Ever since the debacle in the Dome, comfort food has taken on new meaning for New Orleans. Forget chips and dip, this is food with a chip on its shoulder.
With a spectacularly sardonic Super Bowl weekend now shaping up in this town, I’m betting we’ll get a lot more of it.
This is not so much food for emotional eating. This is food as an outlet for civic outrage.
We know that New Orleans devotes an inordinate amount of creative energy to its passions, to its celebrations and, yes, to its grudges. So just as food and drink are normally an expression of our culture, they have become an extension of the case this city has been loudly making that the #SaintsWereRobbed.
The Saints loss did not just deprive the team of a shot at the Lombardi Trophy. It snatched away from New Orleans the chance to do what this community does best.
We love putting on a party. We take immense pride in doing it right and showing other people how we roll.
That’s one thing that those now clucking “get over it” from afar will never understand.
Not content to merely nurse a grudge until next season like a more rational fan base, New Orleans is turning its hard feelings into the very Super Bowl party the game result denied us.
Instead of simply not watching the game, many fans have vowed to party against it, holding boycott parties and replay the Saints Super Bowl of 2010 (spoiler alert: the good guys win). Plenty of bars and restaurants and even mini festivals and block parties will accommodate them.
Wherever Who Dats gather Sunday to not get over it together, you know there will be food. And for this Super Bowl, I’m counting on it being hilarious, on target and rueful, an edible, photo worthy part of the protest.
Whether it’s simmered, smoked, boiled, fried or raw, let’s make sure that to the “get over it” crowd all over the world our Super Bowl food looks like a roast.
