana cuisine and produce with a splash of European flavor set in an historic carriage warehouse. $$$$$ Walk-On’s Bistreaux & Bar 1009 Poydras St., 309-6530, Walk-Ons.com. L, D, daily. Burger, sandwiches, wraps and more made distinctive with a Louisiana twist are served at this sports bar near the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. $$ Warehouse Grille, 869 Magazine St., 322-2188, WarehouseGrille.com. L, D daily, Br Fri-Sun. Creative fare served in

an art-filled environment. Try the duck crêpes or the lamb spring rolls. $$ Wolfe’s in the Warehouse 859 Convention Center Blvd., 613-2882. B, L, D daily.

Chef Tom Wolfe brings his refined cuisine to the booming Fulton Street corridor.

His Smoked Kobe Short Ribs are a good choice. $$$

Downtown The Grill 540 Chartres St., 522-1800. B, L, D daily. A diner with local character staffed by local characters. $

Faubourg Marigny Langlois 1710 Pauger St., 934-1010, LangloisNola.com. L Fri-Sat, D Wed-Sun. *Reservations only Supper club and boutique cooking school in the Marigny serves up culturally informed, farmto-table fare with the added bonus of instruction. Dishes include Spiced Quail and Lemongrass Meatballs with Smoked broth. Open kitchen and convivial atmosphere add up to a good time. $$$

in the tourist Ground Zero of the French Market. Sandwiches, breads, cheeses and more. $$ Hard Rock Café 125 Bourbon St., 5295617, HardRock.com. L, D daily. Local outpost of this global brand serves burgers, café fare and drinks in their rock memorabilia-themed environs. $$ The Pelican Club 312 Exchange Place, 523-1504, PelicanClub.com. D daily.

Serves an eclectic mix of hip food, from the seafood “martini” to clay-pot barbecued shrimp and a trio of duck. Three dining rooms available. $$$$$ Rib Room Omni Royal Orleans Hotel, 621 St. Louis St., 529-7046, RibRoomNewOrleans.com. L, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Old World elegance and high ceilings, house classic cocktails and Anthony Spizale’s broad menu of prime rib, stunning seafood and on weekends a champagne brunch. $$$

GARDEN DISTRICT

The Marigny Brasserie 640 Frenchmen St., 945-4472, MarignyBrasserie.com. L, D daily. Chic neighborhood bistro with traditional dishes like the Wedge of Lettuce salad and innovative cocktails such as the cucumber Cosmo. $$$

Cheesecake Bistro by Copeland’s, 2001 St. Charles Ave., 593-9955, CopelandsCheesecakeBistro.com. L, D daily. Shiny, contemporary bistro serves Cajun-fusion fare along with its signature decadent desserts. Good lunch value to boot. $$

Snug Harbor 626 Frenchman St., 949-0696, SnugJazz.com. D daily. This jazz club serves cocktails and a dining menu loaded with steaks, seafood and meaty burgers served with loaded baked potatoes. $$$$

District Donuts Sliders Brew, 2209 Magazine Street, 570-6945, DonutsAndSliders.com. B, L, D daily. Creative sliders (hello, pork belly) and super-creative donuts (think root beer float) are the hallmarks of this next-generation café. $

French Quarter

Metairie

Angeline 1032 Chartres St., 308-3106, AngelineNola.com. B Mon-Fri, Brunch Sat & Sun, D nightly. Modern southern with a fine dining focus is the hallmark of this bistro tucked away in a quiet end of the French Quarter. Southern Fried Quail and Braised Lamb Necks with ricotta agnolotti represent the style. $$$

Boulevard American Bistro 4241 Veterans Memorial Blvd., 889-2301. L, D daily. Classic American cuisine including steaks, chops and more is augmented by regional favorites like Boulevard Oysters at this Metairie bistro. $$$

Continental Provisions 110 N Peters St., Stall 23, 407-3437. Open daily.

Artisan purveyors including Bellegarde Bakery and Cleaver & Company team up to reclaim a foothold for quality food

café B 2700 Metairie Road, 934-4700, cafeB.com. D daily, L Mon-Sat. Br Sun. Ralph Brennan offers New American bistro fare with a Louisiana twist at this family-friendly neighborhood spot. $$$ Caffe! Caffe! 3547 N. Hullen St., 2679190. B, L Mon-Sat. & 4301 Clearview

Christmas Festivities and Traditions at Antoine’s Antoine’s Restaurant, 713 St. Louis St., 581-4422, Antoines.com The Reveillon dinner is a Creole tradition dating back to the mid-1800s, so where better to enjoy this festive dinner than a classic French-Creole restaurant that dates back to 1840? Still owned and operated by the same family, Antoine’s Restaurant offers a Reveillon menu among a host of Christmas festivities. This grande dame of a restaurant in the French Quarter is beautifully decorated for the holidays and also hosts Santa Brunches. Gift cards make great last minute presents and the Hermes Bar offers some of the best holiday spirit around. –Mirella Cameran

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jeffrey johnston photograph

Parkway, 885-4845. B, L daily; D MonSat. CaffeCaffe.com Healthy, refreshing meal options combine with gourmet coffee and espresso drinks to create a tasteful retreat for Metairie diners at a reasonable price. Try the egg white spinach wrap. $ Heritage Grill 111 Veterans Memorial Blvd., 934-4900, HeritageGrillMetairie. com. L Mon-Fri. This lunch-only destination caters to the office crowd and offers a freshly squeezed juice menu to go along with its regular menu and express two-course lunch. $$ Martin Wine Cellar 714 Elmeer Ave., 896-7300, MartinWine.com. Wine by the glass or bottle to go with daily lunch specials, towering burgers, hearty soups and salads and giant, deli-style sandwiches. $ Vega Tapas Café 2051 Metairie Road, 836-2007, VegaTapasCafe.com. D Mon-Sat. Innovative establishment offers fresh seafood, grilled meats and vegetarian dishes in a chic environment.

Daily chef specials showcase unique ingredients and make this place a popular destination for dates as well as groups of friends. $$

Mid-City Parkway Bakery and Tavern 538 Hagan Ave., 482-3047, ParkwayPoorBoys.com. L, D Wed-Mon. Featured on national TV and having served poor boys to presidents,

it stakes a claim to some of the best sandwiches in town. Their french fry version with gravy and cheese is a classic at a great price. $

NORTHSHORE Dakota 629 N. Highway 190, (985) 892-3712, TheDakotaRestaurant.com. L Tue-Fri, D Mon-Sat. A sophisticated dining experience with generous portions. $$$$$

Riverbend Carrollton Market 8132 Hampson St., 252-9928, CarrolltonMarket.com. D TueSat. Modern Southern cuisine manages to be both fun and refined at this tasteful boîte. $$$

Uptown Audubon Clubhouse 6500 Magazine St., 212-5282, AudubonInstitute.org. B, L Tue-Sat, Br Sun. A kid-friendly menu with local tweaks and a casually upscale sandwich and salad menu. $$ Camellia Grill 626 S. Carrollton Ave., 309-2679. B, L, D daily. A venerable diner whose essential character has remained intact and many of the original waiters have returned. Credit cards are now accepted. $ GG’s Dine-O-Rama 3100 Magazine St., 373-6579, GGsNewOrleans.com. B Sat, L, Tue-Sun, D Tue-Fri, Br Sun. Upscalecasual restaurant serves a variety of specialty sandwiches, salads and wraps, like the Chicago-style hot dog and the St. Paddy’s Day Massacre, chef Gotter’s take

on the Rueben. $$ Martin Wine Cellar 3827 Baronne St., 899-7411, MartinWine.com. Wine by the glass or bottle with cheeses and snacks to-go. $ Slim Goodies 3322 Magazine St., 891 EGGS (3447), SlimGoodiesDiner.com. B, L daily. This diner offers an exhaustive menu heavily influenced by local cuisine.

Try the Creole Slammer, a breakfast platter rounded out by crawfish étouffée.

The laid-back vibe is best enjoyed on the patio out back. $ Stein’s Market and Deli 2207 Magazine St., 527-0771, SteinsDeli.net. B, L, D TueSun. New York City meets New Orleans.

The Reuben and Rachel sandwiches are the real deal and the half-sours and pickled tomatoes complete the deli experience. $

winners. Grab a local Abita beer to wash it all down. Also a great location to watch the game. $

H Upperline 1413 Upperline St., 891-9822, Upperline.com. D Wed-Sun. Consummate hostess JoAnn Clevenger and talented chef Dave Bridges make for a winning combination at this nationally heralded favorite. The oft-copied fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade originated here. $$$$

H Wayfare 4510 Freret St., 309-0069, WayfareNola.com. L, D daily. Creative sandwiches and southern-inspired small plates. $$ Ye Olde College Inn 3000 S. Carrollton Ave., 866-3683, CollegeInn1933.com. D Tue-Sat. Serves up classic fare, albeit with a few upscale dishes peppering the menu. $$$

Surrey’s Café and Juice Bar 1418 Magazine St., 524-3828; 4807 Magazine St., 895-5757, SurreysCafeAndJuiceBar.com.

B, L daily. Laid-back café focuses on breakfast and brunch dishes to accompany freshly squeezed juice offerings.

Health-food lovers will like it here, along with fans of favorites such as peanut butter and banana pancakes. $$

Asian Fusion/Pan Asian

Tracey’s Irish Restaurant & Bar 2604 Magazine St., 897-5413, TraceysNola. com. L, D daily. A neighborhood bar with one of the best messy roast beef poor boys in town. The gumbo, cheeseburger poor boy and other sandwiches are also

Red’s Chinese 3048 St. Claude Ave., 304-6030, RedsChinese.com. D Wed-Mon. Assertive, in-your-face Chinese fare by chef Tobias Womack, an alum of Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese. The Kung Pao Pastrami and Delta Broccoli are good

Little Tokyo Multiple locations, LittleTokyoNola.com. L, D daily. Multiple locations of this popular Japanese sushi and hibachi chain make sure that there’s always a specialty roll within easy reach. $$

Bywater

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DINING GUIDE options. $$

CBD/Warehouse District Rock-N-Sake 823 Fulton St., 581-7253, RockNSake.com. L Fri, D Tue-Sun, late night. Fresh sushi and contemporary takes on Japanese favorites in an upbeat, casual setting. $$$

Faubourg Marigny Bao and Noodle 2700 Charters St., 272-0004, BaoAndNoodle.com. L, D daily. Housemade noodles and a more authentic take on Chinese fare sets this neighborhood startup apart. Try the soup dumplings if available $$

French Quarter V Sushi 821 Iberville St., 609-2291, VSushiMartini.com. D daily, late-night.

Creative rolls and a huge list of fusion dishes keep party-lovers going late into the night at this combination sushi and martini bar. $$$

Garden District Hoshun Restaurant 1601 St. Charles Ave., 302-9716, HoshunRestaurant.com.

L, D daily. Offers a wide variety of Asian cuisines, primarily dishes culled from China, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia.

Five-pepper calamari is a tasty way to begin the meal, and their creative sushi rolls are good. Private dining rooms available. $$

H Tan Dinh 1705 Lafayette St., 361-

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8008. B, L, D daily. Roasted quail and the beef pho rule at this Vietnamese outpost. $$

Kenner Little Chinatown 3800 Williams Blvd., 305-0580, LittleChinatown.net. L, D daily.

One of the city’s best Chinese restaurants is secreted away on William’s Boulevard in Kenner. Try the roast duck or roast pork, either one is terrific, as well as their short menu of authentic dishes that (for the most part) avoid Americanized Chinese fare. $$

Lakeview Lakeview Pearl 6300 Canal St., 3095711, LakeviewPearl.com. L, D Mon-Sat. A long list of specialty rolls rounds out the offerings of this Asian-Fusion restaurant. $$

Metairie CoNola Grill & Sushi 619 Pink St., 8370055, CoNolaGrillSushi.com. L, D TueSun. Eclectic cafe with DNA from both Sun Ray Grill and Aloha Sushi Bar puts out southern-inspired fare backed by an Americanized sushi menu, a kids menu and more. Along with a Sunday brunch, there’s something for everyone at this independent restaurant. $$$

H Royal China 600 Veterans Blvd., 831-9633. L daily, D Tue-Sun. Popular and family-friendly Chinese restaurant is one of the few places around that serves

dim sum. $$

MARRERO Daiwa, 5033 Lapalco Blvd., 875-4203, DaiwaSushi.com. L, D daily. Japanese destination on the Westbank serves an impressive and far-ranging array of creative fusion fare. $$$

Mid-City H Café Minh 4139 Canal St., 482-6266, CafeMinh.com. L Mon-Fri, D Mon-Sat. Chef Minh Bui and Cynthia Vutran bring a fusion touch to Vietnamese cuisine with French accents and a contemporary flair. $$ Five Happiness 3605 S. Carrollton Ave., 482-3935, FiveHappiness.com. L, D daily.

This longtime Chinese favorite offers up an extensive menu including its beloved mu shu pork and house-baked duck. $$

H MoPho 514 City Park Ave., 482-6845, MoPhoMidCity.com. L, D Wed-Mon. Vietnamese cuisine meets southern Louisiana in this upscale casual hybrid by chef Michael Gulotta. Mix-and-match pho and an interesting poor boy menu rounds out the appeal. $$$

Riverbend H Ba Chi Canteen 7900 Maple St., 3735628. L, D Mon-Sat. The kitchen plays fast and loose with Vietnamese fare at this eclectic outpost on Maple Street. Try the caramelized pork “Baco”. $

H Chill Out Café 729 Burdette St., 8729628. B, L daily, D Mon-Sat. Thai food and breakfast favorites like waffles and pancakes can both be had at this affordable college-friendly hangout. $

Uptown Chiba 8312 Oak St., 826-9119, Chiba-Nola.com. L Wed-Sat, D Mon-Sat. Contemporary restaurant features fresh, exotic fish from all over the world and fusion fare to go along with typical Japanese options. Extensive sake list and late night happy hours are a plus. $$$

H Jung’s Golden Dragon 3009 Magazine St., 891-8280, JungsChinese.com. L, D daily. This Chinese destination is a real find. Along with the usual, you’ll find spicy cold noodle dishes and dumplings.

One of the few local Chinese places that breaks the Americanized mold. $

H Magasin 4201 Magazine St., 8967611, MagasinCafe.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Pho, banh mi and vegetarian options are offered at this attractive and budgetfriendly Vietnamese restaurant. Café sua da is available as well. $

WEST BANK Nine Roses 1100 Stephen St., 366-7665, NineRosesResturant.com. L, D Sun-Tue, Thu-Sat. The extensive Vietnamese menu specializes in hot pots, noodles and dishes big enough for everyone to share. $$

Bakery/Breakfast Café du Monde Multiple Locations, CafeDuMonde.com. This New Orleans institution has been serving fresh café au lait, rich hot chocolate and positively addictive beignets since 1862 in the French Market 24/7. $ CC’s Coffee House Multiple locations in New Orleans, Metairie and Northshore, CCsCoffee.com. Coffeehouse specializing in coffee, espresso drinks and pastries. $

BROADMOOR Gracious to Go 7220 Earhart Blvd., 301-3709, GraciousBakery.com. B MonFri. Quick-service outpost of Gracious Bakery + Café serves artisan pastries, locally roasted coffee and grab-and-go sandwiches to meet the needs of commuters. Onsite parking a plus. $

CBD/Warehouse District H Merchant 800 Common St., 571-9580, MerchantNewOrleans.com. B, L daily. Illy coffee and creative crêpes, sandwiches and more are served at this sleek and contemporary café on the ground floor of the Merchant Building. $ Red Gravy 4125 Camp St., 561-8844, RedGravy.com. B, Br, L, Wed-Mon. Farm-to-table Italian restaurant offers a creative array of breakfast items such as Cannoli Pancakes as well as delectable sandwiches and more for lunch.

Homemade pastas and authentic Tuscan specialties like Cacciucco round out the menu. $$

H Ruby Slipper Café 200 Magazine St., 525-9355; 1005 Canal St., 525-9355, TheRubySlipperCafe.net. B, L daily, Br Sun. Homegrown chain specializes in breakfast, lunch and brunch dishes with unique local twists such as bananas Foster French toast and barbecue shrimp and grits. $$

CARROLLTON Breads on Oak, 8640 Oak St., 324-8271, BreadsOnOak.com. B, L Wed-Sun. Artisan bakeshop tucked away near the levee on Oak Street serves breads, sandwiches, gluten-free and vegan-friendly options. $

City Park Morning Call 56 Dreyfous Drive, City Park, 885-4068, NewOrleansCityPark. com/in-the-park/morning-call. 24 hours a day; cash-only. Chicory coffee and beignets coated with powdered sugar make this the quintessential New Orleans coffee shop. $

Faubourg Marigny H Ruby Slipper Café 2001 Burgundy St., 525-9355, TheRubySlipperCafe.net.

