In the kitchen at Two Sisters in Treme, Colette Finister tends a stove crowded with well-seasoned pots, steam rising from under the lids into an unmistakable aroma.
It is soul food, the down-home Southern pot cooking of Black tradition, rendered with a range of rich gravies in a spectrum of brown hues.
Her sister, Shanel Snowton, calls the arsenal of stockpots and Dutch ovens their “soul pots.” They yield meaty, generous plate lunches built around smothered turkey wings or turkey necks, stewed oxtails, smothered hen, pork neckbones with cabbage and chitterlings.
Two Sisters in Treme opened earlier this year, but it’s not exactly a new restaurant. In fact, it goes way back, and backatown.
In 1972, their parents bought a restaurant on North Derbigny Street, just off Canal Street and near downtown. It was already called Two Sisters back then. They kept the name because someone advised it would be good luck.
Their clientele was made up of bus drivers and cops, nurses from Big Charity and staffers from City Hall. Office workers left with towering stacks of takeout cartons to bring back to their colleagues.
That one is long gone, but the sisters had their own restaurant called Two Sisters ‘N Da East, built in an old Pizza Hut on Chef Menteur Highway and the legend continued. It did close in the East.
But before long Two Sisters was essentially recruited into business again by members of the Prince Hall Masonic Temple in Treme. They wanted the restaurant back and in their building. It opened this spring, with an assist from no other than Irma Thomas. The soul queen of New Orleans is a fan of their soul cooking; she recommends the oxtails on Sunday by the way.
For all the new restaurants opening around New Orleans, menus like those at Two Sisters are more of a rarity. It’s not trendy, but instead deeply rooted. This cooking has a history based on necessity, ingenuity and care told through food.
Service is sweet and speedy, but it’s food to take some time enjoying, and given the generous portions, a plate will probably give you two meals anyway. This is a welcome comeback from old New Orleans, now up for a new chapter right in the heart of Treme.
