Biscuits from on High: The Fried Chicken Throwdown at West Town Tavern

JRH (who is much older than I am, incidentally) claims that I hate him, despite the fact that it was I who brought him in contact with divine biscuits in celebration of his birthday. There's just no pleasing some dumbasses.

See, here's the thing: JRH's birthday is just two days before M. So every year for the last . . . 4 or 5 years at least, we've celebrated their birthdays together. This year, pulling that off involved a 3.5-hour drive from State College, PA, to Washington, DC (sorry J and W: it was an action-packed weekend with no time for side socializing), a 2-hour flight home, whirlwind changing, and a journey up to West Town Tavern. And all of that was on very little sleep to begin with plus an hour snatched away by a greedy government.

But it was all worth it, oh yes, it was worth it. The Fried Chicken Throwdown at West Town was designed as a benefit for the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization whose mission is "to celebrate, teach, preserve, and promote the diverse food cultures of the American South"—work that's obviously more important now than ever. And far be it from pal M, TLBO, M, JRH, our pal B, and me to refuse to eat ourselves sick in the name of such a worthy cause.

Susan Goss kicked off the evening by introducing John T. Edge, the director of the SFA, who gave us a brief introduction to the SFA, fried chicken (which, he emphasized, has a silent "DEEP" in front of it, as far as any legitimate purveyor is concerned) in general, and the relationship between the SFA and the creators of the first two courses. He also explained that the complicated AV set up was required for the screening of a short film that the SFA had made about André Prince Jeffries whose hot chicken formed not only the second course, but the inspiration for next year's birthday bash. As intrigued as we were by the shiny equipment and the prospect of a little MSTing, I think we were all relieved that food was imminent and the film was definitely after-dinner entertainment.

The first course was Susan's rendition of Willie Mae Seaton's Scotch House Fried Chicken. Although this pre-Katrina reviewer foolishly leads with the pork chop, his assessment of the chicken is a good one: The batter is light and crisp, almost more like that found on really good fish and chips, but there is no question of it being heavy or trapping oil between itself and the chicken as can sometimes happen. In terms of seasoning, again, I concur with the reviewer that it is not particularly dependent on heavy spices, but mostly uses salt and maybe a little something else to bring out the juicy flavor of really good chicken. Our servings were smallish boneless cutlets accompanied by succotash and The Biscuit (more on those in a minute).

At our table, we had a refresher course on succotash before the food arrived: B hasn't had it in ages, as his wife, the possibly imaginary G, won't touch the stuff. This seems to be a girly phenomenon, because TLBO and pal M both eschew the mushiness of the lima bean. (In fact, I have it on good authority that "nothing bigger than a lentil" goes in pal M's mouth.) I have no lima bean objections, but I'm not overly fond of cooked carrots, which have always been a part of my succotash experience. (I see, however, upon checking a dictionary that this is yet another culinary fraud perpetrated upon me.) Much to my delight, then, did I note that the nasty, nasty carrots had been replaced by delicious chunks of bacon. Is it any wonder that Susan is one of my favorite chefs in the whole wide world?

And then there was The Biscuit. These are billed on the menu as Lora Tatum-Smith's Buttermilk Biscuits. I don't know who Lora Tatum-Smith is, but she is my Messiah now. That biscuit was like velvet to the touch. It was neither too dense nor so air filled that it was hard to get a handle on the taste. It was not too salty. It was not too floury. It was the Essential Biscuit. And it was only with difficulty that I did not weep when mine was gone.
I

The second course was a pair of Prince's Hot Chicken wings, rampant, on a caesar salad. Having now seen Ms. Jeffries and her devotees discussing various aspects of the hot chicken, I can only assume that we were experiencing the mild version. The wings were sticky to the touch, but not with the heavy, syrupy quality that often characterizes such things. The heat, to me, seemed to have a black-pepper foundation, with a tangy, hot pepper overlay. The quality and flavor of the chicken were still discernible underneath the heat, which, again, is not what you usually find when the heat is emphasized.

The caesar salad was remarkably good as well, with a light, fresh dressing, and slivers of practically perfect cheese. pal M opined that she would have added a single crouton to make it truly perfect. This led all and sundry at the table to express their extremely fond wishes for MORE BISCUIT MISS MAH BISCUIT SO MUCH! It was then that a staff member appeared from the ether with AN ENTIRE BASKET OF BISCUITS. As TLBO noted, this sudden response to intercessory baked good prayers presents something of a problem to the godless among us, particularly when the biscuits kept a-comin'.

The third course was Susan's own West Town Tavern Fried Chicken. Considering that I've eaten there, oh, let's call it an even 50 trillion times, this should be nothing new, right? WRONG. I have been depriving myself of this chicken for years, because I am a fool. Susan's chicken is not so different from Ms. Seaton's, although the batter tends more toward the crunchy end of the spectrum, so it's not quite as light. In other words, it was ideal for a more rib-sticking third course. The garlic mashed taters and the mushroom gravy were lusciously delicious, and the greens of unspecified latin name were also good (not vinegary or bitter, which is too often the case with greens). If someone forced me to criticize something about the whole meal, I'd say that the breast for course three might have been a touch too large. I think that pal M, through her moans of distress, might have been in agreement by the end of the evening.

The movie started up while we were all eagerly awaiting the lemon chess pie and blueberries (despite our groans of fullness). The pie was an excellent capper for the meal, being about as light as desserts get, yet still giving that satisfying sweet happy ending.

Mr. Edge had been a bit circumspect about the film aspects of SFA's endeavors. He repeatedly referred to the movies as "irreverent, but respectful." They'd intended to show both the movie about Prince's Hot Chicken and that about the Scotch House at the Throwdown, but the latter has been growing and growing. It currently stands at near an hour. The Prince's Hot Chicken movie was a lean, mean 12 minutes, which is fortunate for those of us who nearly laughed ourselves sick.

Much of it features an interview with Ms. Jeffries herself, who has a hilarious deadpan delivery, even when (especially when?) she is creating euphemisms on the fly for hot-chicken-induced rumpy pumpy. Other interviewees included a pair of members of film crew who are also addicts of the chicken. They imparted useful information about using the hotness of the chicken for self-defense. Another gentleman talked trash about the heat, then revealed that that he, himself, orders mild. But holding his own against the owner was the interviewee who turned out to be the Mayor of Nashville. That is a man I'd vote for without asking any further questions about his politics.

Interspersed among the interviews were educational film clips about the urges we experience and Your Friend the Digestive System. It was something that could have so easily become labored and unfunny, and yet the SFA did an absolutely stellar job keeping things light, funny, and informative. Immediately after the film ended, JRH declared "Next year in Nashville." And so say we all.

While we lingered, both Susan and Mr. Edge came over to chat with us. M and I were gratified to learn that Leah Chase will be reopening her place the Thursday before Easter. We're determined to get there (and Scotch House, now, it goes without saying) before the year's out.

Waiting for Gumbot

Roughly 12 aeons ago, my friend A asked for my Gumbo recipe (which, of course, is Frank Brigtsen's recipe). M and I learned to make this gumbo on our honeymoon when we did a class at the New Orleans Cooking Experience. We've made it several times. It's time consuming but definitely worth it. I'm just typing in from the recipe that Frank gave us and giving the notes that I think will be helpful.


Yield: 12 bowl-sized portions (14.5 cups)

MTZQ Notes: This is a cajun gumbo (not surprising as Frank trained under Paul Prudhomme, who literally wrote the book[s] on cajun cuisine), which involves making the roux separately, then adding it to a boiling broth. Creole recipes cook the vegetables in the roux once it's fully browned. Both are nice, but I like the cajun way somewhat better for a gumbo, whereas the creole method lends itself better to less "soupy" things.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Andouille sausage, sliced into half-rounds, 1/4" thick

MTZQ Note: I have used hot italian sausage in a pinch, but andouille is best, both for flavor and texture

2 TBSP Pomace olive oil

MTZQ Note: The key here is high heat tolerance. You don't want an extra virgin olive oil, because it will burn before your trinity has browned. You can also use reserved bacon grease or any other kind of animal fat.