B, L daily, Br Sun. Homegrown chain specializes in breakfast, lunch and brunch dishes with unique local twists such as bananas Foster French toast and barbecue shrimp and grits. $$

Mid-City Gracious Bakery + Café 1000 S. Jeff Davis Parkway, Suite 100, 301-3709, GraciousBakery.com. B, L daily. Boutique bakery on the ground floor of the Wood-

ward Building offers small-batch coffee, baked goods, individual desserts and sandwiches on breads made in-house.

Catering options available. $

H Ruby Slipper Café 139 S. Cortez St., 525-9355, TheRubySlipperCafe.net.

B, L daily, Br Sun. Homegrown chain specializes in breakfast, lunch and brunch dishes with unique local twists such as bananas Foster French toast and barbecue shrimp and grits. $$

Barbecue Bywater The Joint 701 Mazant St., 949-3232, AlwaysSmokin.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Some of the city’s best barbecue can be had at this locally owned and operated favorite. $

French Quarter BB King’s Blues Club 1104 Decatur St., 934-5464, BBKings.com/new-orleans. L, D daily. New Orleans outpost of music club named for the famed blues musician features a menu loaded with BBQ and southern-inspired specialties. Live music and late hours are a big part of the fun. $$$

Lower Garden District Voodoo BBQ 1501 St. Charles Ave., 5224647, VoodooBBQAndGrill.com. L, D daily.

Diners are never too far from this homegrown barbecue chain that features an array of specialty sauces to accompany its smoked meats and seafood. $$

Metairie Voodoo BBQ 2740 Severn Ave., 3534227, VoodooBBQAndGrill.com. L, D daily.

Diners are never too far from this homegrown barbecue chain that features an array of specialty sauces to accompany its smoked meats and seafood. $$

Burgers French Quarter Bayou Burger, 503 Bourbon St., 5294256, SportsBarNewOrleans.com. L, D daily. Sports bar in the thick of Bourbon Street scene distinguishes its fare with choices like Crawfish Beignets and Zydeco Bites. $$ Port of Call 838 Esplanade Ave., 5230120, PortOfCallNola.com. L, D daily. It is all about the big, meaty burgers and giant baked potatoes in this popular bar/ restaurant – unless you’re cocktailing only, then it’s all about the Monsoons. $$

Lakeview Lakeview Harbor 911 Harrison Ave., 486-4887, NewOrleansBestBurger.com.

L, D daily. Burgers are the name of the game at this restaurant. Daily specials, pizza and steaks are offered as well. $

Riverbend H Cowbell 8801 Oak St., 298-8689, Cowbell-Nola.com. L, D Tue-Sat. Burgers and homemade sauces on potato rolls are the specialty here, along with other favorites like skirt steak. $$

Uptown

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DINING GUIDE H The Company Burger 4600 Freret St., 267-0320, TheCompanyBurger.com.

L, D Wed-Mon. Custom-baked butterbrushed buns and fresh-ground beef patties make all the difference at this excellent burger hotspot. Draft beer and craft cocktails round out the appeal. $

French CBD/Warehouse District Chateau du Lac 857 Fulton St., 3010235, ChateauduLacWarehouse.com. L Tue-Fri, D Mon-Sat. This casual French bistro, run by chef-owner Jacques Saleun, offers up classic dishes such as escargot, coq au vin and blanquette de veau. $$$$ Le Foret 129 Camp St., 553-6738, LeForetNewOrleans.com. D Mon-Sat. Sophisticated fine dining melds southern cuisine and classic French with modernist influences in an elegant setting. $$$$

Faubourg St. John H Café Degas 3127 Esplanade Ave., 945-5635, CafeDegas.com. L, D Wed-Sat, Br Sun. Salad Niçoise, Hanger steak and frites are served in a lovely enclosed courtyard at this jewel of a French bistro. $$

French Quarter Broussard’s, 819 Conti St., 581-3866, Broussards.com. D daily, L Fri, Br Sun. Creole-French institution also offers beautiful courtyard seating. $$$$

H Marti’s 1041 Dumaine St., 522-5478, MartisNola.com. D daily. Classic French cuisine, small plates and chilled seafood platters like Grand Plateau Fruits De Mer are the calling cards for this restaurant with an elegant “Old World” feel. $$$

Lacombe H La Provence 25020 Highway 190, (985) 626-7662, LaProvenceRestaurant. com. D Wed-Sun, Br Sun. Chef John Besh upholds time-honored Provençal cuisine and rewards his guests with a true farm-life experience, from housemade preserves, charcuterie, herbs, kitchen gardens and eggs cultivated on the property. $$$$$

Metairie Chateau du Lac 2037 Metairie Road, 831-3773, ChateauduLacBistro.com. L Tue-Fri, D Mon-Sat. This casual French

bistro, run by chef-owner Jacques Saleun, offers up classic dishes such as escargot, coq au vin and blanquette de veau. $$$$

Uptown Bistro Daisy 5831 Magazine St., 8996987, BistroDaisy.com. D Tue-Sat. Chef Anton Schulte and his wife Diane’s bistro serves creative and contemporary bistro fare in a romantic setting. The signature Daisy Salad is a favorite. $$$$

H Coquette 2800 Magazine St., 2650421, CoquetteNola.com. L Wed-Sat, D Wed-Mon, Br Sun. The food is French in inspiration and technique, with added imagination from chef Michael and his partner Lillian Hubbard. $$$ Flaming Torch 737 Octavia St., 8950900, FlamingTorchNola.com. L Mon-Fri, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. French classics including a tasty onion soup and often a sought-after coq-au-vin. $$

H La Crêpe Nanou 1410 Robert St., 899-2670, LaCrepeNanou.com. D daily, Br Sun. Classic French bistro fare, including terrific moules and decadent dessert crêpes, are served nightly at this neighborhood institution. $$$ La Petite Grocery 4238 Magazine St., 891-3377, LaPetiteGrocery.com. L TueSat, D daily, Br Sun. Elegant dining in a convivial atmosphere. The menu is heavily French-inspired with an emphasis on technique. $$$ Lilette 3637 Magazine St., 895-1636, LiletteRestaurant.com. L Tue-Sat, D MonSat. Chef John Harris’ innovative menu draws discerning diners to this highly regarded bistro. Desserts are wonderful as well. $$$$$

Gastropub Abita Springs Abita Brew Pub 72011 Holly St., (985) 892-5837, AbitaBrewPub.com. L, D TueSun. Better-than-expected pub food in its namesake eatery. “Tasteful” tours available for visitors. $$

CBD/Warehouse District Gordon Biersch 200 Poydras St., 5522739, GordonBiersch.com. L, D daily. Local outpost of this popular chain serves specialty brews made on-site and crowdpleasing lunch and dinner fare. $$

Victory 339 Baronne St., 522-8664, VictoryNola.com. D Tue-Sat. Craft cocktails served by owner and acclaimed bartender Daniel Victory, as well as refined small plates and gourmet pizza. $$

standards of the libations is the draw at this lively wine bar and gastropub. Food is grounded in French bistro fare with eclectic twists. $$

Italian

French Quarter H Cane & Table 1113 Decatur St., 581-

Avondale H Mosca’s 4137 Highway 90 West, 463-

1112, CaneAndTableNola.com. L Sat-Sun, D daily. Open late, this chef-driven rustic colonial cuisine and rum and “protoTiki” cocktails make this a fun place to gather. $$

8950, MoscasRestaurant.com. D Tue-Sat. Italian institution dishes out massive portions of great food, family-style. Good bets are the shrimp Mosca and chicken à la grande. Cash only. $$$

Orleans Grapevine Wine Bar and Bistro 720 Orleans Ave., 523-1930, OrleansGrapevine.com. D daily. Wine is the muse at this beautifully renovated bistro, which offers vino by the flight, glass and bottle.

A classic menu with an emphasis on local cuisine. $$$

Bywater H Mariza 2900 Charters St., 598-5700,

H Patrick’s Bar Vin 730 Bienville St., 200-3180, PatricksBarVin.com. D daily.

This oasis of a wine bar offers terrific selections by the bottle and glass. Small plates are served as well. $$

Lower Garden District The Tasting Room 1926 Magazine St., 581-3880, TTRNewOrleans.com. D WedSun. Flights of wine and sophisticated small plates are the calling cards for this wine bar near Coliseum Square. $$

Mid-City Trèo 3835 Tulane Ave., 304-4878, TreoNola.com. L Wed-Sat, D Tue-Sat. Craft cocktail bar also serves a short but excellent small plates menu to accompany its artfully composed libations. $$

Uptown The Avenue Pub 1732 St. Charles Ave., 586-9243, TheAvenuePub.com. Kitchen open 24/7. With more than 43 rotating draft beers, this pub also offers food, including a cheese plate from St. James Cheese Co. and the “Pub Burger.” Counter service only. $ Bouligny Tavern 3641 Magazine St., 891-1810, BoulignyTavern.com. D MonSat. Carefully curated small plates, inventive cocktails and select wines are the focus of this stylish offshoot of John Harris’s nationally acclaimed Lilette. $$ The Delachaise 3442 St. Charles Ave., 895-0858, TheDelaichaise.com. L SatSun, D daily. Cuisine elevated to the

MarizaNewOrleans.com. D Tue-Sat. An Italian-inspired restaurant by chef Ian Schnoebelen features a terrific raw bar, house-cured charcuterie and an array of refined adult beverages served in the industrial/contemporary setting on the ground floor of the Rice Mills lofts. $$$

CBD/Warehouse District H Domenica The Roosevelt Hotel, 123 Baronne St., 648-6020, DomenicaRestaurant.com. L, D daily. Chef Alon Shaya serves authentic, regional Italian cuisine.

The menu of thin, lightly topped pizzas, artisanal salumi and cheese, and a carefully chosen selection of antipasti, pasta and entrées features locally raised products, some from chef John Besh’s Northshore farm. $$$$ Tommy’s Cuisine 746 Tchoupitoulas St., 581-1103, TommysNewOrleans.com. D daily. Classic Creole-Italian cuisine is the name of the game at this upscale eatery.

Appetizers include the namesake oysters Tommy, baked in the shell with Romano cheese, pancetta and roasted red pepper. $$$$$

French Quarter Café Giovanni 117 Decatur St., 5292154, CafeGiovanni.com. D daily. Live opera singers three nights a week. A selection of Italian specialties tweaked with a Creole influence and their Belli Baci happy hour adds to the atmosphere. $$$$ Chartres House, 601 Chartres St., 5868383, ChartresHouse.com. L, D daily. This iconic French Quarter bar serves terrific Mint Juleps and Gin Fizzes in its picturesque courtyard and balcony settings.

Also famous for its fried green tomatoes

Holiday Happiness at Café Adelaide and The Swizzle Stick Bar Café Adelaide and the Swizzle Stick Bar, 300 Poydras St., 595-3305, CafeAdelaide.com There are lots of places to celebrate the holidays downtown, but none is more festive than Café Adelaide and The Swizzle Stick Bar. First, there’s the “Bring Us Your Bells’ program which offers 25-cent martinis to anyone wearing jingle bells during December.

If you don’t have any bells, go for lunch Monday through Friday when they’re handed out for free. A special Reveillon menu is available for the whole of December, with festive menus for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve. With live caroling, even Scrooge would succumb to the holiday fun at this downtown venue. – M.C.

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cheryl gerber photograph

and other local favorite dishes. $$$ Irene’s Cuisine 539 St. Philip St., 529881. D Mon-Sat. Long waits at the lively piano bar are part of the appeal of this Creole-Italian favorite beloved by locals.

Try the oysters Irene and crabmeat gratin appetizers. $$$$

H Italian Barrel 430 Barracks St., 569-0198, ItalianBarrel.com. L, D daily.

Northern Italian dishes like Braciola di Maiale as well as an exhaustive pasta menu tempt here at this local favorite that also offers al fresco seating. $$$ Muriel’s Jackson Square 801 Chartres St., 568-1885, Muriels.com. L, D daily, Br Sun. Enjoy pecan-crusted drum and other local classics while dining in the courtyard bar or any other room in this labyrinthine, rumored-to-be-haunted establishment. $$$$ Napoleon House 500 Chartres St., 524522-4152, NapoleonHouse.com. L Mon-Sat, D Tue-Sat. Originally built in 1797 as a respite for Napoleon, this family-owned European-style café serves local favorites gumbo, jambalaya and muffulettas, and for sipping, a Sazerac or lemony Pimm’s Cup are perfect accompaniments. $$ Ralph Brennan’s Red Fish Grill 115 Bourbon St., 598-1200, RedFishGrill.com.

L, D daily. Chef Austin Kirzner cooks up a broad menu peppered with local favorites such as barbecue oysters, blackened

redfish and double-chocolate bread pudding. $$$$$ Arnaud’s Remoulade 309 Bourbon St., 523-0377, Remoulade.com. L, D daily.

Granite-topped tables and an antique mahogany bar are home to the eclectic menu of famous shrimp Arnaud, red beans and rice and poor boys as well as specialty burgers, grilled all-beef hot dogs and thin-crust pizza. $$

H R’evolution 777 Bienville St., 5532277, RevolutionNola.com. L Wed-Fri, D daily, Br Sun. An opulent place that combines the local flavors of chef John Folse with the more cosmopolitan influence of chef Rick Tramonto. Chef de cuisine Chris Lusk and executive sous chef Erik Veney are in charge of day-to-day operations, which include house-made charcuterie, pastries, pastas and more. $$$$$

harahan Oak Oven 6625 Jefferson Highway, Harahan, 305-4039, OakOvenRestaurant. com. L, D Mon-Sat. Wood-fired pizza and seasonal Italian cuisine with a locavore philosophy brings respite to the burbs.

Family friendly with patio seating to boot. $$

Lakeview H Tony Angello’s 6262 Fleur de Lis Drive, 488-0888, TonyAngellos.com. D Tue-Sat. Creole-Italian favorite serves up fare. Ask Tony to “Feed Me” if you want a real multi-course dining experience.

$$$$

Metairie H Andrea’s Restaurant 3100 19th St., 834-8583, AndreasRestaurant.com. L Mon-Sat, D daily, Br Sun. Osso buco and homemade pastas in a setting that’s both elegant and intimate; off-premise catering. $$$ Semolina 4436 Veterans Blvd., Suite 37, 454-7930, Semolina.com. L, D daily. This casual, contemporary pasta restaurant takes a bold approach to cooking Italian food, emphasizing flavors, texture and color. Many of the dishes feature a signature Louisiana twist, such as the muffuletta pasta and pasta jambalaya. $$ Vincent’s Italian Cuisine 4411 Chastant St., 885-2984, Metairie, VicentsItalianCuisine.com. L Tue-Fri, D Mon-Sat. Snug Italian boîte packs them in, yet manages to remain intimate at the same time. The cannelloni is a house specialty. $$$

Mid-City H Liuzza’s 3636 Bienville St., 482-9120, Liuzzas.com. L, D daily. Classic neighborhood joint serves favorites like the “Frenchuletta,” stuffed artichokes and andouille gumbo. Kid’s menu offered. $$ Ralph’s On The Park 900 City Park Ave., 488-1000, RalphsOnThePark.com. Br Sun, L Tue-Fri, D daily. A modern interior and contemporary Creole dishes such as City Park salad, turtle soup, barbecue Gulf shrimp and good cocktails. $$$$

NORTHSHORE H Del Porto Ristorante 501 E. Boston St., (985) 875-1006, DelPortoRistorante. com. L, D Tue-Sat. One of the Northshore’s premier fine dining destinations serving Italian food that makes use of locally sourced meats and produce. $$$

Uptown Amici 3218 Magazine St., 300-1250, AmiciNola.com. L, D daily. Coal-fired pizza is the calling card for this destination, but the menu offers an impressive list of authentic and Creole Italian specialties as well. $$ Pascal’s Manale 1838 Napoleon Ave., 895-4877, PascalsManale.com. L MonFri, D Mon-Sat. Vintage neighborhood restaurant since 1913 and the place to go for the creation of barbecued shrimp.

