Some museums offer a chance to connect with the highest achievements of art and ingenuity, to gaze over priceless wonders or to better understand pivotal moments of human history.
At the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, some of what resonates most richly may be artifacts you once had in your pantry or old brand names whose jingles are still stuck in your head.
You’re less likely to swoon over some rarified treasure as to delight in the recognition of something tied up with your own traditions and ties to the region’s food culture.
For New Orleanians of different generations it could be the plastic tub of Creole cream cheese from the old Gold Seal Creamery, or the thick glass of a Dr. Nut soda bottle, or even the blue cardboard tube of orange juice concentrate from Schwegmann's, a grocery’s own in-house discount brand that may pack more punch for some in this city than any high-dollar national marketing campaign.
These are just a few examples of unexpectedly evocative memory captured in the food culture of the South, and part of larger displays across the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans.
Last fall, the museum cut the ribbon to open its new museum facility, built, fittingly enough, in an old public food market in Central City. But that was something akin to a soft opening in the restaurant world, an opportunity to get open and build up to the full program. So over the past few months, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum has been adding more pieces and parts, and this weekend it officially marks its grand opening. There are cooking demos in its gleaming new teaching kitchen, national experts in barbecue and cocktails discussing their specialties and new exhibits are on display, from the history of absinthe to the legacy of Al Copeland.
One of the biggest pieces to come into play for the Southern Food & Beverage Museum since that first ribbon cutting is the debut of its restaurant, Purloo. It’s a cool, contemporary space under a soaring ceiling separated from the museum exhibits by just a sheer curtain. The in-house restaurant makes this a particularly interactive museum. If those exhibits stoke your appetite, get a table or a seat at the bar to consider the modern Southern menu, which runs broadly from Louisiana to the Carolinas.
The bar itself might look familiar to some New Orleanians. Intricate with Victorian flourishes across its carved arches and columns, the bar was once installed at Bruning’s, the lakefront seafood restaurant that lived from 1859 until Hurricane Katrina washed it away.
But the bar was recovered, salvaged from the water and painstakingly rebuilt, and now it serves modern drinks and classic ones to restaurant patrons and museum visitors. Sipping a cold one here, it's hard to believe the bar was once sitting on the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. But then, after a spin through the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, you may be primed for memories welling up from depths much greater than that.
Southern Food & Beverage Museum
1504 Oretha C. Haley Blvd.; www.southernfood.org
Friday, April 17
7-9 p.m.: Eat! Drink! SoFAB Grand Opening Gala (patron party at 6 p.m.)
Live music, drinks and food from Purloo, cocktail demonstration from drinks expert Dale DeGroff, cooking demonstrations from chef Justin Devillier, and Poppy Tooker, radio host of Louisiana Eats!
Get ticket information and more details here.
Saturday, April 18
11 a.m.-5:30 p.m.: Free museum admission
2 p.m.: Chef Tenney Flynn, of G.W. Fins, presents a “nose to tail” fish cooking demo on getting the most from local seafood.
Sunday, April 19
11 a.m.-5:30 p.m.: Free museum admission
2 p.m.: Tariq Hanna, of Sucré,
presents a pastry demo.
