I hope you’re hungry, people, because I’m here to sing of a torrid love affair with New Orleans food and restaurants, one renewed because of a brief hiatus.
I just had a vacation to Spain and Portugal, and it was a busman’s holiday for sure. At home, my job is chasing the story of New Orleans food and reporting it back to you. On vacation, pretty much all I did was chase the pleasures of Spanish and Portuguese food with the abandon of one who knows this affair has a departure date.
I return from the trip with a new appreciation for gigantic American servings of ice water - seriously, I have no idea how Europe stays hydrated – and this, as a traveler reveling in so much that is different and wonderful overseas, I gained a refreshed perspective on what we have here as our own in Louisiana. I started to look at it through the eyes of a traveler, and it made me yearn for it anew.
It made me proud of our culture, and hungry and eager to share it.
That’s because our home is a cauldron of culinary creativity, it’s a draw for restaurant talent and for food aficionados, and that’s a tribute to the underlying culture that is found only here. It’s up to us to support it, perpetuate it and write its next chapters as practitioners of this culture.
Go to a local restaurant today. Make a plan to return to a place you love, a restaurant that’s meaningful to your family, to your own traditions, or go to a new place, bringing the story forward, doing something different and exciting.
Embrace it. Know that this food culture is ours, distinct from anything else in the world, and the envy certainly of anywhere else in our country.
Yeah, closing the book on a nice vacation can be tough. But it’s easier when it means coming back to New Orleans. So I’ll see you at the next table, with a giant glass of ice water to help wash it all down.