Its oyster bar serves icy cold, freshly shucked Louisiana oysters and the Italian specialties and steaks are also solid. $$$$ Vincent’s Italian Cuisine 7839 St. Charles Ave., 866-9313, VicentsItalianCuisine.com. L Tue-Fri, D Tue-Sun. Snug Italian boîte packs them in yet manages to remain intimate at the same time. The cannelloni is a house specialty. $$$

Louisianian Fare CBD/Warehouse District H Annunciation 1016 Annunciation St., 568-0245, AnnunciationRestaurant. com. D Mon-Sat. Chef Steven Manning brings a refined sensibility to this refined

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DINING GUIDE Warehouse District oasis along with his famous fried oysters with melted brie. $$$

with Louisiana seafood and real moonshine from the bar. Reservations strongly recommended. $$

Balise 640 Carondelet St., 459-4449, BaliseNola.com. L Mon-Fri, D nightly.

Chef Justin Devillier turns back the clock at this turn-of-the-century inspired bistro in the CBD. Decidedly masculine fare – think venison tartare with horseradish and pumpernickel – is carefully crafted and fits well alongside the excellent cocktail and beer list. $$$

Drago’s Hilton Riverside Hotel, 2 Poydras St., 584-3911, DragosRestaurant. com. L, D daily. This famous seafooder specializes in charbroiled oysters, a dish they invented. Great deals on fresh lobster as well. $$$$

Bon Ton Cafe 401 Magazine St., 5243386, TheBonTonCafe.com. L, D Mon-Fri. A local favorite for the old-school business lunch crowd specializing in local seafood and Cajun dishes. $$$$ Café Adelaide Loews New Orleans Hotel, 300 Poydras St., 595-3305, CafeAdelaide.com. B, D daily, L Mon-Fri. This offering from the Commander’s Palace family of restaurants has become a power-lunch favorite for business-people and politicos. Also features the Swizzle Stick Bar. $$$$

H Cochon 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 588-2123, CochonRestaurant.com. L, D, Mon-Sat. Chefs Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski showcase Cajun and Southern cuisine at this hot spot. Boudin and other pork dishes reign supreme here, along

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Emeril’s 800 Tchoupitoulas St., 5289393, EmerilsRestaurants.com. L MonFri, D daily. The flagship of superstar chef Emeril Lagasse’s culinary empire, this landmark attracts pilgrims from all over the world. $$$$$

H Herbsaint 701 St. Charles Ave., 524-4114, Herbsaint.com. L Mon-Fri, D Mon-Sat. Enjoy a sophisticated cocktail before sampling chef Donald Link’s menu that melds contemporary bistro fare with classic Louisiana cuisine. The banana brown butter tart is a favorite dessert. $$$$$ Mother’s 401 Poydras St., 523-9656, MothersRestaurant.net. B, L, D daily.

Locals and tourists alike endure long queues and a confounding ordering system to enjoy iconic dishes such as the Ferdi poor boy and Jerry’s jambalaya.

Come for a late lunch to avoid the rush. $$

Mulate’s 201 Julia St., 522-1492, Mulates.com. L, D daily. Live music and dancing add to the fun at this worldfamous Cajun destination. $$ Palette 700 Tchoupitoulas St., 613-2350, B, L, D daily. Creole, Cajun and French flavors all come together at this restaurant in the Renaissance Hotel near the Convention Center. $$

Central City Café Reconcile 1631 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd., 568-1157, CafeReconcile.org. L Mon-Fri. Good food for a great cause, this nonprofit on the burgeoning OCH corridor helps train at-risk youth for careers in the food service industry. $$

Darrow Café Burnside Houmas House Plantation, 40136 Highway 942, (225) 473-9380, HoumasHouse.com. L daily, Br Sun. Historic plantation’s casual dining option features dishes such as seafood pasta, fried catfish, crawfish and shrimp, gumbo and red beans and rice. $$ Latil’s Landing Houmas House Plantation, 40136 Highway 942, (225) 473-9380, HoumasHouse.com. D Wed-Sun. Nouvelle Louisiane, plantation-style cooking served in an opulent setting features dishes like rack of lamb and plume de veau. $$$$$

Faubourg Marigny Feelings Cafe 2600 Chartres St., 9452222, FeelingsCafe.com. D Wed-Sun, Br Sun. Romantic ambiance and skillfully created dishes, such as veal d’aunoy, make dining here on the patio a memorable experience. A piano bar on Fridays adds to the atmosphere. Vegan menu offered. $$$$ Horn’s 1940 Dauphine St., Marigny, 459-4676, HornsNola.com. B, L daily, D Thu-Mon. This casual, eclectic watering hole offers offbeat twists on classics (the Jewish Coonass features latkes to go with the crawfish etouffée) as well as the usual breakfast and lunch diner fare. $ Praline Connection 542 Frenchmen St., 943-3934, PralineConnection.com. L, D daily. Down-home dishes of smothered pork chops, greens, beans and cornbread are on the menu at this Creole soul restaurant. $$

French Quarter Acme Oyster House 724 Iberville St., 522-5973, AcmeOyster.com. L, D daily.

Known as one of the best places to eat oysters. $$

H Arnaud’s 813 Bienville St., 523-5433, ArnaudsRestaurant.com. D daily, Br Sun. Waiters in tuxedos prepare Café Brûlot tableside at this storied Creole grande

dame; live jazz during Sun. brunch. $$$$$

$$$$$

featuring glazed pork belly. $

Antoine’s 713 St. Louis St., 581-4422, Antoines.com. L, D Mon-Sat, Br Sun. This pinnacle of haute cuisine and birthplace of oysters Rockefeller is New Orleans’ oldest restaurant. (Every item is à la carte, with an $11 minimum.) Private dining rooms available. $$$$$

Criollo Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal St., 681-4444, CriolloNola.com. B, L, D daily. Next to the famous Carousel Bar in the historic Monteleone Hotel, Criollo represents an amalgam of the various cultures reflected in Louisiana cooking and cuisine, often with a slight contemporary twist. $$$

K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen 416 Chartres St., 596-2530, ChefPaul.com/KPaul. L Thu-Sat, D Mon-Sat. Paul Prudhomme’s landmark restaurant helped introduce Cajun food to a grateful nation. Lots of seasoning and bountiful offerings, along with reserved seating, make this a destination for locals and tourists alike. $$$$

H The Bistreaux New Orleans Maison

H Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House 144

H MiLa 817 Common St., 412-2580,

Dupuy Hotel, 1001 Toulouse St., 5868000, MaisonDupuy.com/dining.html. L, D daily. Dishes ranging from the casual (truffle mac and cheese) to the upscale (tuna tasting trio) are served in an elegant courtyard. $$

Bourbon St., 522-0111, BourbonHouse. com. B, L, D daily. Classic Creole dishes such as redfish on the halfshell and baked oysters served. Its extensive bourbon menu will please aficionados. $$$$

MiLaNewOrleans.com. L Mon-Fri, D MonSat. Focuses on the fusion of the cuisines of Miss. and La. $$$$

The Bombay Club Prince Conti Hotel, 830 Conti St., 586-0972, TheBombayClub. com. D daily. Popular martini bar with plush British décor features live music during the week and late dinner and drinks on weekends. Nouveau Creole menu includes items such as Bombay drum. $$$$ Café Maspero 601 Decatur St., 523-6250, CafeMaspero.com. L, D daily. Tourists line up for their generous portions of seafood and large deli sandwiches. $ Court of Two Sisters 613 Royal St., 522-7261, CourtOfTwoSisters.com. Br, D daily. The historic environs make for a memorable outdoor dining experience.

The famous daily Jazz Brunch buffet and classic Creole dishes sweeten the deal.

Galatoire’s 209 Bourbon St., 525-2021, Galatoires.com. L, D Tue-Sun. Friday lunches are a New Orleans tradition at this world-famous French-Creole grand dame. Tradition counts for everything here, and the crabmeat Sardou is delicious. Note: Jackets required for dinner and all day Sun. $$$$$ House of Blues 225 Decatur St., 3104999, HouseOfBlues.com/NewOrleans. L, D daily. Surprisingly good menu complements music in the main room. Worldfamous Gospel Brunch every Sunday.

Patio seating available. $$ Killer Poboys 811 Conti St., 252-6745, KillerPoboys.blogspot.com. L, D WedMon. This quasi-popup operating out of the Erin Rose Bar serves some of the city’s best poor boys, including one

NOLA 534 St. Louis St., 522-6652, Emerils.com. L Thu-Mon, D daily. Emeril’s more affordable eatery, featuring cedarplank-roasted redfish; private dining. $$$$$ Richard Fiske’s Martini Bar & Restaurant, 301 Dauphine St., 586-0972, RichardFiskes.com. D nightly. Just a few steps off of Bourbon Street you can find this relaxing bar featuring an innovative menu with dishes like Crawfish, Jalapeno-and-Bacon Mac and Cheese garnished with fried oysters. Live music a plus. $$$ Royal House, 441 Royal St., 528-2601, RoyalHouseRestaurant.com. L, D daily. B Sat and Sun. Poor boys, jambalaya and shrimp Creole are some of the favorites served here. Weekend breakfast and an oyster bar add to the crowd-pleasing appeal. $$$

SoBou 310 Chartres St., 552-4095, SoBouNola.com. B, L, D daily. There is something for everyone at this “Modern Creole Saloon.” Decidedly unstuffy with an emphasis on craft cocktails and wines by the glass. Everything from $1 pork cracklins to an extravagant foie gras burger on accomplished yet eclectic menus. $$

H Tableau 616 S. Peter St., 934-3463, TableauFrenchQuarter.com. L, D daily, Br Sun. Gulf seafood such as trout amandine and classic Creole brunch dishes like eggs Sardou are the highlights of this Dickie Brennan restaurant that shares space with Le Petite Théâtre on the corner of Jackson Square. $$$

H Tujague’s 823 Decatur St., 525-8676, TujaguesRestaurant.com. L Sat-Sun, D daily. For more than 150 years this landmark restaurant has been offering Creole cuisine. Favorites include a nightly six-course table d’hôté menu featuring a unique beef brisket with Creole sauce. $$$$$

Kenner Copeland’s 1319 W. Esplanade Ave., 617-9146, CopelandsofNewOrleans.com.

L, D daily, Br Sun. Al Copeland’s namesake chain includes favorites such as Shrimp Ducky. Popular for lunch. $$

Lakeview H Cava 789 Harrison Ave., 304-9034. D Mon-Sat. Fine dining (and excellent wine list) at this high-end Cajun and Creole

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DINING GUIDE restaurant that makes customer service a big part of the experience. $$$

Metairie/Jefferson Acme Oyster House 3000 Veterans Blvd., 309-4056, AcmeOyster.com. L, D daily.

Known as one of the best places to eat oysters. $$ Austin’s 5101 W. Esplanade Ave., 8885533, AustinsNo.com. D Mon-Sat. Mr. Ed’s upscale bistro serves contemporary Creole fare, including seafood and steaks. $$$ Copeland’s 1001 S. Clearview Parkway, 620-7800; 701 Veterans Blvd., 831-3437, CopelandsofNewOrleans.com. L, D daily, Br Sun. Al Copeland’s namesake chain includes favorites such as Shrimp Ducky.

Popular for lunch. $$ Crabby Jack’s 428 Jefferson Highway, 833-2722, CrabbyJacksNola.com. L MonSat. Lunch outpost of Jacques-Imo’s.

Famous for its fried seafood and poor boys including fried green tomatoes and roasted duck. $ Drago’s 3232 N. Arnoult Road, 888-9254, DragosRestaurant.com. L, D Mon-Sat. This famous seafooder specializes in charbroiled oysters, a dish they invented.

Great deals on fresh lobster as well. $$$$

Mid-City H Katie’s Restaurant and Bar 3701 Iberville St., 488-6582, KatiesInMidCity. com. L, D Mon-Sat, Br Sun. Creative poor boys, local dishes such as gumbo and Sunday brunch make this a neighborhood favorite. $$ Lil’ Dizzy’s Café 1500 Esplanade Ave., 569-8997, LilDizzysCafe.com. B, L daily, Br Sun. Spot local and national politicos dining at this favored Creole soul restaurant known for homey classics like fried chicken and trout Baquet. $

H Mandina’s 3800 Canal St., 482-9179, MandinasRestaurant.com. L, D daily.

Though the ambiance is more upscale, the food and seafood dishes make dining here a New Orleans experience. $$

H Toups’ Meatery 845 N. Carrollton Ave., 252-4999, ToupsMeatery.com. L, D Tue-Sat. Charcuterie, specialty cocktails

and an exhaustive list of excellent à la carte sides make this restaurant a carnivore’s delight. $$$

Upper 9th Ward St. Roch Market 2381 St. Claude Ave., 615-6541, StRochMarket.com. B, L, D daily. Beautiful restoration of historic St. Claude Marketplace with open dining space houses a broad collection of independent eateries including craft cocktails and more. $$

NORTHSHORE Acme Oyster House 1202 N. Highway 190, Covington, (985) 246-6155, AcmeOyster.com. L, D daily. Known as one of the best places to eat oysters. $$ Gallagher’s Grill 509 S. Tyler St., (985) 892-9992, GallaghersGrill.com. L, D TueFri, D Sat. Chef Pat Gallagher’s destination restaurant offers al fresco seating to accompany classically inspired New Orleans fare. Event catering offered. $$$

Riverbend H Boucherie 1506 S. Carrollton Ave., 862-5514, Boucherie-Nola.com. L, D Tue-Sat. Serving contemporary Southern food with an international angle, chef Nathaniel Zimet offers excellent ingredients presented simply. $$ Brigtsen’s 723 Dante St., 861-7610, Brigtsens.com. D Tue-Sat. Chef Frank Brigtsen’s nationally famous Creole cuisine makes this cozy cottage a true foodie destination. $$$$$

Uptown H Apolline 4729 Magazine St., 894-8881, ApollineRestaurant.com. D Tue-Sun, Br Sat-Sun. Cozy gem serves a refined menu of French and Creole classics peppered with Southern influences such as buttermilk fried quail with corn waffle. $$$ Casamento’s 4330 Magazine St., 8959761, CasamentosRestaurant.com. L Tue-Sat, D Thu-Sat. The family-owned restaurant has shucked oysters and fried seafood since 1919; closed during summer and for all major holidays. $$ Clancy’s 6100 Annunciation St., 8951111, ClancysNewOrleans.com. L Thu-Fri, D Mon-Sat. Their Creole-inspired menu

has been a favorite of locals for years. $$$

weather is right the romantic patio is the place to sit. $$$$

Commander’s Palace 1403 Washington Ave., 899-8221, CommandersPalace. com. L Mon-Fri, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. The grande dame is going strong under the auspices of James Beard Award-winner chef Tory McPhail. Jazz Brunch is a great deal. $$$$

Copeland’s 2333 Manhattan Blvd., 3641575, CopelandsofNewOrleans.com. L, D daily, Br Sun. Al Copeland’s namesake chain includes favorites such as Shrimp Ducky. Popular for lunch. $$

Dick and Jenny’s 4501 Tchoupitoulas St., 894-9880, DickAndJennys.com. L Thu-Fri, D Mon-Sat, Br Sun. A funky cottage serving Louisiana comfort food with flashes of innovation. $$$$

Reginelli’s Pizzeria Multiple Locations, Reginellis.com. L, D daily. Pizzas, pastas, salads, fat calzones and lofty focaccia sandwiches are at locations all over town. $$

Domilise’s 5240 Annunciation St., 899-912. L, D Mon-Wed, Fri-Sat. Local institution and rite-of-passage for those wanting an initiation to the real New Orleans. Wonderful poor boys and a unique atmosphere make this a one-of-a-kind place. $

Theo’s Pizza Multiple Locations, TheosPizza.com. L, D daily. The crackercrisp crust pizzas are complemented by a broad assortment of toppings with a lot of local ingredients at cheap prices. $$

H Gautreau’s 1728 Soniat St., 899-7397,

8282, PizzaDelicious.com. Authentic New York-style thin crust pizza is the reason to come to this affordable restaurant that began as a pop-up, but they also offer excellent salads sourced from small farms and homemade pasta dishes as well. Outdoor seating a plus. $

GautreausRestaurant.com. D Mon-Sat. Upscale destination serves refined interpretations of classics along with contemporary creations. $$$$$ Jacques-Imo’s Cafe 8324 Oak St., 8610886, Jacques-Imos.com. D Mon-Sat. Reinvented New Orleans cuisine served in a party atmosphere. The deep-fried roast beef poor boy is delicious. The lively bar scene offsets the long wait on weekends. $$$$ Joey K’s 3001 Magazine St., 891-0997, JoeyKsRestaurant.com. L, D Mon-Sat. A true neighborhood restaurant with daily lunch plates; red beans and rice are classic. $ Mahony’s 3454 Magazine St., 899-3374, MahonysPoBoys.com. L, D daily. Along with the usual poor boys, this sandwich shop serves up a grilled shrimp and fried green tomato version dressed with remoulade sauce. Sandwich offerings are augmented by a full bar. $ Mat & Naddie’s 937 Leonidas St., 8619600, MatAndNaddies.com. D Mon-Tue, Thu-Sat. Cozy converted house serves up creative and eclectic regionally inspired fare. Shrimp and crawfish croquettes make for a good appetizer and when the

WEST BANK

Pizza

Bywater H Pizza Delicious 617 Piety St., 676-

Uptown H Ancora 4508 Freret St., 324-1636, AncoraPizza.com. D Mon-Sat. Authentic Neapolitan-style pizza fired in an oven imported from Naples. The housemade charcuterie makes it a double-winner. $$ Pizza Domenica 4933 Magazine St., 301-4978, PizzaDomenica.com. L Fri-Sun, D nightly. James Beard Award Winning Chef Alon Shaya’s pizza centric spinoff of his popular Restaurant Domenica brings Neapolitan-style pies to Uptown. Excellent salads and charcuterie boards are offered as well. $$ Slice 1513 St. Charles Ave., 525-PIES (7437); 5538 Magazine St., 897-4800; SlicePizzeria.com. L, D daily. Order up slices or whole pizza pies done in several styles (thin- and thick-crust) as well as pastas, seafood, panini and salads. $

Seafood Akers Middendorf’s Interstate 55, Exit 15,

Christmas Eve Experience on the Natchez Steamboat Natchez, 569-1401, SteamboatNatchez.om A daytime or dinner jazz cruise on the last authentic steamboat on the Mississippi is always a unique way to enjoy the culture of New Orleans and the South. This year, the Natchez will host a special Christmas Eve cruise that includes a sumptuous festive dinner and a traditional jazz quartet.

