Over in Munich, Oktoberfest is tapped out for the year, but it’s just getting started here in New Orleans and the timing feels perfect. Local Oktoberfests have become a rite for autumn in New Orleans, part of the welcome, needed shift in weather and own social calendars after the ravages of summer.
It also gives a view on an important part of the kaleidoscope of New Orleans cultures we don’t hear much about, the German heritage of New Orleans, which back in the day gave us bakeries with German names that make our po-boy bread, breweries from German families that once dotted the city and traditions in the butcher shop that we call Cajun but which taste German, andouille being the leading example.
That can be hard to discern today, but then it’s October and you’re holding a beer stein in one hand, a brat in the other and instructing your nephew on the footwork of the chicken dance as a giant costumed chicken wearing lederhosen gets the crowd kicking again.
The biggest annual Oktoberfest here is the Deutsches Haus edition along Bayou St. John.
But there’s more. Middendorf’s, famous for catfish out in Manchac and also in Slidell, goes into heavy German mode for the season, with special menus each Wednesday and Thursday that go deep on Bavarian specialty plates with names so long I don’t even have the broadcast time to try to mispronounce them here. But they’re delicious and the theme is fun and it goes on through early November.
And in the Bywater, it’s always Oktoberfest at Bratz Y’All, a restaurant where the flavors, the drinks and the flowerbox beer garden setting all give a convincing transport to Germany year round.
But Oktoberfest at Deutsches Haus is the nexus, right there across from City Park where so much of New Orleans comes together, and the oompah is out there each Friday and Saturday through the end of the month. Now here, somebody quick, hold my beer, I know that chicken is headed back to the dance floor and it’s time to get these wings flapping again.
