What do you do when you see an unfamiliar face? The more I get around Louisiana, the more I think the answer is, you stuff it.
That’s right, you stuff that face with food. You talk about the food as you’re doing it. And before too long that unfamiliar face, now stuffed, isn’t so unfamiliar after all, maybe even before you’ve gotten around to talking about where they’re from, what they do for a living or all the other erstwhile essentials of making a new acquaintance.
It’s hospitality the hands-on way, and maybe even hospitality with some leftovers to take home. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing this in action many times, and the experience never gets old. In one case, it actually served as an early introduction to a particular strain of New Orleans food culture, the glorious and always abundant tradition of Creole Italian cooking.
I had moved to town only a few months prior when a co-worker took me to lunch at his grandmother’s house. I should have known what would happen. This guy was Sicilian, so was his grandmother. But somehow I managed to think I was merely in for a quick home-cooked lunch to break up the day at the office. Well, the feast that unfolded was so epic that now, 15 years later, the memory of that meal is so vivid it can still make me feel full.
There was pasta and salad, artichoke dressing, sausage links hand-made by the grandfather, heavy on the black pepper and fennel, then panéed pork, another pasta, on and on, all followed, of course, by several different types of cookies.
Since then, I’ve been on the receiving end of this force-fed friendliness. It’s happened before Saints games and in the wake of Carnival parades as strangers, thrown together by an event, let the food take care of the introductions. And I’ve found myself on the other side of the equation too, eagerly plying guests brought along by friends of friends.
A few weeks back, it happened again, this time at the Mother in Law Lounge, the bar and music joint along North Claiborne Avenue. I dropped by hoping to find a band playing. Instead, I walked into a small gathering for a birthday party. It was clearly a tight-knit group, but before there was any question of who I was or who I might know, there was food. I was taken promptly under the wing and toured around a buffet of shiny aluminum chaffing dishes, a battleship row of seafood pasta, deviled eggs, turkey necks, chicken feet, rice and beans and dressing and so on – a battleship row of soul food. I thought I was going to walk in and walk out. Instead I stayed for an hour.
But that’s how it goes. For the recipient of this type of hospitality, protesting that you’ve just eaten will not fly. Making plain that you already know you don’t a particular dish is no shield either. A legit and recognized food allergy might be the only thing to stay the hand that serves you in these situations, though I’ve never tested that boundary.
This is by no means a Louisiana phenomenon. I’m sure it happens wherever people are proud of their food and friendly to strangers. But I can’t think of too many other places that have so much to work with.