The soup and salad courses will be followed with entrées such as smoked turkey and Wagyu beef, and finished with desserts including a Yule Log and bread pudding. Decorated for the holidays, the Natchez will sail between 7:30 -9:30 p.m., and advance reservations are required. – M.C.

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cheryl gerber photograph

30160 Highway 51 South, (985) 3866666, MiddendorfsRestaurant.com. L, D Wed-Sun. Historic seafood destination along the shores of Lake Maurepas is world-famous for its thin-fried catfish fillets. Open since 1934, it’s more than a restaurant, it’s a Sun. drive tradition. $$

CBD/Warehouse District H Borgne 601 Loyola Ave., 613-3860, BorgneRestaurant.com. L, D daily.

Coastal Louisiana seafood with an emphasis on Isleños cuisine (descendants of Canary Islanders who settled in St. Bernard Parish) is the focus of this high-volume destination adjacent to the Superdome. $$$

H Pêche 800 Magazine St., 522-1744, PecheRestaurant.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Award-winning southern-inspired seafood destination by chef Donald Link serves whole roasted Gulf fish from its massive, wood-burning oven. An excellent raw bar is offered as well. $$$ Sac-A-Lait 1051 Annunciation St., 324-3658, Sac-A-LaitRestaurant.com. D Tues-Sat, L Fri. Cody and Sam Carroll’s shrine to Gulf Coast and Louisiana culinary heritage melds seafood, game, artisan produce, and craft libations in an ambitious menu that celebrates local and southern cuisine. The striking buildout in the Cotton Mill lofts adds to the appeal. $$$$

French Quarter Bourbon House 144 Bourbon St., 522-

0111, BourbonHouse.com. B, L, D daily.

Local seafood, featured in both classic and contemporary dishes, is the focus of this New Orleans-centric destination.

And yes, bourbon is offered as well. $$$ Crazy Lobster 500 Port of New Orleans Place, Suite 83. L, D daily. Boiled seafood and festive atmosphere come together at this seafood-centric destination overlooking the Mississippi River. Outdoor seating a plus. $$$ Creole Cookery 508 Toulouse St., Suite C110, 524-9632, NewOrleansCreoleCookery.com. L, D daily. Crowd-pleasing destination in the French Quarter offers an expansive menu of Creole favorites and specialty cocktails served with New Orleans flair. $$$ Deanie’s Seafood 841 Iberville St., 5811316, Deanies.com. L, D daily. Louisiana seafood, baked, broiled, boiled and fried is the name of the game. Try the barbecue shrimp or towering seafood platters. $$$

H GW Fins 808 Bienville St., 581-FINS (3467), GWFins.com. D daily. Owners Gary Wollerman and twice chef of the year Tenney Flynn provide dishes at their seasonal peak. On a quest for unique variety, menu is printed daily. $$$$$

H Kingfish 337 Charters St., 598-5005, CocktailBarNewOrleans.com. L, D daily.

Regionally inspired seafood dishes with carefully sourced ingredients and

southern influence is the focus at this chef-driven French Quarter establishment. $$$

“Cajun-Boiled” Lobster prepared crawfish-style in spicy crab boil. $$$

Landry’s Seafood 400 N. Peters St., 5580038, LandrysSeafood.com. Kid-friendly and popular seafood spot serves of heaping platters of fried shrimp, Gulf oysters, catfish and more. $$

Mr. Ed’s Seafood and Italian Restaurant 910 W. Esplanade Ave., Ste. A, 463-3030, AustinsNo.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Neighborhood restaurant specializes in seafood and Italian offerings such as stuffed eggplant and bell pepper. Fried seafood and sandwiches make it a good stop for lunch. $$

Le Bayou 208 Bourbon St., 525-4755, LeBayouRestaurant.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Blackened redfish and Shrimp Ya-Ya are a just a few of the choices at this seafood-centric destination on Bourbon Street. Fried alligator is available for the more daring diner. $$$ Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House 512 Bienville St., 309-4848, MrEdsRestaurants.com/oyster-bar. L, D daily. A seafood lover’s paradise offering an array of favorites like Shrimp Creole, Crawfish Etouffee, Blackened Redfish and more.

An elaborate raw bar featuring gulf oysters both charbroiled and raw is part of the draw. $$$ Oceana Grill 739 Conti St., 525-6002, OceanaGrill.com. B, L, D daily. Gumbo, poor boys and barbecue shrimp are served at this kid-friendly seafood destination. $$ Pier 424, 424 Bourbon St., 309-1574, Pier424SeafoodMarket.com. L, D daily.

Seafood-centric restaurant offers long menu of traditional New Orleans fare augmented by unusual twists like

Kenner

Metairie Austin’s Restaurant, 5101 W. Esplanade Ave., 888-5533, AustinsNo.com. D MonSat. Signature steak, seafood and Italian specialties reign at this dinner-only destination. Catering offered as well. $$$ Deanie’s Seafood 1713 Lake Ave., 8314141, Deanies.com. L, D daily. Louisiana seafood, baked, broiled, boiled and fried, is the name of the game. Try the barbecue shrimp or towering seafood platters. $$$ Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House 3117 21st St., 833-6310, MrEdsRestaurants. com/oyster-bar. L, D Mon-Sat. Seafoodcentric eatery specializes in favorites like whole flounder, crabmeat au gratin and more. An oyster bar offering an array of raw and broiled bivalves adds to the appeal. $$$ Mr. Ed’s Seafood and Italian Restaurant 1001 Live Oak St., 838-0022, AustinsNo.com. L, D Mon-Sat. Neighborhood

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DINING GUIDE restaurant specializes in seafood and Italian offerings such as stuffed eggplant and bell pepper. Fried seafood and sandwiches make it a good stop for lunch. $$

tor leads to the plush, wood-paneled environs of this local outpost of the famed Chicago steakhouse popular with politicians and celebrities. $$$$

Mid-City

Ruth’s Chris Steak House Harrah’s Hotel, 525 Fulton St., 587-7099, RuthsChris. com. D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Filet mignon, creamed spinach and potatoes au gratin are the most popular dishes at this area steak institution, but there are also great seafood choices and top-notch desserts. $$$$$

Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House 301. N. Carrollton Ave., (phone number coming soon), MrEdsRestaurants.com/oyster-bar.

L, D daily. Latest outpost of local seafood chain features char-broiled oysters, seafood poor boys and other favorites such fried chicken and red beans and rice in a casual setting in Mid-City Market. $$

Uptown

Garden District H Mr. John’s Steakhouse 2111 St.

Frankie & Johnny’s 321 Arabella St., 243-1234, FrankieAndJohnnys.net. L, D daily. Serves fried and boiled seafood along with poor boys and daily lunch specials. Kid-friendly with a game room to boot. $$

Charles Ave., 679-7697, MrJohnsSteakhouse.com. D Tue-Sat, L Friday. Wood paneling, white tile and USDA Prime Beef served sizzling in butter are the hallmarks of this classic New Orleans steakhouse. $$$

Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House 1327 St. Charles Ave., 267-0169, MrEdsRestaurants.com/oyster-bar. L, D daily.

Outpost of local seafood chain serves Cajun and Creole classics in the Maison St. Charles Hotel. Favorites include Redfish Maison St. Charles, which features blackened redfish topped with crawfish etouffee. $$$

French Quarter

West End Landry’s Seafood 8000 Lakeshore Drive, West End, 283-1010, LandrysSeafood. com. Kid-friendly and popular seafood spot serves of heaping platters of fried shrimp, Gulf oysters, catfish and more. $$

Steakhouse CBD/Warehouse District H Besh Steak Harrah’s Casino, 8 Canal St., 533-6111, HarrahsNewOrleans. com. D daily. Acclaimed chef John Besh reinterprets the classic steakhouse with his signature contemporary Louisiana flair. $$$$$ Chophouse New Orleans 322 Magazine St., 522-7902, ChophouseNola.com. D daily. In addition to USDA prime grade aged steaks prepared under a broiler that reaches 1,700 degrees, Chophouse offers lobster, redfish and classic steakhouse sides. $$$

H Desi Vega’s Steakhouse 628 St. Charles Ave., 523-7600, DesiVegaSteaks. com. L Mon-Fri, D Mon-Sat. USDA Prime steaks form the base of this Mr. John’s offshoot overlooking Lafayette Square, but Italian specialties and a smattering of locally inspired seafood dishes round out the appeal. $$$

Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse 716 Iberville St., 522-2467, DickieBrennansSteakhouse.com. L Fri, D daily. Nationally recognized steakhouse serves USDA Prime steaks and local seafood. $$$$$

H Doris Metropolitan 620 Chartres St., 267-3500, DorisMetropolitan.com. L SatSun, D daily. Innovative, genre-busting steakhouse plays with expectations and succeeds with modernist dishes like their Classified Cut and Beetroot Supreme. $$$$ Galatoire’s 33 Bar & Steak 215 Bourbon St., 335-3932, Galatoires33BarAndSteak. com. L Fri, D Sun-Thu. Steakhouse offshoot of the venerable Creole grande dame offers hand-crafted cocktails to accompany classic steakhouse fare as well as inspired dishes like the Gouté 33: horseradish-crusted bone marrow and deviled eggs with crab ravigote and smoked trout. Reservations accepted. $$$

Metairie Ruth’s Chris Steak House 3633 Veterans Blvd., 888-3600, RuthsChris.com. L Fri, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Filet mignon, creamed spinach and potatoes au gratin are the most popular dishes at this area steak institution, but there are also great seafood choices and top-notch desserts. $$$$$

Mid-City H Crescent City Steaks 1001 N. Broad St., 821-3271, CrescentCitySteaks.com. L Tue-Fri & Sun, D daily. One of the classic New Orleans steakhouses. Steaks, sides and drinks are what you get. $$$$

H La Boca 870 Tchoupitoulas St., 525-

Uptown

8205, LaBocaSteaks.com. D Mon-Sat. This Argentine steakhouse specializes in cuts of meat along with pastas and wines. Specials include the provoleta appetizer and the Vacio flank steak. $$$

Charlie’s Steak House 4510 Dryades St., 895-9323, CharliesSteakHouseNola. com. D Tues-Sat. This quintessential New Orleans neighborhood steak house serves up carnivorous delights including its 32-ounce T-Bone in a relaxed and unpretentious atmosphere. An upstairs dining room accommodates larger parties with ease. $$$

Morton’s The Steakhouse 365 Canal St., One Canal Place, 566-0221, Mortons. com/NewOrleans. D daily. Private eleva-

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Vegan/Vegetarian Lower Garden District H The Green Fork 1400 Prytania St., 267-7672, GreenForkNola.com. B, L Mon-Sat. Fresh juices, smoothies and vegetarian-friendly fare make The Green Fork a favorite for lovers of healthy food.

Catering is offered as well. $$

World Byblos Multiple Locations, ByblosRestaurants.com. L, D daily. Upscale Middle Eastern cuisine featuring traditional seafood, lamb and vegetarian options. $$

Bywater The Green Goddess 307 Exchange Place, 301-3347, GreenGoddessRestaurant.com.

L, D Wed-Sun. One of the most imaginative local restaurants. The menu is constantly changing, and chef Paul Artigues always has ample vegetarian options.

Combine all of that with a fantastic selection of drinks, wine and beer, and it’s the total (albeit small) package. $$

CBD/Warehouse District Johnny Sanchez 930 Poydras St., 304-6615, JohnnySanchezRestaurant. com. L, D daily. Contemporary Mexican mecca offering celebrity chef cachet to go along with the locally sourced produce accompanying the Bistec a la Parilla.

Popular happy hour and downtown locale next to South Market District add to the appeal. $$$

H Lüke 333 St. Charles Ave., 378-2840, LukeNewOrleans.com. B, L, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Chef John Besh and executive chef Matt Regan serve Germanic specialties and French bistro classics, housemade pâtés and abundant plateaux of cold, fresh seafood. $$$ Palace Café 605 Canal St., 523-1661, PalaceCafe.com. L Mon-Sat, D daily, Br Sun. Dickie Brennan-owned brasserie with French-style sidewalk seating and house-created specialties of chef Darrin Nesbit. Favorites here include crabmeat cheesecake, turtle soup, the Werlein salad with fried Louisiana oysters and pork “debris” studded Palace potato pie. $$$$$

Faubourg Marigny H Mona’s Café 504 Frenchmen St.,

Susan Spicer’s nationally acclaimed cuisine is served in this 200-year-old cottage. Ask for a seat on the romantic patio, weather permitting. $$$$$ El Gato Negro 81 French Market Place, 525-9752, ElGatoNegroNola.com. Central Mexican cuisine along with handmuddled mojitos and margaritas made with freshly squeezed juice. A weekend breakfast menu is an additional plus. $$

Kenner H Fiesta Latina 1924 Airline Drive, 4682384, FiestaLatinaRestaurant.com. B, L, D daily. A big-screen TV normally shows a soccer match or MTV Latino at this home for authentic Central American food.