4 c diced yellow onions, 1/2" pieces (divide into 3c and 1c portions)
3 c diced celery, 1/2" pieces (divide into 2c and 1c portions)
2 c diced bell pepper (any color is fine, but it's nicer if you have some variety), 1/2" pieces
2 Bay leaves
1 TBSP minced fresh garlic
4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp whole-leaf dried thyme
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground white pepper
1/4 tsp ground cayenne pepper
3 TBSP gumbo filé powder

MTZQ: Note: The salt, dried spices, and filé powder can be tossed into the same dish, making a "spice kit." Resist the urge to up the spices because you like things more flavorful, at least the first time, this gumbo is nice and bold and really does require only these small amounts

12 c chicken stock

MTZQ Note: Frank says "or water" in the original recipe. Uh, no. You really do want to use chicken stock

1 chicken, cut into 8 pieces (3-4 lbs of bone-in chicken pieces)

MTZQ Note: I've always used legs and thighs, never tried this with breasts, which can be too unwieldy during frying, or wings, which seem like a lot of effort for little yield when it comes to removing the meat from the bones. Also, I just like dark meat better.

4 TBSP Chef Paul Prudhomme's Meat Magic seasoning
3 c all-purpose white flour
Enough vegetable or peanut oil for frying the chicken pieces

Steps

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Place the sliced andouille sausage on a shallow baking pan and bake until the edges have turned brown, 40-45 min.
   

   MTZQ Note: This might seem like an odd step, because frying the sausage in the gumbo pot would give you fat for sauteing the trinity. However, it's a step that makes a difference. The crisping of the edges of the sausage helps it retain some firmness in the gumbo, and you don't have to deal with too much grease/not enough grease. I'm a firm believer in baking.

   
   
2. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over high heat. Add 3 c of onion, 2 c of celery, 1.5 c of bell pepper, and the bay leaves. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions begin to brown, 12-15 minutes.
   

   MTZQ Notes: First thing to realize is that this is the gumbo pot in which you're sauteeing. Eventually, the whole kit and caboodle will be in this pot, including 12 c of stock, so make sure it's big enough. The second thing about this phase is that it may go against every cooking instinct you have. When it says "high heat," crank that burner up. When it says stir "occasionally," it means occasionally. In the first 10 minutes, you might only stir these babies twice, and just a few more times in the last few minutes. It's not only ok for things to stick and brown, you want them to stick and brown. As Frank explained it "Brown is the color of flavor." Those bits that stick will be deglazed at later stages, and they'll add a lot of depth to the flavor. Also, we are talking brown on those onions. Not slightly golden, not toasty, but a nice, rich brown. Onions are hard to burn and they have a distinct and nasty smell when they are burning. If your onions look, to your panicked eyes, like they're burning, but they don't have that smell, they're not burning. Take a deep breath, salute the light in your onions, and resist the urge to stir.

   
   
3. Add the remaining vegetables: 1 c of onion, 1 c of celery, and 1/2 c of bell pepper. Reduce heat to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the second stage of onions turns clear, 2-3 minutes.
   

   MTZQ Note: If you were worried about all the veggies being limp and slimy, be contented. These vegetables are both for texture and a lighter, crisper flavor.

   
   
4. Add the garlic and your spice kit, including filé powder. Reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring constantly, for 3-4 minutes.
   

   MTZQ Note: The important thing here is to battle the stringy nature of the filé powder. The low heat and constant stirring are key for that, the timing less so. Your filé may take more or less time before it plays nice and blends into the mixture, rather than coming away with the spoon in strings.

   
   
5. Add the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add the cooked andouille sausage. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour. Skim off any excess oil that rises to the surface and discard.
   
6. While this is simmering, it's time to tackle the chicken. I'm rearranging a few of Frank's steps here, because this order works better for me.
   
   
   
   • Seasoning
     
     
     
     1. Seasoned flour: In a shallow baking pan, add 2 c of the flour and 4 tsp of the Meat Magic seasoning. Blend well.
        
     2. Season the chicken pieces on both sides with the remaining meat magic, then dredge these in the seasoned flour
        

        MTZQ Note: As a disciple of Frank, I must insist that you embrace the "wet hand, dry hand" rule here. Handle the initial seasoning of the chicken and initial deposit of the chicken pieces into the flour with one hand, flip them with this same hand, then use the other hand to do more thorough coating and to transfer the now dry chicken piece to the plate or whatever you have waiting. It makes this much less painful.

        
        
     
     
   • I do believe it's time for you to fry.
     
     
     
     1. Heat your skillet with about 1/2" of vegetable or peanut oil to about 350° F.
        

        MTZQ Note: Ultimately you want to fry in whatever you are most comfortable with. For me that is either my cast-iron skillet or one of my deep nonstick skillets. You could theoretically do this in an electric fry pan with a temperature control, but I don't own one. Don't try this in any kind of personal (or professional, I guess, deep fryer, though).

        
        
     2. Place chicken pieces in the hot oil for browning. Fit as many in as you can, but don't crowd. Be aware that putting cold chicken in will lower the temperature of your oil, so you'll want to monitor this.
        

        MTZQ Note: I use a clip-on thermometer to monitor the oil temperature, but it's awkward and no mistake. Some rules of thumb that can help. Poppy Tooker advises that one can tell that oil is just about ready for frying when a strike-anywhere wooden match that has been tossed into the pot ignites and immediately goes out. I generally use the flour test: when a pinch of pure flour sizzles and pops when dropped in, the oil is ready. In terms of maintaining the temp, it should be bubbling and popping pretty vigorously throughout.

        
        
     3. It should take about 5 minutes to brown each side, for a total of about 10 min. per piece of chicken.
        

        MTZQ Notes: You are not trying to cook the chicken to the point that it is edible here. This phase has two goals: The first is to brown the chicken skin so that it adds plenty of flavor to the broth when the chicken is added to it; the second is to add flavor to the oil, which is then used to make the roux. To that end, you do do not want to submerge the pieces entirely (yes, that is one half of one inch above). You want to brown one side (about 5 min), flip the piece, then brown the other. If you submerge or nearly submerge the pieces, the "face up" side is getting bogged down with rapidly cooling oil. That makes for greasy, heavy chicken.

        
        
     4. As the chicken is browned, remove it to a plate covered with paper towels to drain.
        
     
     
   
   
7. After the broth has simmered for 1 hour sans chicken, add the browned chicken to the still-simmering broth and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is fully cooked and tender, 35-40 min.
   
8. Remove chicken from the gumbo and place it in a shallow pan to cool. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, take the meat off the bones and set aside. Discard the chicken bones and skin.
   

   MTZQ Note: If you haven't started making the roux while the chicken was cooking in the gumbo, you can certainly take care of this step while the chicken is cooling. It's no biggie if the chicken cools all the way down. Also, I use the chicken bones and skin to make chicken broth. You'll probably want to add a few wings or something to it, just because these have already been boiled a bit in the gumbo itself, but there's still plenty of flavor.

   
   
9. Making the roux.
   
   
   
   • Take a deep breath. Banish fear from your mind.
     
   • Once your frying oil is cool, slowly and carefully pour it into a heatproof glass measuring cup.
     

     MTZQ Note: You don't want any of the browned flour bits in your oil. To keep these out, I place a paper towel in a colander or mesh sieve and pour the oil through it and into the measuring cup.

