The other night I went out for a post-rehearsal bite to eat with some of my fellow Footloose cast members.* We stopped at City Diner, which seemed like a pretty decent place for the most part. It’s on the I-10 Service Road by Causeway, next to the LaQuinta, where Denny’s used to be. And given the location, it’s only natural that it serves up lots of the diner fare, albeit with a lot of New Orleans twists. One of my friends had shrimp remoulade(!) and liked a lot. Another had some onion rings; I tried one and it was quite good. I myself had pancakes, and they were fine. (Not as good as IHOP’s, I suppose, but not bad.) But that wasn’t the problem. Continue reading ‘restaurants that serve fake chocolate milk’
Tag Archive for 'food'
I’m under the weather with a bit of a cold and too lazy to form a lengthy, sustained argument on one topic, so here’s a smattering of tidbits on things I hate but couldn’t make a full post out of. Continue reading ‘miscellany’
The 20th century brought us lots of wonderful inventions. The World Wide Web. Satellites. Airplanes. Bikinis. One invention, however, has a few benefits, but on the whole has been a terrible scourge to humanity. I speak of the microwave, of course, that destroyer of taste and producer of soggy, flavorless dishes. Any good New Orleanian must take a stand against bad food. And since microwaves make bad food, we must unite against them.
One of my favorite foods ever since I was little has always been rice and gravy, which my 91-year-old Maw Maw* (who grew up in rural southern Louisiana and whose first language was French) often cooks for us. Rice and gravy is a staple of Cajun cuisine; there’s a few variations with different types of meat, but hers always uses veal rounds, which my family would get from Guillory’s on Derbigny Street in Metairie, just a block down the street from where I grew up. The meat and gravy are prepared by braising the veal rounds with some onions and garlic over a low heat; my grandmother seems to leave it on the stove all afternoon. As the veal rounds cook they make a wonderful gravy. It’s really fantastic, and I’ve never had anything like it.** Continue reading ‘microwaves’
Sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch (or breakfast). Maybe you’re at some conference or meeting or whatever, and there’s a table with free food. Maybe you’re checking out the continental breakfast at a motel (in which case you paid for the food unless someone else was paying for the hotel, but whatever). Maybe there’s some finger sandwiches or something.* If it’s a free breakfast, maybe there’s a few baskets of muffins and pastries. Or maybe there’s a tray of cookies. I’d like to discuss two specific things: muffins, and cookies. What always runs out first? Blueberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies. Always. Everyone likes them, so why even bother with the other crap? Continue reading ‘inappropriately low numbers of chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins’
I admit I can be a bit of a food snob sometimes. Not too much, because I’m too cheap to eat at fancy restaurants, and because when I’m lazy it’s easier to pop some pizza rolls in the oven. But I’m from New Orleans, and that means loving good food. And loving good food means you have to hate the bad stuff. But there’s one area of snobbery I simply condemn outright. And that, my friends, is wine snobbery. I dislike alcohol snobbery in general, but some types I can at least sympathize with. I totally understand not liking cheap American beer—I find most of it drinkable, but some is just disgusting.* But I’m hardly a beer snob—I usually just stick with something from Abita since drinking it makes me feel like a good New Orleanian. And the high-end beer snobs are really just as bad as the wine snobs. And maybe connoisseurs of scotch or brandy or whatever notice a difference among various brands, but I’m not much of a hard liquor kind of guy, except for vodka, and if you think it makes a difference what kind of vodka you drink, you’re a moron.** Continue reading ‘wine snobs’