Tacos include a charred carne asada. $$

Lakewood H Mizado 5080 Pontchartrain Blvd., 885-5555, MizadoCocina.com. L daily, D Mon-Sat. Sleek restaurant offers modern Mexican cuisine featuring pan-Latin flavors and influences. Small batch tequila and a ceviche bar make it a party. $$

Lakeview H Mondo 900 Harrison Ave., 224-2633, MondoNewOrleans.com. L Mon-Fri, D Mon-Sat, Br Sun. Chef Susan Spicer’s take on world cuisine. Make sure to call ahead because the place has a deserved reputation for good food and good times. $$$

METAIRIE Vega Tapas Café 2051 Metairie Road, 836-2007, VegaTapasCafe.com. D MonSat. Fun, eclectic small plates destination offers creative fare keeps guests coming back with frequent regionally inspired specialty menus served with humor and whimsy. $$

Mid-City Juan’s Flying Burrito 4724 S. Carrollton Ave., 486-9950, JuansFlyingBurrito. com. L, D daily. Hard-core tacos and massive burritos are served in an edgy atmosphere. $ Lola’s 3312 Esplanade Ave., 488-6946, LolasNewOrleans.com. D daily. Garlicky Spanish dishes and great paella make this artsy boîte a hipster destination. $$$

H Mona’s Café 3901 Banks St., 482-

949-4115. L, D daily. Middle Eastern specialties such as baba ganuj, tender-tangy beef or chicken shawarma, falafel and gyros, stuffed into pillowy pita bread or on platters. The lentil soup with crunchy pita chips and desserts, such as sticky sweet baklava, round out the menu. $

7743. L, D daily. Middle Eastern specialties such as baba ganuj, tender-tangy beef or chicken shawarma, falafel and gyros, stuffed into pillowy pita bread or on platters. The lentil soup with crunchy pita chips and desserts, such as sticky sweet baklava, round out the menu. $

Faubourg St. John H 1000 Figs 3141 Ponce De Leon St.,

H Taqueria Guerrero 208 N. Carrollton

301-0848, 1000Figs.com. L, D Tue-Sat. Vegetarian-friendly offshoot of the Fat Falafel Food Truck offers a healthy farm-to-table alternative to cookie-cutter Middle Eastern places. $$

French Quarter Bayona 430 Dauphine St., 525-4455, Bayona.com. L Wed-Sat, D Mon-Sat. Chef

Ave., 484-6959. B, L, D, Tue-Sat. Friendly staff and authentic Mexican cuisine make this affordable neighborhood restaurant a neighborhood favorite. $

Upper 9th Ward Kebab , 2315 Saint Claude Ave., 3834328, KebabNola.com. L, D Fri-Mon. The menu is short and tasty at this kebab outpost along the revitalized St. Claude

Avenue corridor. $

Uptown H Café Abyssinia 3511 Magazine St., 894-6238. L, D daily. One of a just few authentic Ethiopian restaurants in the city, excellent injera and spicy vegetarian fare make this a local favorite. $$

H Irish House 1432 St. Charles Ave., 595-6755, TheIrishHouseNewOrleans. com. L Mon-Fri, D daily, Br Sat-Sun. Irish pub dishes such as shepherd’s pie and fish and chips are featured here, as well as creative cocktails like Irish iced coffee. Check the schedule of events for live music. $$ Jamila’s Mediterranean Tunisian Cuisine 7808 Maple St., 866-4366. D Tue-Sun. Intimate and exotic bistro serving Mediterranean and Tunisian cuisine. The Grilled Merguez is a Jazz Fest favorite and vegetarian options are offered. $$ Juan’s Flying Burrito 2018 Magazine St., 569-0000, JuansFlyingBurrito. com. L, D daily. Hard-core tacos and massive burritos are served in an edgy atmosphere. $

H Mona’s Café 4126 Magazine St., 894-9800; 1120 S. Carrollton Ave., 861-8174. L, D daily. Middle Eastern specialties such as baba ganuj, tendertangy beef or chicken shawarma, falafel and gyros, stuffed into pillowy pita

bread or on platters. The lentil soup with crunchy pita chips and desserts, such as sticky sweet baklava, round out the menu. $

H Panchita’s 1434 S. Carrollton Ave., 281-4127. L, D daily. Authentic, budgetfriendly Mexican restaurant serves tamales, mole and offers free chips and salsa as well as sangria. $ H Patois 6078 Laurel St., 895-9441, PatoisNola.com. L Fri, D Wed-Sat, Br Sun. The food is French in technique, with influences from across the Mediterranean as well as the American South, all filtered through the talent of chef Aaron Burgau. Reservations recommended. $$$

H Shaya 4213 Magazine St., 891-4213, ShayaRestaurant.com. L, D daily. James Beard Award-winning chef Alon Shaya pays homage to his native Israel with this contemporary Israeli hotspot.

Fattoush Salad and Matzo Ball Soup made with slow-cooked duck are dishes to try. $$$

Specialty Foods CBD/Warehouse District Calcasieu 930 Tchoupitoulas St., 5882188, CalcasieuRooms.com. For gatherings both large and small, the catering menus feature modern Louisiana cooking and the Cajun cuisine for which chef Donald Link is justifiably famous.

French Quarter Antoine’s Annex 513 Royal St., 5258045, Antoines.com/Antoines-Annex.

Open daily. Serves French pastries, including individual baked Alaskas, ice cream and gelato, as well as panini, salads and coffee. Delivery available.

Metairie Sucré 3301 Veterans Blvd., 834-2277, ShopSucre.com. Desserts daily. Open late weekends. Chocolates, pastry and gelato draw rave reviews at this dessert destination. Beautiful packaging makes this a great place to shop for gifts.

Catering available.

and related accouterments. Look for wine and cheese specials every Friday.

Sucré 3025 Magazine St., 520-8311, ShopSucre.com. Desserts daily & nightly. Open late weekends. Chocolates, pastry and gelato draw rave reviews at this dessert destination. Beautiful packaging makes this a great place to shop for gifts. Catering available. n

Mid-City H Blue Dot Donuts 4301 Canal St., 218-4866, BlueDotDonuts.com. B, L Tue-Sun. The Bacon Maple Long John gets all the press, but returning customers are happy with the classics as well as twists like peanut butter and jelly.

Uptown Blue Frog Chocolates 5707 Magazine St., 269-5707, BlueFrogChocolates.com.

Open daily, closed Sundays in summer.

French and Belgian chocolate truffles and Italian candy flowers make this a great place for gifts.

St. James Cheese Company 5004 Prytania St., 899-4737, StJamesCheese. com. Open daily. Specialty shop offers a selection of fine cheeses, wines, beers

If you feel that a restaurant has been misplaced, please email Managing Editor Morgan Packard at Morgan@MyNewOrleans.com.

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1. Grandmother’s Buttons GrandmothersButtons.com 2105 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-249-5821 2

The Mahalia is a versatile combination bracelet and necklace. It features vintage West German glass, a Czech Republic hand-pressed glass button, an antique brass button circa 1880-1910, and a vintage German emerald glass teardrop. $106

2. Lakeside Shopping Center LakesideShopping.com 504-835-8000

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Trends to watch for this season are slouchy CC fur pom pom beanies that are perfect stocking stuffers, $24, and throw on and go blanket scarves that can be styled more than one way for those cold winter nights, $24 at Blink Boutique in Lakeside Shopping Center.

3. Luna Press LunaPress.com

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The Laughing Lady Written and illustrated by Dalt Wonk, available at local bookstores and LunaPress.com. A fantasy for children and adults, with whimsical full-color illustrations and original music. Adventures and nearescapes abound! Can Florence save her kidnapped pet cockatoo from the evil Laughing Lady? $14

4. Cristy's Collection CristyCali.com 504-407-5041 Cristy Cali jewelry is all about empowering you to your greatest potential. When you look in the mirror with your new Cristy Cali Magnolia Studs, remember you are beautiful and a gift to our planet Earth.

Magnolia Stud Earrings $65

5. Le Visage Day Spa LeVisageDaySpaNola.com 8110 Hampson St., New Orleans 504-265-8018 Frasier Fir's quintessential fragrance sparks traditions and conjures up joyous memories to Le Visage clients and staff. The aromatic snap of Siberian Fir needles, heartening cedar wood and sandalwood form a refreshing bed of crisp, just-cut forest fragrance that feels cozy and comforting.

Since the spa opened, they have been carrying the most-coveted collection with new designs and accessories that echo the fragrance's forest heritage bringing a sense of beauty that is as enjoyable as a spa treatment at Le Visage.

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ADVERTISING SECTION 6. QUEORK Queork.com 838 Chartres St., French Quarter 3005 Magazine St., Garden District 504-481-4910 Cork phone wallet cases: iPhone 5 through 7; Samsung 5, 6; and Note $39. For Him: Black and Gold Cork Oxford shoes, Goodyear welted, made in Portugal $270. For Her: Cork Flapper handbag $149.

7. Auraluz ShopAuraluz.com 4408 Shores Drive, Metairie 504-888-3313

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LAMPE BERGER ... The perfect gift!

It's both decorative and functional.

Made in France for over 118 years, each Lampe Berger cleanses, purifies and fragrances the air with over 50 fragrances to choose from ... all available at AURALUZ.

8. Chateau Drugs & Gifts 3544 West Esplanade Ave., Metairie 504-889-2300 Find something for everyone on your holiday list in one spot! In addition to beautiful home décor, you’ll find children’s toys, soaps and candles, handbags, sweaters and ponchos, robes and pajamas, seasonal items and more! Free gift wrap, too!

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9. Konnie’s Gift Depot 859 Brownswitch Road, Slidell 985-643-8000 8

Safe, flameless, battery powered LED Candles by Cypress have new features including realistic appearance and selectable flickering look. Set of three comes with remote control which controls brightness, flickering as well as selectable 4- and 8-hour timer. Great for use around children and pets!

10. Southern Aesthetics PTreeceMD.com 3815 Hessmer Ave., Metairie 504-779-7749

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Southern Aesthetics ... helping clients look and feel younger for over 20 years. Give them something they want that will last all year … or put a little something “special” in your own stocking! Gift cards are 20% off through December 25th for all medical spa and surgical services!

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ADVERTISING SECTION 11. Preservation Tile Co. PreservationTiles.com The perfect personalized gift for everyone on your list! Local artist Danny Chinn recreates the historic New Orleans street tiles by hand. No two are alike to ensure a unique collection. Each comes framed and ready to hang.

Give a piece of history and share in the spirit of New Orleans and its local art.

12. Saint Hugh TheWomenWhoHunt.com 504-517-4844 Saint Hugh’s Pro Pullover is the perfect gift for the woman who values comfort and style. Made with organic french terry and featuring a sleek angled neckline, it’s the cozy and chic pullover she’ll live in this season.

13. Commander’s Palace CommandersPalace.com 1403 Washington Ave., New Orleans 504-899-8221 Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace: I don’t want a restaurant where a jazz band can’t come marching through. Before the food business was show business, one woman led the way. You’ll love the story of Miss Ella Brennan and how the famous Brennan clan got their start on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street.

This is the Great American Story. Purchase your copy at Commander’s Palace, Café Adelaide and SoBou or online at CommandersPalace.com.

14. Steamboat Natchez SteamboatNatchez.com 504-587-0733 The authentic Steamboat NATCHEZ is a memorial to Mississippi River’s Golden Age of steamboats. Frances Coppola says, “Kerri McCaffety turns the places she photographs into poem” which she has in her 19th book, with Captain Clarke Hawley. Hard and soft cover.

15. Boudreaux's Jewelers

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BoudreauxsJewelers.com 701 Metairie Road, Metairie 504-831-2602 Since 1933, the craftsmen of Boudreaux’s Jewelers have taken enormous pride in designing exquisite creations of outstanding quality and enduring value. Boudreaux’s offers distinguished pieces from many of the world’s finest watch and jewelry designers, including this handmade ruby and diamond band in 18 White Gold. A gift from Boudreaux’s Jewelers will surely make your loved one’s holidays sparkle.

16. Donald J. Pliner DonaldJPliner.com Canal Place, Second floor, New Orleans 504-522-1720 Add some glitz to your wardrobe with the sparkly style of the KEARA kid suede pump embellished with crystals. This pump will become your new wardrobe staple to style with all of your favorite outfits, just in time for the holiday season.

17. Yvonne LaFleur YvonneLaFleur.com 8131 Hampson St., New Orleans 504-866–9666 Yvonne LaFleur has gifts for every woman on your holiday list. Each year she extends special shopping evenings from 6 to 8 on Thursdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Enjoy champagne, models, and expert assistance in selecting gowns and presents complimentary gift-wrapped.

Gift selections include Yvonne LaFleur signature fragrance products, furs, cashmere sweaters, lingerie, formal gowns, jewelry, handbags and scarves.

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18. The Basketry TheBasketry.com 12337 Highway 90, Luling 985-785-8769 The Basketry has been providing beautiful custom designed gift baskets since 1995.

Let us make shopping easy and ship/deliver a beautiful gift basket to family, friends and clients. Starting at $25.

19. Keil’s Antiques KeilsAntiques.com 325 Royal St., New Orleans 504-522-4552 For over a century, Keil's Antiques has been providing furnishings for New Orleans' finest homes. A recent visit to Royal Street opened our eyes to their amazing collection of chandeliers. No wonder people come from all over to shop there!

20. Trashy Diva TrashyDiva.com 2048 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-299-8777 Make an unforgettable entrance into all your holiday parties in Trashy Diva's new Fresco Floral collection– a deeply hued watercolor satin line – paired with lush and luxurious jewels from designer Kenny Ma.

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21. M. Goldberg Clothier MGoldbergClothier.com 502 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans 504-891-1119

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Barbour’s high quality, durable and timeless style jackets are designed for layering and comfort that will last for many years. M. Goldberg offers the largest selection of men’s and women’s Barbour in the region.

Available in an assortment of styles and colors. Complimentary gift wrapping and off street parking. Open Monday–Saturday 10am–6pm.

22. Scriptura Scriptura.com 5423 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-897-1555 3301 Veterans Blvd., Metairie (corner of Severn & 17th Street) 504-219-1113

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Our stunning Italian Leather Fleur de lis journal ($68) and Visconti Portrait Blu Van Gogh fountain pen ($259) will make the perfect stocking stuffer for all of your favorites on the nice list!

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23. Wellington & Company WCJewelry.com 505 Royal St.,New Orleans 504-525-4855

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The Wellington & Company sapphire and diamond ring is the perfect gift to give this holiday season. Wear it every day or on occasion only and you will be sure to shine. Available in any size.

24. R | D Home RazzleDazzle.com 2014 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-523-9525 Lady Primrose products were first created when one of London's finest hotels, the Lanesborough (adjacent to Buckingham Palace) needed a line of luxury bath and body products that would live up to the standards of their discriminating guests. The Tryst candle is part of the Tryst collection – their signature fragrance.

25. Bra Genie TheBraGenie.com 2881 Highway 190, Mandeville 985-951-8638 7539 Corporate Blvd., Suite 180, Baton Rouge 225-223-6114 Look your best at the holiday parties in Shapeez underwire bra camis. This shapewear gives you 360-degree perfection and erases bra lines and back bulges! With no-roll hem, silky stretch Lycra and moisture wicking fabric it works to slims the tummy and waist. Available for $89 in black and beige. Gift wrap and shipping are always free! Carrying 180+ sizes, Bra Genie has holiday gifts for everyone and gift cards always fit!

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26. Fleur D’Orleans FleurDOrleans.com 3701a Magazine St. | 504-899-5585 818 Chartres St. | 504-475-5254 Inspired by the design of a traditional New Orleans art glass window, this beautiful pair of 14K gold plated earrings add the sparkle of gold, and New Orleans, to any holiday gift. Fleur D’Orleans has more than 100 designs inspired by the heritage of New Orleans.

27. Jaci Blue JaciBlue.com 2111 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-603-2929

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At Jaci Blue, you’ll find gorgeous, fashion-forward clothing hand picked to flatter women sizes 12 and up. Arrive flawless to any holiday festivity in this Karen Kane lace peplum top ($126) with pencil skirt ($90).

28. Judy at the Rink Facebook: @JudyAtTheRink 2727 Prytania St., New Orleans 504-891-7018 Judy at the Rink has a large selection of unique holiday decor and gifts, including these hand crafted glasses!

There are various colors and styles to choose from and glasses are sold separately. Judy is the place to get away from the mall madness to shop local at great prices for décor, gifts and party supplies for the perfect holiday hostess! Parking available in The Rink garage. Check us out on Facebook!

29. Good Feet 29

OrleansShoes.com 539 Bienville St., French Quarter 504-875-2929 2109 Magazine St., Uptown 504-309-7702 3000 Severn Ave., Metairie 504-888-7080 Find relief from foot, leg and back pain this holiday season with Good Feet® orthotics and popular comfort shoe brands such as Naot, Birkenstock, Brooks, New Balance, Dansko, KEEN, Vionic and more. Complimentary personal consultations seven days a week.

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30. Dr. Burkenstock’s Skin Body Health SkinBodyHealth.com 3841 Veterans Blvd., Metairie 504-208-9052 2040 N. Causeway Blvd., Mandeville 985-273-5200 Be fabulous for the festivities!

Dr. Burkenstock has trained with International luminaries to ensure you receive the best results from your anti-aging treatments including lasers, Botox and fillers. In December, Crows Feet Botox $269. (Value: $349)

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ADVERTISING SECTION 31. NOLA Boards NolaBoards.com 4304 Magazine St., New Orleans 504-516-2601 This year give a gift that is handmade right here in New Orleans! NOLA Boards is now open at 4304 Magazine St. and online.