     
     
   • You will need 3/4 cup + 2 TBSP of oil.
     

     MTZQ Note: Frank's roux calls for 3/4 plus 2 TBSPs of oil. I watched Poppy do a much more casual roux with equal success. I am enough of a roux n00b that I stick to Frank's very precise proportions, and I'm happy to report that on New Year's Day, I made a beautiful dark roux in under 10 minutes.

     
     
   • Heat a cast-iron skillet over high heat and add the oil. When the oil is hot, gradually add 1 c of flour, whisking or stirring constantly, until the roux becomes the color of peanut butter. Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking, whisking constantly, until the roux is deep reddish brown (chocolate brown). Remove from heat and set aside to cool for 15 min.
     

     
     

     
     
     • MTZQ Notes on timing:
       
       
       
       • There is a point, just when the roux begins to turn the color of peanut butter, that it starts to smoke and becomes very grainy. At this point, pull it off the heat entirely and whisk like something is after you until the smoke dies down and it gets all smooth again. Trust me, it will happen. At that point, you can return it to medium heat.
         
       • My first few rouxeseses took a long time to make, mostly because I feared the heat, panicked, added more flour, and did other silly things. If your roux takes 45 minutes, but it's lovely and hasn't burned, consider it a success. It takes practice to build your confidence.
         
       
       
     • MTZQ Notes on equipment:
       
       
       
       • I usually use my cast-iron skillet, but my most successful roux to date was in a nonstick skillet. I don't think the nonstickyness was key. I think the success is attributable to confidence and practice, but it's worth noting that you can make a perfectly lovely roux in a nonstick pan.
         
       • I recommend stirring with a wooden spoon rather than a whisk to minimize the chances of cajun napalm damage to your person. Vigilant scraping of bottom and sides throughout is key. You want to cook the flour, you don't want to burn it. However, as with onions, go with the smell. Burned flour smells foul. If your roux doesn't reek, it's not burned.
         
       
       
     • MTZQ Notes on eyeballing and roux repair:
       
       
       
       • This roux should be really dark brown and have a distinct reddish tinge to it. It should be a shiny paste, but when stirred, there should not be standing oil.
         
       • If you have violated the first rule of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and panicked somewhere along the way, the roux is probably salvageable, so long as it isn't burned. If you do have standing oil when you stir, let the roux settle until there's a layer of oil on the top. You can then carefully pour off the oil, leaving your lovely roux behind.
         
       
       

     
     

   
   
   
10. Bring the gumbo broth to a boil. Carefully pour off any excess oil that may have risen to the top of the roux and discard. Slowly and carefully add the roux to the boiling broth, a little bit at a time, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 25-30 min. Skim off any excess oil that rises to the surface and discard. Add the chicken meat, increase heat to medium, and cook, stirring gently, until the chicken is heated through until the chicken is heated through.
    
11. Serve over cooked rice.

Green-Eyed Lover: The Big Easy, Days 5.2 & 6

Gentle reader, I cruelly left you on the very doorstep of heaven. Let us go around the back and through the French doors into the kitchen of my dreams.


In the kitchen, we were greeted by Judy Jurisich, who poured us each a glass of menage e trois and ushered us into the parlor. We sat and talked about the week we'd had so far. Judy, in turn, told us how they've all been able to keep on keepin' on with help, cooperation, and some new arrangements. Business has been more erratic than in the past, with big rushes followed by lulls, but so far, so good.

We were shortly joined by two other students in the class, one a Canadian food writer, the other, I think, a travel agent (and possibly friend) who'd arranged her schedule for her. The latter is a displaced local who's been in Baton Rouge since last year. The irony is that her job is in Baton Rouge. As she put it: "I used to be a commuter, and it's like over an hour to Baton Rouge. And now . . . I'd give anything to be a commuter again."

Shortly after 5:30, we ventured into the kitchen and started the class, although we were still waiting for the pair of locals who would round out our class. Of course the four of us cleverly took up stations around the island that required the local couple to sit on opposite sides of the kitchen when they did arrive. They were very gregarious and friendly, though, and didn't seem to hold it against us.

Our chef was Poppy Tooker, a food historian, a cooking teacher, leader of the New Orleans Slow Food Convivium, a chef in her own right (though she spurned that label), and a warrior for the preservation of the most delicious elements of New Orleans culture. She is also officially A Hoot, a Spitfire, and quite possibly a Pistol. You understand that I, as an 21st urban grrrl, do not use these terms lightly, and yet they are the only ones that suit.

The contrast between Poppy and Frank couldn't be greater, and the two styles couldn't have complemented one another better from our perspective. All of Frank's tricks and techniques involved precision: Each was designed to give more control over every step of the process. Poppy made M and KJ cry just a little bit every time she eyeballed, guesstimated, or tossed in a pinch of this or that. Sorry, gentleman: no guts, no glory. And as much as I learned from Frank, I did a little happy dance to have my improvisational approach validated by Poppy (and, of course, I learned a ton from her too).

I think our collective highlight on the cooking style front occurred when Poppy suggested that you can tell when your frying oil has reached the proper temperature (about 365˚ F) by tossing a match into it. When you hear the hiss of the match igniting, then immediately going out, the oil is ready. AMB and I were oohing and ahhing over this when she turned to KJ and asked if he'd use the trick. In his inimitable, mild-mannered way, he replied: "No. I'll measure."

Poppy's storytelling was also a great complement to Frank's. Where Frank's stories were an inside look at the legendary New Orleans kitchens (Commander's Palace, K-Paul's, Antoine, etc.), Poppy's stories were about the roots and subcultures of New Orleans foods. Throughout she had a running commentary about the factors influencing the differences between Creole and Cajun approaches, and she was just as informative about the cultural differences between Creoles in the Quarter and conspicuously consuming Americans in the Garden District. We got insight into the etymology of everything from netural ground to the shallot/scallion confusion and the wacky misunderstanding that gives étouffée its name. She emphasized again and again that New Orleanians are culturally Catholic, whatever their faith may be. And she explored the happy infiltration of New Orleans cuisine by African influences by way of street vendors who used their time off to raise money against their purchase price.

Oh, she talked about other chefs, too. She poked good-natured fun at Frank, who had the audacity to question her pronunciation of "calas" when he was consulting for Vicky and Bryan Krantz before they opened Calas Bistro.

Frank: But Paul pronounces it "Cal-AY" . . .
Poppy: And what would Paul know about it? Of course he'd pronounce it that way: He's CAJUN!

Poppy also cleverly slipped in hilarious stories about Leah Chase whenever possible. Each was more hilarious than the last: "That Poppy Tooker, she's as Catholic as they come, but she sure loves that kosher salt!"; the harrowing tale of turtle processing and the subsequent hell of turtle parts stranded on a sun-baked curb; and Leah's sly references to how times change, what with a white girl doing clean-up for her.

But I was on to Poppy the whole time. She was just trying enlist us all in her crusade to get Leah to reopen Dooky Chase's. Her diabolical plan worked. I must eat there, and I ain't too proud to beg.

But on to the food. Our evening began with one of those rare moments that represent a true food epiphany. I've only had a few of these: my first samosa; discovering chorizo; realizing that I had no analogy for the taste of lucuma ice cream. Not only do calas definitely make the "food epiphany" list, I feel that I also achieved a more enlightened understanding of remoulade sauce before the first course was over.

Poppy started by having us make good friends with the tasso that would eventually go into the calas. Although AMB had already bonded with the spicy meat product at breakfast, she was not above getting reacquainted. While she chopped what we grudgingly left her, Poppy talked about the cutting and curing of tasso and why it's such a staple of Cajun cuisine (the short answer is the usual: It's a fatty cut that's considered undesirable; it can be cured in a short time; and the spices cover up any iffy flavors that result from lack of preservation methods).

