“You’re not from around here are you?”
The smiling elderly lady greets us as she walks in the front door of Bobby’s Seafood. We’ve been fingered as outsiders but a parking lot beatdown does not feel imminent; she’s just being friendly to strangers.
Back when I lived in Alabama I became friends with a girl whose grandmother, Agata, was from Sicily. We’d ride out to the sleepy little town of Alabaster on Sunday afternoons where the granny would be busying herself in the kitchen-dealing out culinary trump cards of obscene deliciousness.
My all time favorite dish she made was an intensely garlicky red-sauced lasagna that boasts three pounds of cheeses.This recipe needs no meat. Meat would just get in the way of this profoundly Italian tasting casserole.
1911 advertisement for Luzianne coffee and tea
And it’s due to the efforts of an 18th century French botanist and a Louisiana entrepreneur who built a beverage empire in the first half of the 20th century that ice tea is the common language of southerners across the United States.
When Andre Michaux, at the behest of King Louis XVI, arrived on the shores of South Carolina in September of 1786 he was set to make a centuries-long impact on the drinking habits of Americans and southerners in particular.
The French plant expert was on a mission. He had been commissioned in his home country to visit the young United States to secure new strains of trees for development in the war-depleted forests of France.
Pony Poindexter: Lost Titan of New Orleans Jazz
Pony Poindexter’s old jazz group, the Black Panthers of the Figuerettes had a good run in Ibiza back in the fifties. They were booked by Bad Jack Hand, an ex-US soldier who had taken it on the lam before briefly making his way to the white isle. I say briefly because he ended up back on the mainland serving a life sentence in a Spanish penitentiary for a murder rap.
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
We had a lively ramble through the streets of New Orleans 7th Ward yesterday afternoon to celebrate mothers both here and dearly departed. The Original Big 7 second line is one of the best of the 40+ that the social and pleasure clubs put on across the greatest city in North America.
This is what we saw:
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
2025 Original Big 7 Mother’s Day Second Line in New Orleans
500 Po Boys: Donanelle’s Steakhouse in Hattiesburg
The Banh Mi Culture Of Vietnam Is Thriving On The US Gulf Coast
Following the fall of Saigon to the Communist North Vietnamese, 130,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam.
Operation Frequent Wind, the largest boat and air lift in refugee history was a rousing success that would lead to 1.4 million Vietnamese émigrés resettling in the United States between 1975 and 1994.
The Gulf Coast South was a favored destination.
It’s crawfish season in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Recently, Canseco’s Market on Esplanade had a sale on locally grown as well as Vietnamese crawfish. The price difference was remarkable. Crawfish from fisheries within 20 minutes of my 9th Ward home cost nearly five times as much as the Vietnamese fishes.
Maylie’s on Poydras where Albert Booth Campbell cooked the best red beans and rice in New Orleans
Albert Booth Campbell is one of the mythical old-school Black cooks of New Orleans.
2025 VIP Ladies and Kids Second Line Parade in New Orleans