Pictured is The Magnetic Bar Tool Holder. The perfect storage for all your bar tools! $115.

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32. Symmetry Jewelers SymmetryJewelers.com 8183 Hampson St., New Orleans 504-861-9925 Stunning and dramatic describes this feature piece in Symmetry Jewelers and Designers extensive antique and estate jewelry collection.

The necklace, crafted in platinum, is set with 14.07 carats of matched pear, marquis and round brilliant cut diamonds with 14.47 carats of rich green pear shaped emeralds. $71,000.

33. NOLA Made MagnoliaBlvd.net Lakeside Mall 504-339-7770 Spoil your favorite NOLA sweetie with these essential baking supplies. Our New Orleans Cookie Cutters feature the cathedral, superdome and streetcar $15. Add a set of NOLA Sweets towels $28 and Silicone Spatula $10 to complete the set!

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34.Tommy's Cuisine

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TommysNewOrleans.com 746 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans 504-581-1103 Phenomenal holiday parties start and end at Tommy’s Cuisine in the Warehouse District. From sit down dinners to passed hors d’oeuvres, and everything in between, they can help you plan and execute the party of a lifetime. For holiday and special event parties of 5-500 or more, think Tommy’s Cuisine in the Warehouse District.

35. Shen Yun ShenYun.com/New-Orleans Shen Yun Performing Arts at Mahalia Jackson Theater 888-974-3698 The New York Times says "Shen Yun" presents "5,000 years of Chinese music and dance in one night." Every year Shen Yun presents over 400 shows all over the world. See for yourself why this performance is leaving millions in awe. Mahalia Jackson Theater from January 20-21st.

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ADVERTISING SECTION

Home Health Home health services are in high demand across Louisiana and the country, as more and more aging adults require assistance, whether medical in nature or with daily tasks and activities. For many families, this can put strain on financial resources as their children often shoulder the burden out of love and gratitude. If your family needs help in caring for an aging adult, there are home health providers and community resources available. Time with aging parents should be filled with joy and making memories, and shouldn’t be financially worrisome or stressful. Learn about your options, and spend your time together doing the things you love most. From Alzheimer’s care to helping extend one’s independence, the following resources are available locally.

The Alzheimer’s Association provides information and tools helpful for those needing to cope with and manage living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. One of the best resources from the Alzheimer’s Association is their 24/7 Helpline number (800-272-3900), which assists patients and families around the clock by providing information, support, and referrals to local programs and services. Callers who are in crisis are triaged to the Alzheimer’s Association’s free, confidential care consultation provided by master’s level clinicians. The 24/7 Helpline also has a language translation service.

The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research.

Their mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research, to provide and enhance care and 112

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support for all affected, and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Their vision is a world without Alzheimer’s®. To learn more, visit ALZ.org or call 800-272-3900.

Providing better solutions for aging well in New Orleans since 1991, Home Care Solutions specializes in compassionate in-home care and Alzheimer’s care in addition to Aging LifeCare Management services to help elderly loved ones in the Greater New Orleans area extend their independence.

Home Care Solutions' team of reliable, experienced caregivers provide older adults assistance with daily living and companionship services. Each caregiver is carefully matched to meet both client needs and personality. The company is committed to providing clients with the highest quality of care in their chosen environment, keeping loved ones safe and comfortable while giving families peace of mind.

Care Managers simplify, coordinate and proactively guide the care of a loved one with intelligence, expertise and heart. They are experienced advocates capable of managing complex situations and finding intelligent and creative solutions for all care concerns.

Home Care Solutions is a member of the Home Care Association of America and the Aging LifeCare Association and is also a licensed Personal Care Attendant Agency. For more information call 504-828-0900 or visit HomeCareNewOrleans.com.

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Urgent Care

Help When You Need It

If we all had a crystal ball to tell us when and how we would fall ill or need care, we’d be sure to make preventative plans or know in advance where we could go for help.

Unfortunately, when illness or injury strikes, we don’t have advance notice and timing is often inconvenient. Knowing what resources are available and at what hours can make a big difference in saving you time and possibly pain. Whether you need assistance with a broken limb, a sore throat or a behavioral health problem, there are resources across New Orleans that can help. Before, during or after business hours, you can find medical and psychiatric help from dedicated professionals who know that illness and injury are never convenient. Take a look at the following resources, and you’ll be a step a head when a health concern strikes.

MHM Urgent Care & Occupational Health provides Greater New Orleans with a network of 12 Urgent Care clinics and four Occupational Medicine clinics that serve the general community and employer groups in seven Southeast Louisiana parishes. These clinics are a trusted destination for affordable, immediate healthcare needs and offer noncritical, urgent medical care to patients as an alternative to long waits in emergency rooms or closed primary care physician’s offices.

All 12 MHM Urgent Care locations are open 365 days a year, offering extended hours with no appointments needed.

MHM Urgent Care has earned the accreditation of the Joint Commission, meeting the highest and most rigorous performance standards for patient care and safety.

MHM Occupational Health focuses on the prevention, evaluation, treatment and resolution of work related illnesses, injuries and diseases. MHM is dedicated to getting employees back to work as quickly and safely as possible. MHM Occupational Health is led by board-certified Occupational Medicine physicians, Dr. Joseph Tamimie and Dr. Douglas Swift. These clinics are located in Kenner, Metairie, the Westbank and Covington.

Stuck with no insurance because of high premiums?

High copays? St. Thomas Community Health Center can help. They offer an affordable sliding scale based on your income, whether you have insurance or not. Their certified application counselors can also help you enroll in an affordable plan.

With a legacy dating back to 1987, St. Thomas Community Health Center has continued its mission of providing comprehensive primary care to the community regardless of ability to pay. As a Federally Qualified Health Center and Patient-Centered Medical Home, their robust teams of dedicated providers work to address individual health needs and ensure delivery of the highest quality of care.

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Services at St. Thomas include primary care, pediatrics, OB-GYN, optometry, behavioral health, and mammography.

They offer same day and next day appointment scheduling, as well as walk-ins to see the next available provider. Office hours are from 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday.

Call 504-529-5558 to schedule an appointment at any of their six convenient locations. For more information, visit StThomasCHC.org.

Did you know that River Oaks Hospital in New Orleans is the only facility in Louisiana that has an inpatient and partial hospitalization program specializing in the treatment of eating disorders? On Tuesday, January 31, 5:30-7 p.m., the Program Director of The Eating Disorders Treatment Center at River Oaks Hospital will be hosting a Q&A session for the community. If you have questions regarding treatment options, warning signs, populations at risk or general questions related to anorexia, bulimia or related disorders, River Oaks Hospital invites you to participate in this informative opportunity. There is no cost to attend, but registration is required. Visit RiverOaksHospital.com/ events for more details and to register.

River Oaks Hospital is the only freestanding psychiatric facility on the New Orleans south shore that has programming for ages 6 through adulthood. Call 504-7341740 or visit RiverOaksHospital.com for more information on their inpatient, outpatient or partial hospitalization programs. Free and confidential assessments are available 24 hours a day, and they’re in network with most insurance plans.

West Jefferson Medical Center (WJMC) in partnership with

Children’s Hospital is proud to announce the opening of

a dedicated pediatric emergency room within WJMC. The emergency room is conveniently located across from the West Jefferson adult ER and just off the main lobby. This new alliance will provide care close to home for the West Bank community with convenient, quick access to emergency care for the whole family from birth through adulthood. The Pediatric Emergency Room at WJMC offers 24/7 emergency care with pediatric specific equipment, seven exam rooms and physicians and nurses who are specially trained to work with children.

Children’s Hospital and WJMC are proud members of LCMC Health, a Louisiana-based, not-for-profit hospital system serving the healthcare needs of the Gulf Coast region.

LCMC Health currently manages award-winning community hospitals including Touro, University Medical Center New Orleans, New Orleans East Hospital, Children’s Hospital and West Jefferson Medical Center. For more information, visit CHNola.org/emergency or call 504-349-1555.

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Delta Festival Ballet

From hot cocoa and the warm glow of lights to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” booming through the department store, everyone has their favorite elements of the holiday season and ways of getting into the spirit.

While foodies look forward to the various Reveillon menus offered across town, kids look forward to photos with Santa and decorating gingerbread houses with candy and crafts.

Many families enjoy sitting around the table together, while others love to pile in the car and check out the numerous light displays, citywide festivities and holiday shopping opportunities. No matter how you prefer to celebrate, ’tis the season to gather with loved ones. Across the region, there’s plenty to do, see and even taste together. The following events, activities, restaurants and community resources are excited to extend some holiday cheer to you and yours.

Events & Attractions

Celebration in the Oaks in New Orleans City Park is one of the most spectacular holiday lights festivals in the country. City Park’s famous oaks are swathed in over 1 million twinkling lights with breathtaking light displays placed throughout 25 acres of the park, including the Botanical Garden, Storyland and Carousel Gardens Amusement Park.

New Orleans’ mild winter weather and City Park’s stunning landscape with its oak groves, moss-covered cypresses and 116

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meandering lagoons make Celebration in the Oaks a unique holiday event. This annual celebration is magical for all ages and has become an enduring holiday tradition for families.

Visitors experience a range of attractions, from light displays to walkways lined with Christmas trees, to rides on the holiday train and historic Carousel.

Celebration in the Oaks runs now through Jan. 1. The event is closed Dec. 1, as well as on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Hours are Sunday-Thursday, 6-10 p.m., and FridaySaturday, 6-11 p.m.

For more information on events and Park amenities, visit NewOrleansCityPark.com.

Gather your family to celebrate beloved holiday traditions and make new memories at the Louisiana Children’s Museum, located at 420 Julia St. Stroll the ongoing Festival of Trees, a festive collection of whimsical holiday trees created by local schools, artists and community partners.

On Sat., Dec. 3, don’t miss Festival of Trees Family Fun Day Patron Brunch and Pajama Party. The Patron Brunch, 10 a.m.-noon begins with a delicious breakfast, a visit from Mr. Bingle and keepsake family photographs. The Newman Jazz Band will entertain, followed by a special holiday performance. After brunch, the fun day continues with festivities including music, crafts, cookie decorating, holiday games and more. Patron Brunch tickets are $20 per person; Fun Day tickets (noon-4:30 p.m.) are $15 per person.

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On Dec. 31, ring in the New Year at noon! Design a one-ofa-kind paper bag party hat and festive noisemaker, and enjoy live music and the noon countdown to 2017 with a confetti toss and balloon release. Tickets are $10 per person. For more information and to pre-register for events, go to LCM.org.

NOLA ChristmasFest returns even bigger and better this year to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, Dec. 16-30! The indoor family Christmas festival features a real and expanded ice skating rink – nearly hockey rink in size – as well as a 120-foot ice slide, a Kringle Carousel, more rides and inflatables, a life-size Amazing Maze, snowball arena, Santa and holiday characters, crafts, a New Orleansthemed gingerbread house exhibit, dozens of decorated trees, entertainment and more. Additionally, animated lights will sparkle outside for two miles along Convention Center Boulevard. Private skating lessons can be pre-purchased, and there’s convenient parking nearby.

NOLA ChristmasFest is open both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Tickets are $20 per person and include skating, skates, all rides and inflatables. Group tickets may be purchased in advance for $15 each for parties of 10. Photos with Santa, skating lessons, cookie decorating, and special events are not included. Purchase tickets at NolaChristmasFest.com.

A variety of festive, holiday events take place this month at The Ritz-Carlton, offering families and friends plenty of opportunities to gather and delight in the season. The Papa Noel Tea, with two seatings a day, is a special holiday celebration featuring an appearance by Papa Noel. Children enjoy cookie decorating, viewing the Ritz-Carlton’s one of a kind gingerbread display and other holiday surprises.

Continue the tradition and build your own gingerbread

house with the Ritz-Carlton as children of all ages are invited to explore their holiday creativity. Each house can accommodate up to four guests, and adult supervision and reservations are required. Both activities take place on selective days in December.

Take the hassle out of your holiday with the Ritz-Carlton’s four-course Reveillon menu offered throughout December, including Christmas Eve, or the four-course Christmas Day Jubilee featuring a seafood buffet, dessert station, unlimited champagne and live entertainment.

For holiday event information and to make reservations for the Ritz-Carlton’s holiday events, call 504-262-5048.

Located just over an hour east of New Orleans,

Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort offers “The New Way” to celebrate the season with friends and family. The resort plays host to Escape Krampus, presented by Escape This Biloxi, welcoming visitors to escape the locked Columns Room in 60 minutes by discovering clues, solving puzzles and uncovering secrets. Escape Krampus runs select days Dec. 1-23. Tickets include a free T-shirt and can be purchased for $25 at EscapeKrampus.ScarletPearlCasino.com.

As the newest casino on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort welcomes the community to join in a celebration of its 1-year anniversary Dec. 9-10. Also, don’t forget to stop in and marvel at Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort’s Gingerbread Town with its chugging train and splendid central Christmas tree.

December’s Gift of the Month at Scarlet Pearl is a logo holiday doormat, yours when you earn 1,000 Base Slot Points Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, from 12 a.m.-12 p.m.

For more information and ideas for fun, visit ScarletPearlCasino.com.

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Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort

With its rich historical ties to the past and its forward gaze into our starry future, Huntsville and Madison County, Alabama, are home to both fascinating sightseeing and an abundance of activities. Known as “Rocket City,” Huntsville continues to play a major role in space exploration while boasting a plethora of historic homes as well as one of the country’s oldest existing railroad depots with Civil War-era graffiti still marking its walls.

This season, experience the holiday magic of Huntsville through a variety of events. Galaxy of Lights returns to the Huntsville Botanical Garden, where thousands of twinkling lights and animated displays mesmerize children and adults alike. Alabama Constitution Village becomes Santa’s Village and welcomes visitors into the home of Santa and Mrs. Claus, the reindeers’ stable, and the elves’ busy toy shop. Downtown Huntsville and the Twickenham Historic District offer even more opportunities for holiday fun, from the Tinsel Trail to Skating in the Park.

For detailed information on these events as well as attractions in Huntsville and Madison County, visit Huntsville.org.

Delta Festival Ballet celebrates its 35th Anniversary Season of The Nutcracker at Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts on Sat., Dec. 17 at 7:30 p.m. and Sun., Dec. 18 at 2 p.m. The production is helmed by Artistic Directors Joseph and Maria Giacobbe, assisted by Ballet Master, Richard Rholdon, who also appears as Mayor Stahlbaum in Act I’s Party Scene. The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Glenn Langdon, will accompany the performances.

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New Orleans native Janessa Touchet returns as Sugar Plum Fairy. Ms. Touchet has been a principal dancer with Cincinnati Ballet where she performed the title role of Cinderella last spring. She will be joined by DFB’s outstanding local professionals and a Youth Corps of over 100 young dancers from the Greater New Orleans Area. The role of Clara will be danced by Lily Franioni, freshman at St. Mary’s Dominican High School, and McCall Schlosser, seventh grader at Academy of the Sacred Heart.

To purchase tickets, visit DeltaFestivalBallet.com.

As Christmas nears, the picturesque city of Covington comes alive with festive holiday celebrations. Not only is walkable downtown Covington a one-stop-shop for unique gifts for everyone on your Christmas list, but it also offers a variety of family-friendly events and entertainment.

Art lovers will enjoy the Covington Art Market at the Covington Trailhead on Dec. 3, which features a variety of works from local artists, including paintings, jewelry, sculpture, woodwork and more. The annual Deck the Rails, also at the Covington Trailhead, also on Dec. 3, is a free children’s event that features a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life, photos with Santa, and other fun kids’ activities. Do not miss the holiday classic A Christmas Carol, on stage at the Furhmann Auditorium on Thurs., Dec. 8. And then, of course, there’s the popular Covington Farmers Market, held every Wednesday at the Covington Trailhead from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and Saturdays at the 600 Block of Columbia Street from 8 a.m.-12 p.m.

For more Covington news and events, visit CovLa.com.

Nestled between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is Houmas House Plantation and Gardens, the “Crown Jewel of Louisiana’s River Road.” This historic property boasts 38 acres of the South’s most beautiful, lush and vibrant gardens.