She then got us started on the remoulade, which is totally easy peasy to make. So easy peasy, in fact, that if I could find any stinking Zatarain's (accept no substitutes, even though the original company was bought out by McCormick-Schilling, which still maintains a strong community presence, so that's ok then) Creole Mustard in this backwater town, I'd be putting that stuff on my pop tarts. Not that I eat pop tarts. But I will consider them and any other potential remoulade vehicles. Louisiana remoulade departs from the white, mayonnaise tradition by omitting the egg. That leaves just Italian parsley leaves, olive oil, hot sauce (Crystal, not Tabasco, for a deeper, peppery flavor with more moderate heat), green onions, cayenne, a butt load of paprika (which is what gives remoulade its color), salt, and lemon juice. And it's my favorite kind of sauce: Throw it all in the food process and process away, no supervision necessary.

The calas looked simple. Poppy billed them as being simple. But I totally choked when I went up to make one. The main ingredient is rice bound with flour and egg, a dash of baking powder to lighten things up, and then whatever ingredients one wants to add for a savory (or sweet, if one chooses to deal in such abominations) treat.

The hard part is forming the calas from the mixture. Poppy demonstrated with two large spoons, warning us not to manhandle them with a lot of pressing and molding. The idea is to shape them by scraping lightly from one spoon to another. This is easy enough to say when you have a black belt in spoons. I do not have a black belt in spoons. In fact, from the way I handled them, you'd think I was a three-fingered Martian who'd just come across an autoharp. Of course, M was a natural. Bastard.

Once the calas have been slid into the oil, they're nearly as no-maintenance as the remoulade. They very kindly turn their deliciously browning selves over so that they don't even need flipping. And when they do come out, they are heavenly. Much, much lighter and more flavorful than you'd think a deep-fried rice ball ever could be. In fact, even though I tend to think of rice as something that you put other things on, in calas form, both the taste and texture are more than just a backdrop for the other ingredients. In this case, the salty, spicy bites of tasso were all the better for the silky texture of the rice, and the green onions were a crisp, sharp-tasting overtone. And dipped in the remoulade? Well, there's that I'm-going-to-hell-and-I-couldn't-be-happier feeling again.

Next on the duty roster was the yeoman's work of making the roux, both for the gumbo and for the chicken piquant. As we got schooled in the methodology, she also gave us a little history. Cajun food uses filé powder to thicken because sassafras leaves were ubiquitous, but flour was an expensive luxury item, taking roux of the table for the poor. When Cajun food does incorporate a roux (as Frank's gumbo does, but combined with filé), it's always added to the boiling liquid, presumably because it racks up the technical difficulty points. Creole food, in contrast, builds from the roux upward.

Poppy's roux was decidedly Creole. In making it, she gave us many useful tips along the way, usually just before she violated them. For example, she sternly informed us that using a wire whisk to stir was just asking for Cajun napalm burns, then promptly turned around to grab the wire whisk insisting that she was making the world's biggest roux. But she also gave us an incredibly liberating tip: The roux functions to add color, add flavor, and thicken. The first two are more important than the last, so a roux the consistency of thin mayonnaise is not cause for panic. I will, no doubt, continue in my quest to make the beautifully thick, rich roux that Frank achieved in two nanoseconds, but along the way, I will give myself permission NOT to stand there for 45 minutes stirring until it happens or my arm falls off. Instead, I will tell my roux that it is a good roux and a pretty roux and a flavorful roux.

Frank was big on the flavor of the roux, too, but in a completely different way. In his recipe, the incredibly precise amount of oil is harvested from the pan in which you've just fried the chicken, so it's gaining relatively subtle flavor. Poppy waited for the bittersweet chocolate color in the roux before adding the onions directly to it, followed by the bell pepper and celery. This, obviously, is going to add a much bigger and more direct flavor to the roux (and boy did that pay, particularly in the chicken piquant).

While whipping up the mother of all roux, Poppy also talked a bit about the so-called "holy trinity" of Creole and Cajun food: Onion, bell pepper, celery. Unfortunately, I went to the bathroom during the first part of this, so I missed some. However, I gather that she thinks it started out with the "mir fois" of traditional French cooking: Onion, celery, and carrots. In Louisiana, though, carrots were hard to come by and peppers were thick on the ground; and thus the new and improved trinity was born.

After dealing with these diverse approaches to roux, Poppy turned attention to the religious issue of okra. She didn't sugar coat it (because I think lovers and haters of okra can agree: That's just gross), saying that stories that slaves brought okra seeds with them across the Atlantic so that they'd have something to remind them of home were so much bunk. Okra is cheap and grows abundantly and easily, end of subject. However, she did argue for its fundamental place in a gumbo, pointing out that the very name comes from the Bantu word for okra: kingumbo.

The most important tactic on the okra side appears to be never, ever to allow it to steam. Rather, it should fried quickly and at high heat and watched carefully so that it is removed from the pan before it starts to give up liquid. I admit that I'm an okra agnostic and don't much care whether it's in our out of what I eat, but AMB, who is antiokra, seemed skeptical. However, we took turns watching each other's backs while we licked every plate clean later, so I don't think there were any adverse okra outcomes.

For the chicken piquant, once the roux is made, the hard part is over. However, it's worth noting that if you're a crazy person who doesn't want a gumbo, too, you should fry the chicken first and use the oil for the roux, a la Frank's gumbo. To continue backing up into the piquant, the chicken is marinated in hot sauce (remember: Crystal!) and cayenne. After browning, it's simmered in the roux plus trinity plus tomatoes, vinegar, bay leaves, and thyme. In the last few minutes, green onions and parsley are added. Un. Believably. Good.

In case you're getting whiplash as I move between the chicken and the gumbo, I assure you the fault is mine. I'm just unable to convey how smoothly Poppy kept both going and kept up a running commentary. I won't say she made it look easy, but it was natural, comfortable, and casual. And she did make it seem like something a a mere human like me could pull off.

So getting back to the gumbo, we got a lecture on making shrimp stock (shrimp detritus plus celery and onion, but positively no green pepper) folded into the state of the post-Katrina seafood industry: "Gumbo" crabs (which are designated as such based primarily on size) aren't really available because of the missed season. As a result, we got to watch Poppy pull apart Louisiana blue crabs with Marfan Syndrome as if they were tissue-paper flowers.

In contrast, the oysters are tiny, which made the job of chopping them for the oyster jambalaya relatively simple. They oysters were also the impetus for a sort of back-room conversation. Poppy was disappointed that the oysters had come from P&J washed. Judy said, in significant tones, that all oysters must be washed before sale. There was some amusing silent communication between them that seemed to imply that there were channels through which unwashed oysters, with sweet, sweet oyster liquor could be obtained. Judy, in turn, revealed that she was once the Oyster Heiress before both the Ps and the Js got out of the business.

For the oyster jambalaya, Poppy got to show us her perfect rice recipe, which involved filling the pot with rice up to the level of her first knuckle, then filling the pot with water (and in this case, oyster liquor and worcestershire sauce, too) to the second knuckle. Although they disagree on the degree of precision in measurements, both Poppy and Frank advise leaving the damned rice alone until it's done. In Poppy's case, she insisted that lifting the lid was not a particularly problem except for the fact that no human being has ever lifted a lid without a spoon in the other hand, hell-bent on making a glutinous mess. I repeat: Leave the rice alone.

The rice on its way, we were ready to tackle dessert. But before we could do that, we had a lot to learn about bread in New Orleans. First up, my proletarian heart was gladdened to learn the history of the Po Boy: During a streetcar strike, the proprietors of Martin's grocery was determined that until the strike was over, those "Poor Boys" would be welcome to a sandwich there. This led to collaboration with Gendusa's bakery to determine how much bread was needed to make a whole meal into a sandwich. Poppy claims that the brown paper that served as a ruler is still intact and on display.

