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. Our indispensable andouille, after all, is really a German smoked sausage with a French name.
So much of this goes unseen but then it’s October and you’re holding a beer stein in one hand, a weisswurst 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.
That’s one scene at biggest annual Oktoberfest here, the Deutsches Haus edition along Bayou St. John, continuing this weekend and next.
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 reach 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.
Uptown, Port Orleans Brewing is now home to Bratz Y’All, the dedicated German restaurant that closed this year, seemingly for good. But now the bratz are back, taking over the brewery taproom kitchen for the whole month of October with most if its old menu and live music on weekends.
Back at Deutsches Haus, it is truly festival time as people pour across the grounds, between a cluster of oak trees, the music stage and the beer booths, snack bars and the giant outdoor dining hall serving up trays full of hearty German home cooking. 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.