Visitors may tour the magnificent mansion featuring a rare collection of period artwork and furnishings. Dine in your choice of three restaurants featuring a contemporary progressive approach to Louisiana delicacies. Houmas House offers both a casual and fine dining atmosphere for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

The latest addition of the Inn at Houmas House completes this plantation destination, making it the most extensive experience of all the plantations along the Great River Road. Twenty-one private cottages nestled along an alley of oaks create a serene environment perfect for a romantic getaway. Each room is complete with porcelain bathrooms, old world furniture and a private porch.

Upon arrival, guests feel transported back to a time of antebellum, Southern splendor. Slow down and enjoy a leisurely time here. Sip a refreshing Mint Julep. Experience the South as it was meant to be at Houmas House Plantation and Gardens. Visit HoumasHouse.com for details.

Degas House invites you to celebrate 100 years since the life and creative genius of Edgar Degas with an overnight stay or visit to the historic museum and former home of the world renowned Impressionist. The historic house museum and luxurious inn and courtyard plays host year-round to weddings, receptions, corporate events, overnight guests and guided tours.

Degas House is distinguished by the French Ministry of

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Dining

Located in the French Quarter,

Salon Restaurant blends the

Degas House

Culture and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the only home or studio of Edgar Degas open to the public in the world. As an exceptional wedding venue, Degas House has been recognized time and again

by Frommers, The Knot and New Orleans Magazine.

Discover the story of the French Creoles, including Edgar Degas and his maternal family, hosted by the greatgrand nieces of the artist himself. Tour both Degas houses and view the documentary Degas in New Orleans, a Creole Sojourn.

A separate tour explores the neighborhood included in Degas’ New Orleans letters.

This month, Degas House will host Holiday Champagne Brunch. Call 504-821-5009 for details and reservations. For tours, overnight stays and event information, visit DegasHouse.com.

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time-honored formality of New Orleans service with the exquisite cuisine of Sucré chef Tariq Hanna. Afternoons begin with modern tea service of tea sandwiches and freshly baked pastries and desserts.

Chicken and waffles, dessert crêpes and croque benedicts are glimpses of the brunch menu, featuring bottomless mimosas on weekends. Evening offers a variety from beets to lasagna, scallops and chef-curated charcuterie and cheeses. Desserts showcase what chef Hanna is internationally known for: sweets. Molten chocolate soufflé will please the whole table, as well as desserts like crème brûlée or affogato for individual indulgence. Salon has a full bar with a curated wine menu, cocktails and beer selections with Happy Hour every Thursday-Friday, 4-6 p.m. featuring $5 specials.

Located above the Sucre at 622 Conti St., Salon is open Thursdays-Sundays. Private events are welcome! To learn more, visit RestaurantSalon.com.

Located in the Lower Garden District and just blocks from Downtown New Orleans, Hoshun Restaurant delivers a

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flavorful punch of pan-Asian flavors with their own take on traditional dishes from China, Japan, Vietnam and other South-Asian countries. Popular menu items include pho soup and Vietnamese spring rolls, pad Thai, sushi, General Tsao’s Chicken, Hunan steak, Kung Pao shrimp and more. Enjoy family style dining in an elegant atmosphere while sharing your favorite appetizers, entrées, combination dinners and sushi specials. Open daily until 2 a.m., Hoshun is a favorite late-night spot for locals and visitors alike.

Whether you’re looking for seafood, steak or vegetarian fare, Hoshun’s extensive menu provides options for everyone.

Salt and pepper shrimp and seared ahi tuna are a couple of Hoshun’s seafood specialties, while butter pepper mignon offers a meatier possibility.

For menu and information, visit HoshunRestaurant.com or call 504-302-9716. Located at 1601 St. Charles Ave., Hoshun offers a private party room overlooking the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line fitting 25-70 people.

Rice serves as a crucial yet often under-emphasized component of Cajun cuisine, providing the soft yet subtle base for everything from jambalaya, étouffée, and gumbo to shrimp Creole, alligator sauce piquante, redfish courtbouillon, and – of course – red beans. This holiday season, elevate your home cooking with rice produced here at home by the local experts of Falcon Rice Mill.

As the manufacturer of Cajun Country Rice, Falcon Rice Mill, located in Crowley, Louisiana, is one of the state’s few rice mills still run by the original family. Whether it’s firm long grain, tender medium grain, healthy whole grain brown

or the slightly distinctive aroma of their popcorn rice or Jasmine rice, Cajun Country has been the leading brand of rice in Louisiana for those that demand quality products when cooking delicious meals. Falcon Rice Mill also produces quality rice products such as Toro, Falcon, Home Country, Laredo and Jackpot.

For information on cooking rice, nutrition facts, a variety of recipes or to purchase Cajun Country Rice for your holiday meals with family and friends, visit CajunCountryRice.com.

For a uniquely Creole holiday experience, visit The Court of Two Sisters at historic 613 Rue Royale in the French Quarter. In true Creole fashion, this award-winning restaurant will uphold the tradition of the Creole Reveillon holiday meal.

This year’s famous Reveillon menu at The Court of Two Sisters begins with turtle soup au sherry, followed by your choice of Panko-fried jumbo frog legs with diced pears and smoked jalapeno butter or a red oak-frisee lardon salad.

Entrée choices include filet tournedos with two fried green tomatoes, wild mushroom risotto and fried quail eggs, pompano Napoleon with charred-tomato mousse and roasted corn purée and duck confit en casserole with petit peas, sweet potatoes, caramelized onions and bell peppers.

The menu concludes on a sweet note with a delicious eggnog crème brûlée or the Bûche de Noël. Coffee and tea are included. The menu runs from Dec. 1-24 for only $48 per person.

Return to The Court of Two Sisters on New Year’s Eve and ring in the New Year with a spectacular multi-course meal. Call 504-

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522-7261 or visit CourtofTwoSisters.com for reservations.

Celebrate the holiday season this December within the historical walls of the oldest family-run restaurant in the country, Antoine’s Restaurant. This charming, acclaimed and regal French-Creole restaurant invites you to experience their December Reveillon Menu available for lunch or dinner on selective days throughout the month.

The festive $49.00, four-course meal begins with an appetizer of either charbroiled Louisiana oysters or a sherry-laced alligator bisque. After a refreshing, seasonal Noel Salad, guests are offered their choice of entrée: chicken with Champagne mushroom sauce or stuffed Louisiana drum. Finish with a decadent dessert of eggnog bread pudding with praline rum sauce or raspberry chocolate mousse. The menu is available for groups of 15 or less and is exclusive of tax, gratuity and additional alcohol.

Join Antoine’s also for its special holiday jazz brunch, where Santa Claus will be on hand to greet brunch goers and families on Dec. 4, 11 and 18. The festive $33 jazz brunch includes a complimentary mimosa and your choice of appetizer, entrée and dessert.

For more info and to make reservations, visit Antoines.com or call 504-581-4422.

Celebrate the holidays with family and friends at

New Orleans Creole Cookery. Savor authentic Creole dishes prepared by renowned chef John Trinh, formerly from Eleven79 restaurant, and relish the time-honored tastes of classic Creole favorites such as gumbo, shrimp Creole, crawfish etouffée and snapper Pontchartrain.

New Orleans Creole Cookery is everything you love about New Orleans in a setting to fit every occasion. Enjoy casual NOLA Christmas Fest

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fine dining at its very best in your choice of the charming Toulouse Lautrec dining room, romantic courtyard or lively oyster bar. Each offers a Creole-inspired menu complemented by tempting handcrafted cocktails from the bar. Located at 510 Toulouse St. in one of New Orleans’ oldest and most storied locations, New Orleans Creole Cookery is just steps from holiday festivities in the French Quarter, including the annual New Year’s Eve Fleur de Lis Drop and riverfront fireworks.

New Orleans Creole Cookery is open seven days a week 11 a.m.-10 p.m. for lunch and dinner, and a jazz brunch on Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.. Learn more at NewOrleansCreoleCookery.com. Call 504-524-9632 for reservations.

Whether you’re taking a break from holiday shopping at the Riverwalk or looking for a place to enjoy the New Year’s Eve fireworks, you can enjoy riverside dining and drinks this month along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River at The Crazy Lobster and feast on the freshest and best. Share a Steamed Seafood Bucket with your nearest and dearest, or satisfy your own appetite by keeping it all to yourself – a 2-pound lobster, snow crab, shrimp, crawfish, clams, mussels, corn on the cob, potatoes and sausage all seasoned to pure perfection. Crazy Lobster also serves up all the New Orleans’ favorites – étouffée, jambalaya, gumbo and red beans – along with the best fried seafood in New Orleans.

Celebrate the season with Crazy Lobster’s Poppy’s Voodoo Juice, a refreshing tropical cocktail. Live music keeps the restaurant hopping nightly with a variety of funky musicians straight from Frenchmen Street. The Crazy Lobster is open seven days a week, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. For more information and menu, visit TheCrazyLobster.com. Call 504-569-3380 for reservations.

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Westbank residents and visitors have a new option for exceptional New Orleans dining with Lafitte’s Landing Seafood House, located in Harvey at 1700 Lapalco Blvd.

“Our passion is creating delicious and dynamic dining experiences with unmatched service, quality and attention to every detail,” say owners AJ and Anna Tusa. “There is no other restaurant on the Westbank that compares to what we’ve created at Lafitte’s Landing Seafood House.”

From oysters and soft-shell crab to specialty dishes like shrimp pasta Lafitte, redfish Pontchartrain and filet mignon, not to mention New Orleans classics like shrimp and grits, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée and shrimp Creole, the menu is full of local flavor and offers something for everyone.

The bar at Lafitte’s Landing offers a menu of handcrafted cocktails and signature drinks, including the refreshing Lafitte’s Landing Punch, the Big Easy, Southern Cooler, Cajun Bloody Mary and more. Happy hour runs Mondays-Fridays, 3-6 p.m.

For menu and information, visit LafittesLandingSeafoodHouse.com, or like them on Facebook for updates and specials.

Enjoy three burger choices and $1 classic cocktails; your choice of a martini, French 75 or old fashioned. Invite your friends and head to the Black Duck Bar at Palace Café after work for their extended holiday happy hour 4-7 p.m., and warm up with special holiday-inspired cocktails. Complete your Dickie Brennan & Co. holiday bells collection at Bourbon House while enjoying their new select Gulf oysters. Top them off with caviar and a glass of champagne for the perfect holiday treat!

Discover more at FrenchQuarter-Dining.com.

The holidays are happening at a number of Ralph Brennan restaurants, with fun-filled family activities and oncea-year dining opportunities.

On Mon., Dec. 19, enjoy Breakfast at Brennan’s with Santa. The event ($55 for adults, $35 for children) includes a three-course breakfast, snow in the courtyard, photo Lafitte's Landing Seafood House

Dickie Brennan & Co. restaurants continue their holiday bells tradition for the 25th year. Join Palace Café, Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse, Bourbon House, or Tableau for lunch to collect your holiday bells throughout the month of December.

Begin the season in the courtyard of Tableau on Thurs., Dec. 1 at noon as the St. Michael Special School Choir kicks off the holiday bells season and stay for lunch on the balcony overlooking Jackson Square. Collect another at Dickie Brennan’s Steakhouse; their usual Friday lunch is extended to every day of the week starting Dec. 13 through the end of December.

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opportunities with Santa, cookie decorating, reindeer games, holiday jingle bells and a special holiday takeaway. Call 504-5259711 to make reservations for one of the two seatings at 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Also, stop in to Brennan’s between Dec. 13-24 to enjoy spirits of the season through the “12 Days of Cocktails,” which offers a new merriment-inducing, holiday cocktail offering each day!

Red Fish Grill’s Executive Chef Austin Kirzner and Executive Pastry Chef Brett Gauthier will host Gingerbread Workshops on Sat., Dec. 10; Sat., Dec. 17; and Sun., Dec. 18 (12-2 p.m.). The $48 “kit” includes three seats, a gingerbread house, decorations, chef’s hat, crayons, jingle bells and child’s T-shirt.

Santa and his elf will make a guest appearance. Call 504-5981200 for reservations.

Feed your senses of flavor and music in a setting that’s always in full-surround sound. The House of Blues restaurant and Voodoo Garden present a fun family alternative to the stuffy, white-linen restaurants that dot the French Quarter. A delicious harmony of inspired comfort classics and soulful cuisine, House of Blues’ dishes are sure to make your taste buds sing! Stop in for lunch, happy hour or before a show with courtyard dining available in the beautiful, covered Voodoo Garden and nightly live entertainment!

Whether you’re looking for Sunday brunch, a Friday seafood boil, some comedic relief or happy hour cocktail in a happening spot, the House of Blues has it all. The World Famous Gospel Brunch takes place every Sunday at 10:30 a.m. Fridays mean boiled seafood and live music in the Voodoo Garden. Free, live comedy takes the stage on Wednesdays, and Happy Hour runs Mondays through Fridays, 3-6 p.m. The “don’t miss” Holiday

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Bazaar is on Dec. 11, 2-6 p.m.

For more information, including menus and reservations, visit HouseofBlues.com/NewOrleans.

OpenTable’s No. 1 Brunch Spot in New Orleans,

Red Gravy welcomes its seventh year on Camp Street this winter and is celebrating with delicious cold-weather concoctions. From an old Belgian recipe for homemade hot chocolate to hot ginger toddies and stuffed skillet cakes, Red Gravy owner Roseann Melisi Rostoker is rolling out a variety of specialties she’s picked up from travels to Europe and her native Jersey shore. Skillet cakes, which are oven-made pancakes, are often stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as chocolate, bacon, peanut butter, coconut, cranberries and more.

While the ever-changing menu continues to showcase different foods and eating trends, you can always count on Red Gravy’s signature Italian delicacies, Roseann’s famous meatballs, and handmade pasta. This holiday season, keep an eye out for traditional specials including seafood recipes from Roseann’s past and lots of Italian Christmas desserts such as struffoli, small balls of fried dough bathed in honey.

View the menu and make reservations online at RedGravyCafe.com, or call 504-561-8844.

Galatoire’s “33” Bar & Steak is a perfectly flavorful place to celebrate the holiday season with friends, family, and associates.

Join them Dec. 1-24 for their Reveillon menu featuring dishes such as baked oysters “33” with pesto and Herbsaint alongside sautéed redfish with broccoli florets and saffron beurre blanc.

Ring in the New Year at their champagne dinner and enjoy sipping J. Dumangin throughout the evening, or stop in for a

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holiday cocktail and toast at Bar “33.” For reservations, call 504-335-3932.

Hosting a holiday get together? Their private dining spaces provide the perfect atmosphere for a gathering of any size and any occasion. And don’t forget about Mardi Gras, the best holiday of them all. Their balconies have the best views of Bourbon Street, where you and your guests can enjoy Galatoire’s or Galatoire’s “33” Bar & Steak’s impeccable food and hospitality at your own private Carnival celebration. For more information and private event scheduling call 504-335-3933 or visit Galatoires33BarandSteak.com.

Located Uptown on the corner of Magazine and General Pershing streets, La Petite Grocery features traditional New Orleans cuisine with the creative spin of Chef Justin Devillier, the James Beard Award winner for Best Chef: South in 2016.

Here, Devillier delights both regulars and visitors with dishes like turtle Bolognese and blue crab beignets. Devillier’s fromscratch approach is evident in every dish, from the panéed rabbit with spaetzle, mustard greens, turnip purée and sauce grenobloise, to the famous LPG Cheeseburger with house pickles, onion marmalade, arugula, whole grain mustard, aioli and gruyere with hand-cut fries.

La Petite Grocery’s name pays homage to the storied history of the home, a century-old building that has acted as a coffee and tea depot, grocery store, butcher shop, florist’s studio and restaurant. After Hurricane Katrina, Devillier helped build the infrastructure and took over ownership of the restaurant in 2010 with his wife Mia Devillier.

La Petite Grocery has private dining options available for all your holiday events. The restaurant will be closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. For information and reservations, visit LaPetiteGrocery.com or call 504-891-3377.

In February 2015, James Beard Award winner and chef Justin Devillier, together with his wife Mia, opened their second New Orleans restaurant in a 19th century Creole townhouse located in the Central Business District. Balise, named after the first 126

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Austin's

French settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi River, evokes the bygone era with a recognizable old-world New Orleans feel.

The restaurant and menu celebrate New Orleans as a port city and its unique access to a wide variety of ingredients.