As the bread pudding process progressed, my head began to spin. You know the "Big Wedge of Cheese Day" episode of The West Wing? Well, even if you don't, there's a part where Josh and CJ are listening to a presentation from Dr. Phlox (who is disguised as a passionate cartographer) about the fundamental flaws in Mercator Projection Maps. They're sucked into the issue against her will:

Josh: You mean Germany isn't where we think it is?
Phlox: Nothing is where you think it is.

And later when CJ sees the "upside-down" map (southern hemisphere on top):
Phlox: The map is flipped over.
CJ: Yeah, but you can't do that
Phlox: Why not?
CJ: 'Cause it's freaking me out!

Yeah, this kind of went like that. See, you may be among the benighted segment of humanity who thinks that Po Boys are served on any old French Bread. They are not. They are served on Po Boy loaves, which can only be made in New Orleans. Literally. Po Boy loaves made outside New Orleans, it seems, stubbornly refuse to get crusty enough on the outside or light enough on the inside. The Gendusas (I think) found this out the hard way when they tried to move their business elsewhere in Louisiana, only to find the that critical elements of their bread were standing at the edge of the Big Easy, waving placards that urged them to come home, all was forgiven.

Another rookie mistake one might make is to think that bread pudding involves using any old day old bread. WRONG. If one is in New Orleans, then a day-old Po Boy loaf is acceptable. Outside of New Orleans, you might as well just be using an old sofa pillow. If you must make bread pudding outside the Holy Land, Poppy recommends Vietnamese baguettes with milk added until just a bit of milk breaks out between your fingers when you squeeze. In a final act to win our hearts (as if she even needed to try), Poppy then made the hard sauce for the bread pudding and did not cook off one. single. drop. of the bourbon.

As much as I am naturally lazy and gluttonous, I can still say that there was a kind of perverse regret in my heart when we left Poppy and her clairvoyant assistant in the kitchen. In 2004, it was pissing down rain the day we did our class, so we didn't get to tour the grounds of the House at all. It was a beautiful night, this time, and Judy gave us the tour. The food writer asked questions about how the School got its start, so AMB and KJ no longer had to rely on my flawed memory of it. She was also obviously quite impressed with the experience and admitted that she rather dreaded cooking classes usually, because they all followed the same format, which didn't really allow for much other than mastering some minor kitchen task. This opened up an opportunity for all and sundry to praise the school to high heaven.

Dinner was, of course, delicious, congenial, and relaxing. Judy sat at our table and we talked about weddings (she and Tommy never got to eat a crumb of the food at their own and wound up at a fast-food drive through), Katrina (they were teaching their last class as the House was being boarded up, then Judy got in her car and drove to Atlanta where Tommy was on duty at the time), and Chris Rose (although that essay [with thanks to AJ for pointing it out] hadn't yet been published at the time). Poppy came out later to chat and answer any questions we might had, but she was understandably tired and wanted to call it a night. We did, too, not long after, and Tommy was gracious enough to drive us back to our hotel, where we bid a nearly tearful farewell to AMB and KJ.

The next morning, we had enough time to brave Cafe DuMonde and its Darwinian approach to getting a table. We prevailed before long and even managed (eventually) to flag down some service. Og merely had coffee, but M had the beignets. We were really on a mission for pralines, though, and would accept no substitutes for Aunt Sally's. This resulted in a kind of Marx Brothers routine where M tried the Decatur Street door and declared it closed. I saw someone inside and tried the door nearest Dutch Alley, which opened. Of course, it turned out that we were assaulting the proprietor the very first minute that she got in, but we secured our pralines.

If you think I got that close to Dutch Alley and didn't go in, your willing suspension of disbelief is marvelous. If you think I went into Dutch Alley and didn't get anything, I'm flattered by your confidence in my fiscal responsibility. I very nearly wound up with the glamour trash gojira earrings, but ultimately decided what I'd known to be true from the beginning: The Sapient Hair was not going to play nice with them.

I did, however, wind up with two pieces of Sabine Chadborn's jewelry. One is cord necklace has a beautiful oval agate pendant suspended from a silver semi-oval, the other is cord necklace with a a treble clef of twisted silver with a silver guitar welded on to it. That one makes me feel like a bit of a poseur, but it was just too cool for me to pass up. (Actually, I've just looked at it and realized that it's a bass, so I'm an uberposeur. Now I definitely have to buy the Bad Badtz-Maru Bass at the OTSFM members' sale tomorrow.) I also proved unable to resist Dan Fuller's art a second time. I picked up two smaller prints from his treehouse series: the firehouse and the circus.

While the earring lady was ringing us up, she noticed my shirt. Unfortunately, she tragically misread the boobies as ducks and periodically quacked at us as she wrote up our order.

So, as you can see, days 5.2 and 6 were a well-spent end to a pretty kick-ass trip. But it's a trip that has made me afraid. I'm really preoccupied with getting back there. That's not too surprising, because I feel like I've left a little more of me there with each visit and taken a little bit more of it back to Chicago. But what if, as CB says, I go in July and still think I could live there? What if death by half muff and hurricane looks like a good alternative to leaving?

The Culinary Return: The Big Easy, Day 5.1

M and I had packed and pretty much passed out on Thursday night, both in preparation for having Breakfast at Brennan's, which numerous people informed us we must. AMB and K were on board, as was J. Og also braved Cave!Slayer, but sie was all about the sleep at that point.


A lot of vocabulary has just been beaten to death by the tourism industry, particularly with regard to New Orleans: Old World charm, elegance, etc. But it all really applies to Brennan's. The spotless stone floors glow with care and time; the wood reception desk and glass-and-wood display cases are warm and inviting; the archways and chandeliers draw the eye from floor to ceiling and along corridors; and . . . dear Baal I sound like I'm writing Tennessee Williams fanfic or intro text for Gone with the Wind. It's just a really lovely, elegant space. Even Og could appreciate that.

Also according to instructions, some of enjoyed the canonical gin fizz. We'd had pale imitations the night before at Remoulade, but these were the real deal: lightly creamy, delicate hint of orange, and pleasant from start to finish. M also sampled another drink that he enjoyed (an Absinthe Suissesse, maybe?), but it was too anise-y for me. I am now kicking myself again because none of us tried the Mr. Funk of New Orleans (which, I'm pretty sure is what and I dubbed a "Butterwick" in honor of and at their wedding.

There was also COFFEE! Excellent, hot, delicious coffee in a pretty silver pot. And fresh-squeezed juice, which I suppose is good if you're not into playing fast and loose with your stimulants and your depressants before noon.

M was the only one of us brave enough to do the full on Table d'Hote. In fact, he went one better than that. He had the Creole Onion soup, but then pulled a reverse on the entree and went for the grillades and grits (please note that this involves BABY veal, not that imitation toddler veal). For dessert, he had the bananas foster.

I was all about following the path of the unusual omelette, which had treated me well earlier in the week. My omelette is not represented on any of the menus that I can find, but it had andouille and cheese and deliciousness on its side. AMB had a tasso omelette (mmmm). I think K might've gotten the same omelette as I did, and I've utterly blanked on J's dish. Braver folk than I ordered the key lime pie, the pecan pie, and auxiliary bananas foster, but I couldn't even think about dessert. Not even when the waiter appeared to really, REALLY want me to have a sympathy order of bananas foster. (It was a very nice gesture, but seriously, Og cannot be responsible for hir actions in the presence of bananas en fuego before noon.)

Somehow we made it back to the hotel after breakfast, and the Fellowship was broken. J and AKS were headed back home by way of Atlanta, and M and I were off to a less capacious room for our last night in NO. AMB and K were kind enough to help us move (which meant that we doubled our likelihood of getting lost on the way to the elevator, simply because none of us could remember where it was).

M had to work, of course, but the rest of our remaining merry band was intent on heading down to the end of Magazine Street near Audubon Park. First up, though, I had to hit the FedEx/Kinko's to ship the posters off to Casa Wombata. This errand and planning for the excursion set us up for more wackiness in the service sector. Bear in mind that I was carrying a 4-foot-tall tube of heavy vinyl as I asked the clerk at Kinko's about shipping.

Clerk: Do you want to ship those ground?

Me: I think so. It's not important how soon they get there, so whatever's inexpensive.

Clerk: Ground is cheaper.

Me: Ok, ground then.

Clerk: You can't ship those ground. They're not packed.

Me: . . .

Clerk: I can put them in a FedEx bag if you ship them 3-day.

Me: 3-day it is . . .

Earlier at the Marriott, AMB bravely tries to obtain information about the St. Charles streetcar.

DRB: Can you tell me how much the streetcar is?

Clerk: $1.50.

DRB: Great. Thank you. Do you know how often they're running?

Clerk: Oh, I don't think they're running, are they?

DRB: . . .

Clerk: You can take the bus. That's the same price.

DRB: Ok, then. Thanks . . .

Like I said: Not bad service, just weird service.

Posters mailed, we hopped on the bus and tried not to be worried about the sign warning us about the penalties for attacking transit employees, which was in Reader's Digest large-print format. The bus ride took us through the Garden District where there seemed to be a lot of real estate for sale. As I was saying to M today, visiting NO in October—especially this October—may have been a grave error. I found myself saying over and over again, "I could live here. I really could live here." We've decided that we need to return in July to remind ourselves that there's no way we'd survive a single summer there.

I don't think we saw much of the real destruction on that ride. M saw some on the train in, and certainly AMB and K saw a bunch on their trip out to the swamp tour. But certainly that area of the city was both harder hit and more forgotten than the Quarter.

We exited the bus around Calhoun and began shopping our way back down magazine. I very nearly wound up with these Vans, and AMB very nearly wound up with these; sadly neither of us got quite the right fit. (And I confess that I have since obtained these.)

We moseyed onward, stopping in any shops that caught our fancy. Most were in houses, so it was a great opportunity to soak up the enviable architecture. We hit a bath and scent store along the way where AMB obtained much-needed rubber duckies for the bunnyface F1 generation. One store dealt exclusively in vintage accessories. Most of you know that I have a much lower than average attraction to and concern for purses than the average XX individual, and even I saw that there were some genuinely beautiful bags in there. Also, K tried to talk me into buying the most beautiful compact in the world, but I simply could not justify spending $60 on a pocket mirror when I often go weeks without looking in the regular mirrors in my home.

We hit a boutique called Sweet Pea & Tulip that also has a location in the Quarter (one that we somehow missed in the shopping extravaganza on Thursday). I somehow lucked into a pretty peasant/hippy top on clearance. It's white with purple-grey faux finish, melon trim, and has a periwinkle and melon embroidered/sequined design front and back. I realize that sounds like a nightmare, but it's very pretty. Another boutique called Fairy (Woman's Clothing) came very close to doing a LOT of damage to my wallet. There was a gorgeous pale green wrap blouse that (mercifully) happened to hit me in exactly the wrong spot. There were also cute cargo pants that did weird things to my butt. (I can only imagine what they would have done to someone who actually has a butt.) I also remain grateful that I didn't see the vintage skull bead necklace until we were on our way out.

Given the near miss at Fairy, it was sensible to take a breather and Luna Cafe, a great coffee shop that took up the main floor of a house. In addition to good coffee and delicious cookies, this had great seating on the porch (overlooking the Starbucks across the street) to recommend it. But even if it had failed in the most basic necessities and lacked other fringe benefits, it would have rocked if only for the sign over the toy area at the back of the house, which read:

Unattended children will be given espresso and a puppy

.

As we continued our journey, we stopped at Blue Frog Chocolates, where I picked up a taxonomically confused chocolate gator for the friend who covered my midterms for me. We stopped in a few more boutiques and "antique stores" that leaned more to the thrift shop end of the spectrum (not that there's anything wrong with that, and I very nearly scored an Emergency Home Sacraments Kit very like the one we had when I was growing up. This was a far superior EHSK, though, because it had a kind of electric blue enamel inlay behind Our Savior.

Time was sadly growing short, though, and all too soon it was time to point ourselves back toward the Warehouse District to collect M. Our cooking class was scheduled to begin at 5:30, and we definitely did not want to be late. Despite rush hour traffic, though, our United Cab Man had us at the House on Bayou Road by about 5:10. We rang the bell and were waiting for a response when a deep, authoritative voice from behind us asked if we were there for the cooking class. As one, we turned to find . . . a guy in full combat fatigues coming up the path.

This would turn out to be Tom, husband of Judy (the business part of NOCE, and former archaeologist. Had I but known his identity at the outset, I would have been obnoxiously talking shop with him all evening. As it was, I only got in a little bit of this when he generously drove us back to the hotel at the end of the evening, and by then I was so full of delicious food that I was barely conscious.

Speaking of barely conscious, I'm afraid I'm going to stop here for now. I'm rapidly fading, and I still need to work out before I can sleep. The best and last is yet to come.

Virtue: The Big Easy, Day 4.2

I made a lame start to Day 4, partly because my morning on Day 4 was lame, both in the sense that my body refused to leave the bed in timely fashion and because I spent it grading. Lunch was not lame. It was, however, lewd.

So, J, M, and I took a cab to Jackson Square to meet up with AMB and KJ. I really was unprepared for the rage that bubbled up in me as we drove past a truly beautiful spot, and this truly ugly, hateful, pathetic disingenuous moment featuring a lousy excuse for a bag of cells flashed through my mind. Seriously, I'm usually quite in touch with my rage, as you may have noticed. That caught me totally off guard.

Anyway.

We ambled across the street from Cafe Du Monde to a place called the River's Edge Cafe. M could not resist the Taste of New Orleans sampler, AMB simply had to have a Half Muff, and I think KJ and J went for Po' Boys. (It is worth noting that only a day earlier, KJ had declared shrimp on a sandwich to be "weird," but it took him less than 48 hours to become a Po' Boy junkie.) I had the aforementioned jambalaya omelette, which sounds bizarre, but is really one of those "Where have you been all my life?" kind of things.

Service continued to be weird, but I do have to hand it to this weirdness: It was weird even for weird service. The server just kind of . . . forgot that AMB and KJ were there at all about half way through the meal.

There wasn't much time for dilly-dallying. That afternoon featured what I thought to be the only worthwhile sessions of the whole conference: some evolution, some straight population genetics, actually using hap maps for something, rather than just endlessly making them like some kind of gamma-irradiated scarf destined for Tom Baker. And, of course, Jstill had his poster presentation to do. AKS and I accompanied him for moral support and to secure provisions.

This proved challenging because . . . and I am not making this up . . . the Starbucks in the convention center RAN OUT OF COFFEE. Although I was adequately caffeinated, AKS was most definitely not. She was brave, though, and we conquered the snack table with the combined power of the tiny, useless T. rex hands of our ancestors. Ok, so there were some dodgy moments when it looked like there were going to be cheese-based casualties, but after they brought out the tongs, all was well.

We spent some time lurking with the professor by his paper, and then I wandered a bit seeing some posters and talking to a few people, some of whom had research that might dovetail with ours. Eventually, AKS and I went in search of coffee. When we learned that there was not a single open coffee shop until we hit the quarter, we were very near committing the extremely tacky crime of availing ourselves of the coffee at the unguarded guest snack lounge at the Hampton Inn. But we were good. What? Stop looking at us like that.