Menu favorites include the grilled pork chop with satsuma, blistered shishito peppers, spicy greens and chimichurri as well as the roasted lamb shoulder with marinated turnips, cucumber, pickled red onion, lentils and castelventrano vinaigrette. In addition to its exceptional lunch, brunch and dinner menus, Balise offers a world-class beverage program with a curated wine, beer, and cocktail list.

Balise has private dining options available for all your holiday events. The restaurant will be closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. For information and reservations, visit BaliseNOLA.com or call 504-459-4449.

Taste the rich history of New Orleans this season by going to Pascal’s Manale, home of the original BBQ Shrimp.

Founded in 1913, this New Orleans tradition is now in its third, fourth and fifth generation of family involvement and still serves the classic dishes for which it’s been famous for decades.

A blend of Italian and Creole, Pascal’s Manale’s menu includes New Orleans and Italian favorites, steaks and seafood dishes.

Start your night with raw oysters from the oyster bar before indulging in the succulent barbecue shrimp. The veal Gambero and fish Pascal specials have flavors all their own while also incorporating the richness of the barbecue shrimp and its sauce. Other Pascal’s Manale favorites include the Oysters Bienville, baked oysters topped with a mushroom, shrimp and bacon dressing, or the combination pan roast, which consists of shrimp, oysters and crabmeat chopped together with shallots and seasoning.

Monday-Friday, from 3-6 p.m., enjoy half-priced raw oysters at the oyster bar as well half-priced beer, wine and cocktails.

World-famous Pascal’s Manale is located at 1838 Napoleon Ave., off the St. Charles streetcar line. For reservations, call 504-8954877 or visit them at PascalsManale.com.

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This holiday season, stop by any of the Tropical Isles, home of the Hand Grenade®, New Orleans’ Most Powerful Drink® and the Hand Grenade® Martini. Also, enjoy a Hand Grenade® at Funky Pirate Blues Club or Bayou Club. Experience Trop Rock, Cajun/Zydeco & the Blues with Tropical Isle’s nightly entertainment, the best on Bourbon. State-of-the-art sound systems plus great live bands will keep you dancing the night away at Tropical Isle Bourbon, Tropical Isle Original, Little Tropical Isle, Funky Pirate, and the Bayou Club. While there, ask about the Hand Grenade® Martini! Enjoy big screen TVs at Funky Pirate, Bayou Club, Tropical Isle Bourbon and Top of the Trop. For more on Tropical Isle, visit TropicalIsle.com.

For a quiet escape, visit local favorite The Orleans Grapevine Wine Bar & Bistro right off of Bourbon at 720 Orleans Ave., which has more than 200 varieties of wine by the bottle and plenty of wine by the glass, plus a Bacon Happy Hour! For sample menus and wine lists, visit OrleansGrapevine.com.

For over a decade, Austin’s Restaurant has been known as Metairie’s hot spot for steak, seafood, and the Creole-Italian creations of Restauranteur Ed McIntyre and his esteemed culinary staff. Garnering awards and accolades from critics and readers alike, readers of New Orleans Magazine named Austin’s “Favorite Steak House” and voted founder Ed McIntyre as a “New Orleanian of the Year” in 2010.

Austin’s impressive menu includes signature appetizers, soups, and salads such as the popular Austin’s Louisiana Creole crab salad and oyster Fitzgerald, as well as the finest aged USDA steaks and savory Creole-Italian entrees of seafood, veal, duck and pork. Austin’s is located at 5101 W. Esplanade Ave., in Metairie and is open Mondays-Saturdays 5 p.m.-’til and for private

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luncheons and banquets. Austin’s is now accepting reservations for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Mr. Ed’s Restaurant Group Gift Cards are also available for the Holiday Season.

For more information or to make reservations, call 504-8885533. Visit Austin’s online at AustinsNO.com. McIntyre also oversees Mr. Ed’s Seafood & Italian Restaurant and Mr. Ed’s Oyster Bar & Fish House.

Five Happiness, New Orleans’s award-winning Chinese restaurant, offers a delicious menu of Sichuan and Hunan specialties in a recently renovated sleek and elegant dining room.

Enjoy the succulent shrimp with honey roasted pecans, General’s chicken or asparagus sautéed with garlic sauce in a comfortable and unique setting distinguished by its authentic Chinese décor of etched glass and Chinese paintings. The dining room, now split into three rooms, provides a more private dining experience for guests.

The well-known and affordable Imperial Room is available at Five Happiness for private parties, receptions or other functions and can hold up to 60 people. Serving options are customized for each party, ranging from sit-down dinners to buffets or cocktails with hors d’oeuvres and prices ranging from $20-$45 per person.

For those not wanting to cook during the holidays, Five Happiness happily serves lunch and dinner on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. For more information, call 504-482-3935 or visit FiveHappiness.com.

A restaurant as revered as Arnaud’s has an original way of doing things. Recognizing the appeal of authentic Creole cuisine, Arnaud’s serves the true classics, offering signature items like the shrimp Arnaud, soufflé potatoes, and trout Meunière. Open

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for 98 years, the proprietary Casbarian family continues to carry on the courtesies and traditions that have garnered worldwide acclaim for Arnaud’s.

During the holidays, guests can revel in Arnaud’s 17 public and private dining rooms beautifully ornamented with elegant decorations. To match, diners can savor Arnaud’s traditional Reveillon dinner menu, Dec. 1-23, and enjoy lunch with family, friends or colleagues, Dec. 12-24 from 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., featuring spirited promotions in partnership with Moet & Chandon Champagne.

With unmatched food, ambiance and service, Arnaud’s ensures a uniquely New Orleans dining experience that won’t soon be forgotten. For more information or to make reservations, call 504523-5433 or visit ArnaudsRestaurant.com.

Boulevard American Bistro, conveniently located at 4241 Veterans Memorial Blvd., invites you to “Social Hour” in its large, comfortable bar. Drinks and small plate specials are offered Monday through Friday from 3-6 p.m. Bartender Jay Teichmann pours $6 well drinks and $7 featured wines by the glass. Simple, well composed small plate menu items ($8) includes house-made guacamole, No. 1 grade tuna tartare, smoked salmon dip, crispy fried Louisiana oysters, “mini dip” (spinach and artichoke dip) and a petit ribeye steak sandwich.

“We are excited to offer a gathering place for locals to come and relax and meet up with friends,” says General Manager Robert Hardie. “Boulevard has a great social atmosphere, so what better way to celebrate summer with friends than with a social hour right in their own backyard.”

The all-day, à la carte menu is available in the dining room from 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday-Thursday, and 11 a.m.-

10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information on Boulevard American Bistro, including full cocktail menu, wine list, and lunch and dinner menus, please visit BoulevardBistro. com or call 504-889-2301 to make reservations.

Broussard’s Restaurant is the ultimate gathering place this holiday season with a traditional Reveillon menu available throughout the month of December.

Executive Chef Neal Swidler shares his culinary creativity with a festive holiday meal including, for starters, a choice of charcuterie and house-made pâté with Creole mustard sauce and pickles or Tabasco deviled eggs with Southern pimento cheese and scallion hush puppies, followed by a Creole turtle soup au sherry or truffle butternut squash bisque with spiced pumpkin seeds.

Chef Swidler’s entrées are bold – filet mignon Wellington with wild mushroom pastry box, melted Cambazola and port wine truffle glaze or seared drum with crispy crab croquette and red pepper corn maque choux. And finish it off with roasted pumpkin bread pudding with pecan praline sauce or roasted stick panna cotta with chocolate ganache.

For more information on Broussard’s and its brunch, lunch, dinner or Reveillon menu, visit Broussards.com or call 504-581-3866 to make reservations.

Every fall and winter in New Orleans, locals look forward to chef Andrea Apuzzo’s four-course Fall and Reveillon menu available at Andrea’s Restaurant. Offered through Dec. 31, this special $58 menu ($90 with wine included) features starters as bruschetta Venezia, risotto pescatore, angel hair with smoked salmon and vodka sauce, and torcini mushroom ravioli. After an insalata

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buone feste holiday salad, guests may choose from four entrees: rotisserie duck confit with cassoulet, stiuco di vitello al sufo (braised veal); cioppino bouillabaisse with mussels, clams, shrimp and crabmeat; and speckled trout royale with crabmeat. A dessert of homemade crêpes Marilyn lassen with mascarpone, fresh fruit and raspberry sauce satisfies any sweet tooth. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are available upon request.

Andrea’s Restaurant, located in Metairie, is open Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The restaurant will host a New Year’s Eve party with live music and dancing. Open for 32 years, Andrea’s uses Louisiana ingredients and makes their own pastas and pastries. The restaurant is available for banquets and special events and can cater your holiday party.

For more information and reservations, call 504-834-8583 or visit AndreasRestaurant.com.

School Events & Open Houses

Established in 1929, Metairie Park Country Day School is a co-educational, non-denominational, independent school where care and cultivation of each child, from Pre-K through Grade 12, come to life with exciting and innovative approaches to teaching.

The use of advanced technology and expansive, rigorous curriculum opens the world to Country Day students, and faculty teach them the importance of individual achievement through depth of inquiry rather than mere recitation of facts.

Visit an Admission Open House or email admissions@mpcds.com for a private tour. Upcoming Open Houses include: Kindergarten-fifth grade Jan. 12 at 8:30 a.m.; sixth-12th grades on Jan. 19 at 8:15 a.m.

Country Day’s Early Childhood Center provides children six

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weeks to four years a place to blossom with flexible enrollment options ranging from two to five days a week, with part or fulltime availability. Email cdecc@mpcds.com for a private tour of the Early Childhood Center.

For more information on Metairie Park Country Day School or Country Day’s Early Childhood Center, visit MPCDS.com.

Real Estate & Rentals

A shiny set of keys is all the jingle you need this holiday season!

Come home for the holidays to a 1st Lake Apartment Community.

Whether you’re moving to the Greater New Orleans area or visiting the city on business, the perfect apartment is right around the corner. An array of 1st Lake Properties apartment communities extend from Kenner and Metairie to River Ridge, Mandeville, Covington, Slidell and even Mississippi.

As the leader in multi-family developments, 1st Lake offers an unrivaled living experience. Not only can residents rent fully furnished apartments – many of which are luxury – they can enjoy top notch amenities like granite countertops, access gates, free off-street parking, pools, fitness centers, washers/dryers and flex space. Concierge-style services like dry cleaning and bike sharing are also available.

With an emphasis on customer service, 1st Lake provides onsite management and service teams. Conveniently, residents may pay rent and submit service requests online, while taking advantage of the resident rewards program, which offers deals to local businesses.

For more information on their 70 communities, 9,500 apartments, corporate apartments and applications, visit 1stLake.com.

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The New Way to Have Fun on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (888) 752-9772, ScarletPearlCasino.com If you’re looking for something fun to do, join Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort Dec. 9 and 10 as they celebrate their very special first anniversary. The resort is the newest casino on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and has already given away more than $15,000,000 in jackpots.

Their anniversary celebration includes complimentary cake and champagne; guests will have the chance to win a Chevy Camaro on Fri., Dec., 9 and a Jeep Wrangler on Sat., Dec. 10.

Otter This World

Up close and personal at the Aquarium

By Kelly Massicot

cheryl gerber photo

O

Discover the Designs and Décor at R|D Home R|D Home, 2014 Magazine St., 523-9525, RazzleDazzle.com If you’ve ever marveled at the beauty and variety of the homes in the Crescent City, we can let you into a secret: Many of the owners have trusted experts and stores on which they rely. R|D Home is such a place. Owned by Barbara Coe, it’s filled to the brim with inspiring sofas, chairs, lamps, throws, rugs, pictures and mirrors.

Tablescapes, custom floral designs and seasonal decorating services are also on offer. You might find the perfect gift among the collectible fairies by Mark Roberts, jewelry by Adena Accents and Kristina Collections, a signature candle line and many other choice items.

– Mirella Cameran

ne day, custom publishing editor Jess DeBold and I met a fun and vivacious lady named Clara. Clara is a yacht club girl from Southern California who loves a good sushi plate and is an avid swimmer. In 2015, Clara traveled from California to New Orleans to make a new home for herself. Her home is now the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas here in New Orleans.

Clara is one of two sea otters who call the aquarium their home.

As part of a newer idea at the aquarium, the sea otter experience is meant to give visitors and animal lovers alike an opportunity to see an animal that lends so much to our environment up close and personal. With this 30-minute behind-the-scenes experience, guests access to the staff and training areas and a closer look at the animals that capture the hearts of many.

We first met the sea otter trainers outside of the enclosure where most guests see Clara and her roommate, Emma. They explained to use both Emma and Clara’s stories as well as explain how much of an asset otters are to the ecosystem. Their tank home is a sight to behold. The 25,000-gallon water enclosure is both a home, playground and training area for the two Southern sea otters. Clara and Emma spend their days playing, practicing and eating – boy do these girls eat. A sea otter diet can add up to almost nine pounds a day of raw fish, clams, mussels and other invertebrates, and they’re fed up to six times a day. I love a good sushi plate, but I think even for me that’s a lot of fish a day.

It is all to keep up their fur coats, which we were taught when we went back into the feeding and training area behind their enclosure. Their fur is both an asset and a reason they were on the endangered species list. This large amount of food is used to create body heat to assist their wetsuit-like fur in keeping them warm and protected.

Beside the feedings, we were able to see Clara perform all of her “tricks.” She knew exactly where to go to receive her food, she handed us her toys through the protective glass, spun in circles and even posed for a selfie with the both of us.

Meeting Clara and the loving staff that care for her and Emma was an absolute treat. It is amazing to see an animal up close and to understand their lives and being. I definitely gained a new furry best friend I can’t wait to visit again.

You, too, can visit Clara and Emma at the Audubon Aquarium Thursdays -Sundays at 11:30 a.m. The ticket to the sea otter experience also includes access to the aquarium in its entirety either before or after your scheduled time.

Visit AudubonNatureInstitute.org for more information and to purchase tickets. n myneworleans.com / DECEMBER 2016

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Christmas of ‘89 By errol laborde

I

was at a Christmas party on Wed., Dec. 22 when someone commented about the weather, which was cold even for Christmastime, and added that a heavy freeze was on the way.

She wasn’t wrong. But the next morning an icy mass that didn’t come from the polar north, but from Texas, rumbling across the state like a stampeding cattle drive.

Christmas is traditionally a festive time when one hopes for joy and peace. By Thurs., Dec. 23, a series of events was about to take place, both locally and globally, that would have left locals breathless, except that the

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exhaled breath might have formed ice crystals: By late morning that day the city issued a directive that since the roads would be icy, everyone should go home immediately. That led to thousands of people, who might have left work at their own pace, instead leaving at the same time. Few were familiar with driving on ice. The entire city was locked in a traffic jam made worse by vehicles sliding off the streets.

That night the temperature plunged into the 20s, causing pipes to freeze throughout the region.

(A personal note: To shave I had to heat a damp wash towel in the microwave.)

Meanwhile around the world there was more adventure, actually one of the biggest stories of the decade. Communism was collapsing. In Romania Nicolae Ceausescu, one of the last of the Communist despots, and his wife were captured, tried and shot by a revolutionary firing squad. Fa la la.

You might think that one tyrant going down during Christmas season would suffice. Not so; in Panama U.S. forces cornered strongman boss and drug dealer Manual Noriega, who spent Christmas week hiding in the local Vatican consulate. He was captured on Jan. 3.

Locally, on Christmas morning the most popular man in town was a plumber, if you could find one. As the temperature rose and the ice started to melt, water began to spray from all the cracked pipes.

Then there was a shocking story. On Christmas Eve former Mayor Dutch Morial died reportedly of a heart attack. (I was visiting a relative in the hospital at the time who had suffered from heart trouble. A doctor told me that incidents of heart attacks are higher in December when the cold weather causes the heart to work harder.)

This wasn’t a cheery Christmas at all, and it got worse. Also on that Christmas Eve, there was an explosion at an Exxon refinery in Baton Rouge. One person was killed.

At times like this we needed Christmas more than ever, though this one was a little raw. There were still the trappings that the season brings, including the music – a white Christmas is desirous but not an icy gray one.

That New Year’s Eve Alabama played in the Sugar Bowl, a true sign of a return to normal, but not totally. The Tide lost to the University of Miami.

Life went on, but if there was any solace, at least we didn’t have to worry about Communism anymore. Maybe now there could be peace on earth, or at least a silent night. n

ARTHUR NEAD ILLUSTRATION