Post-poster, we ventured back to the room to dress for dinner at Muriel's. Our cab ride actually got us to the restaurant a bit early, so we headed back to the bar. Ever-hopeful, ever-deluded, I ordered a sidecar, and the bartender (otherwise quite talented) revealed that he hadn't made one in 10 years, but he gave it his best shot. It was ok, but it wasn't Brigtsen's. He did introduce J to Pimm's cups (not my taste, but I gather they're popular with others), so his reputation recovered before we left the bar.

And, of course, we left the bar when we realized that AMB and KJ had been waiting out front for a while. Wackiness, it follows us, I tells ya. The whole building is really beautiful. Spacewise, it was a great way to round out the trifecta, being warm, but grand to Arnaud's cool, airy space, and Brigtsen's homey, close-knit feel.

But on to the menu. I was running dangerously low on scallops, having had only scallop mousse on Sunday, and I ordered my appetizer accordingly. Both the scallops and the accompanying strudel were outstandingly good, but the appetizer portion was huge, which was the start of my troubles. M succumbed to my mind control and got the duck. There is basically no way to make anything containing the words "duck" "galette" and "port wine" bad, but I can and will not damn this duck with faint praise. Port wine sauces can so easily be overly sweet, burying the main flavor. Not so in this case, where the sauce was a round, complex finish to the duck.

I seem to recall a taste of kickass crabcake making its way to my side of the table, possibly from a KJ-ly direction? No, indeed, he had the shrimp and goat cheese crepes, which were an awesome combination. It's possible that I hallucinated crabcake. J was generous with his foie gras, but I believe he had much of it to himself (with some bakshish sent AKS-ward. It horrifies me to make such an accusation, but I think AMB had a salad. In her defense, I believe it was the roasted mushroom salad, which does have aioli.

There was more data collection on the gumbo front. There was more data loss as gumbo compartments filled and gumbo core was dumped. I cannot even recall the ingredients in the Muriel's gumbo, though I do recall a general agreement that the others at the table would cover as we each licked our bowls clean in turn. And one of us, at least, sampled the turtle soup, but it was not I.

For entrees, we were all intrigued and slightly horrified as we wondered what a puppy drum might be. This may explain why we all stayed away from it. I went for the salmon from the table d'hote menu. I believe AMB was seduced by the "duck cracklins," and so our Fowls FROM HELL theme continued. I know that there were at least two big, juicy pieces of meat on the table (ahem), so I think M had the Ribeye, and it's possible that J had the Filet. My mind is a blank on the other entrees.

This is quite possibly because my body started to rebel shortly after the appetizers arrived. I had a wonderful canker sore that had started forming earlier in the day and it was completely en fuego at dinner. I'd been battling a headache before dinner and had taken my Axert, which often produces some oddish sensations. The salmon was good (although the sauce was a bit too heavy on the herb-saint for me), but about four bites in, I just. couldn't. eat. another. bite.

Unless, of course, that other bite consisted of the peanut butter mousse dome with caramel filling, which AKS split with me to save my life.
I know that there was a big push for J to have the bananas foster cheesecake, but I can't recall if he did go through with the plan to have a high-end liquid dessert in addition to real dessert, or just had one or the other. M had the vanilla bean gelato. The rest of the desserts consumed are lost to the mists of time. That's appropriate, I think, because I have a feeling that AMB had the Pain Perdu Bread Pudding.

Oh, there was also coffee. And rejoicing in the streets, because they sold their coffee, and It Was Good. It was Even Better when we realized that the "pound" came in individual packets for making a pot at a time, so we were able to hand off much-needed provisions to those not staying with us at the Marriott. (Sadly, it was Frustratingly Not Good when KJ realized the next morning that their coffee service had self-contained packets and no filters.)

We rolled out of Muriel's almost literally and sauntered up toward Bourbon, doing some window shopping in the mean time and resolving to do real shopping on the morn. Against our better judgement, we revisited the Everythinge Shoppe on Canal to obtain nonlethal footwear (in the form of sparkly flip flops) for AKS. There was a half-hearted attempt to patronize Harrah's that was aborted when all of their table games were lame in the extreme and it seemed silly to sit at machines and not socialize.

We wandered back out on to canal in search of a bar. Thinking that the Wyndham might have such a thing, we made our way through a closed-but-under-construction-and-sure-why-don't-you-wander-unsupervised-through-to-the-Wyndham mall. We found the bar, but it was tragically rather full with Avaya people. More tragically, the bar staff were really inept and out of lots and lots of things. Having risen to the level of their own incompetence, they added insult to injury by announcing last call before midnight. If that isn't the sign that the meterological terrorists have won, I don't know what is.

We finished our mediocre drinks and toddled on hotelward.

Bunnies! Bunnies! It Must Be Bunnies!: The Big Easy, Days 3.2 & 4.1

So I was a giant tease and left all y'all on the very threshold of Brigtsen's. I'm going to be even more cruel and back up to the threshold of the Marriott Residence Inn.


AMB and KJ had joined us at what would soon cease to be our suite (their ultimate solution to our intarweb problems was to have us move to a different room). We called for a cab and piled in, preparing to let the wackiness wash over us.

I knew immediately that the driver was taking a different route to Riverbend than M and I had taken. Although there was no reason to necessarily worry immediately (after all, we were leaving from the Warehouse District, not the Quarter), I had a Bad Feeling. It seemed to take longer than I remembered, too, which moved us from Bad to Worse Feeling territory. When the driver began asking M (who, of course, was having trouble hearing and understanding the driver, as is his way with everyone up to and including me), I thought we were officially fucked. However, all the worry was for naught (unless it was a pleasing offering to the malevolent gods, which is quite possible): We arrived right on time.

We noticed that Dante's Kitchen, where M and I had enjoyed a pre-Brigtsen's drink (we were afraid we'd get lost and left lots and lots of time before the reservation), was not open. Subsequent information indicates that this is a case of the reduced hours to which so many are finding themselves subject because of the staffing shortages. That's a bummer, but I'm glad it isn't a case of them not having reopened at all.

Brigtsen's describes its location as a "Victorian cottage." We climbed the stairs of the porch (and stepped over the cat sleeping on the mat, who looked at us surlily, as if to say "I am SLEEPING and trying to think of nothing but MURDER here" ), fairly salivating by this point. Inside, the space is long and relatively narrow. A hallway runs the length of the left-hand side of the building. The host stand is at the front, just inside the entrance, and the bathroom is at the rear. On your way to the latter, you can see the bar and a bit of the kitchen.

When we were there on our honeymoon, the hallway was packed with walk-ins and those who'd arrived early for reservations. This time, the dining rooms hadn't yet filled up by the time of our 7:30 reservation. We were at a six-top in one of the front dining rooms. I think there are 3.1 dining rooms total (the room in which we were seated has a kind of annex with just a few tables that is at the very front of the house). The rooms aren't large. In ours, the six-top dominated, and there were probably 3 tables for two and possibly one or two set for four? (Please bear in mind that this was almost three weeks and a lot of alcohol ago.) My memory is that the center dining room is a bit larger, probably housing 10 tables, and another smaller room at the back.

The rooms are comfortable and homey, rather than sleek. The wallpaper has a dense, but not overbearing, pattern; there are china knicknacks on the walls and on the mantles of the fireplaces. The tables are close together, but there's not any feeling of crowding or loss of privacy, just enough closeness that diners could share conversation if they were so inclined.

I made a tactical error in being the first to order my drink. I went with the sazerac, thinking it would be useful as a point of comparison with Arnaud's. But that was before I knew that they had The Ultimate Sidecar as their drink special for the evening. AMB was the proud winner of that award, but was kind enough to share. Seriously that sidecar was DOPE.

Because we're morons, we forgot to take a copy of the menu (which changes daily) with us. I'll try to recreate all meals from memory. The gumbo of the day was alligator/duck. The meat and flavor were exquisite. It was a bit on the thin side for a Frank gumbo (he uses filé powder AND a dark roux), but still delicious. At least some of our party had the butternut shrimp bisque, which was quite to die for, as well. I don't know what the secret is of making something so creamy completely delicious but not at all heavy. Whatever secret it is, it's a dangerous one, and I salute it.

For my appetizer, I had delicious, delicious pan-fried rabbit with a creole mustard. It's not on the sample menu and when I search for more adjectives to describe, I keep coming up drool. It was so good, I didn't even miss the frog legs (much), and I'd held off on those at Arnaud's hoping that I'd get to have Frank's again. M, I believe, had the catfish, which is on the sample menu, and was also phenomenal (no doubt attributable to the fact that farm-raised catfish are DEAD to Frank, and not in an "in the pan" way). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that either AKS or J had the pate, but I did not sample it. I am tragically blanking on the appetizers of others, but there was a decidedly promiscuous approach to them at the table, so I'm thinking it's safe to say that they were all awesome.

For entrees, we had some doubling up. KJ and I were unable to resist the siren song of the tuna listed on the sample menu: a huge piece of incredibly fresh tuna done to a turn, with a smokey, creamy, tart sauce that matched it beautifully. I was very sad to see the last chunk of it go, but I knew I had to save room for dessert.

M and J decided to ride to hell by way of heaven on half a duck. Now, they were warned that they would, indeed, be receiving half a duck each. This did not stop the exclamations of "Crivens! That's HALF A DUCK" from being sent up from our table. If it were not terribly gauche, I might have asked for a meal consisting entirely of the delicious crispy duck skin. Bonus points for the cracklicious cornbread dressing, too.

AMB went for the seafood platter on my orders (I had that when last we were there, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. All the seafood I've eaten that wasn't that seafood platter meant nothing to me. I was thinking of it the whole time.) The funny thing is the staff is under orders to reassure you that the platter is actually comparable, in terms of sheer volume of food, to the rest of the entrees, even though it looks like you're eating your way to Atlantis. Of course, you're still eating your way to Atlantis, despite the tasting portions on the plate. The cornbread-y thingy on this platter was a particular stand out.

And AKS had the paneed rabbit for her entree. It's basically breaded lightly and flash pan-fried, which gives it a very light, but nicely crisp texture. And with rabbit, that's also a recipe for juicy, succulent perfection. I think she had spinach or other greens in a dill mustard to finish it, but I'm not positive. However, it was delicious enough to defeat most of her guilt over eating bunny, I believe.

Desserts are also somewhat hazy, but I'm not going to blame the alcohol this time. I'm going to blame the cake. The delicious, light, deceptively not filling, moist perfection of double-chocolate cakeness. The one down side to it is it made me feel like I was cheating on Susan Goss's Devil's Food Cake. I'm sorry. I love you both equally. We're just going to have to move to Utah.

M's fidelity was also called into question on the tres leches front. You see, Tecalitlan has the best comfort tres leches in the world, and Salpicón has the best upscale tres leches cake in the world. How, then, could Frank's tres leches place without turning us into dirty tres leches polygamists? By being entirely different, and still delicious. I love it when a plan comes together.

I believe that KJ had the pecan pie with caramel sauce. That, of course, has become "our" pecan pie, but apparently we now need to shake someone down for the caramel sauce recipe. The adorable, darling AKS got the sorbets, I think, and I seem to recall one particularly awesome one, but I'm damned if I recall the flavor. And I think we skipped the creme brulee altogether (although it's possible that J had it, and I was just too busy singing "Oh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you!" to my cake), because we're rebels.

If into every dinner a little rain must fall, our rain was the banana bread pudding, ordered by AMB. Now, of course, banana bread pudding sounds to me like a dual mistake right on the face of it. But were I going to try it anywhere, it would be at Brigtsen's. Unfortunately, it looked as if we weren't going to get to try it at all when it didn't arrive with the rest of our desserts or even shortly thereafter. When we gently reminded our server, she was extremely apologetic and comped the dessert. And after all the sturm and drang, it was pronounced good, but not great by those not repulsed by banana-flavored things.

After dessert and excellent coffee, we rolled back to our hotels along a route much more familiar to M and me. Although my dearest wish was to then sink into a bed and hibernate until my meal was used up entirely, we had to move our things to the third floor and to what turned out to be a much more sensibly arranged suite for four people.

On the morn, I'd fully intended to get up for a paper at around 9:30ish, but my body stubbornly refused such a proposition. By the time I rolled out of bed a little after 10 and got dressed, J had long since departed for the sessions. I decided that I'd get some grading done and, miraculously, did. (And yet, I'm still playing catch up on that front.) In the early afternoon, we put in a call to AMB and KJ and arranged to meet up with them at Jackson Square for lunch, where I had an awesome jambalaya omelette at the River's Edge Cafe.

I will expound more on the rest of Day 4 later, but now I must adjourn to attend M's graduation at Old Town.

Depths, Breadths, and Heights: The Big Easy, Day 2 and 3.1

I would be lying if I said I was not experiencing some Tiger-by-the-Tail-induced personal nadir on Day 2 of the New Orleans trip. However, without attempting to rationalize the ill-advised feline sequel on the evening before, I think my hangover was at least half bioinformatic, given that I hadn't gotten more than 3 hours of sleep in the 10 days before I left. Whatever the source, I was experiencing deep hurting on Monday morning, which was bad news for the part of my life that remained back at the ranch.


While NCBI was trying to kill me overtly, it also had more subtle machinations going on in the form of leaving me no time for the rest of my life. Thus, I did not get my midterms written before I left. I wrote about 10 points' worth of the first on the plane before passing out for about 20 minutes. I made a futile attempt to add to that post-dinner, but I was basically hosed.

When I'd adjourned to my room, the alarm clock was helpfully not plugged in, and I couldn't find an accessible outlet near the bed. I plugged it into the nearest wall outlet, set the alarm for 8:30, and conked out for a while. I woke up before the alarm and wrote questions, somehow managing not to intersperse "please kill me" into the text. Og made a public appearance around 10 AM as sie obtained shiny, cold Diet Coke from the fridge and grunted in J's general direction. Then it was back into bed to continue writing. The battery on the laptop attempted to die at some point, requiring that Og pull the bed away from the wall if sie wanted to work in bed. Sie wanted, very badly, to continue working in bed. (I admit that between this and the alarm clock on the floor, things were slightly askew, but I still think that M's somewhat nervous query about a localized hurricane hitting our room was somewhat overblown.) I finished the first around 11 or so, then went back to sleep for about an hour and a half.

Out and about again around 12:30, I set to writing the second exam in the living room as J caught me up on the news and watched Skeleton Key, which is a regrettably mediocre movie. Og reemerged during an attempt to make coffee, but J successfully intervened and casualties were avoided. The second final took an age to write, partly because it was scheduled a week earlier than usual on account of the ASHG timing. Consequently, I'd gotten through very little in the way of genetics and was stuck asking scintillating questions like "What kind of plants did Mendel work with?" and "how many fingers did Robert Chambers have?"

By the time I finished it around 4 PM, I was completely ravenous and aware of the fact that I really, REALLY needed a shower. The professor kindly took my laptop into an area with public WiFi (the net access in our first room was fucked) and sent off the exams for printing while I addressed the latter issue so that we, as a group, could address the former.

An aside that only worked out to be funny because of the timing of me finding out: They kept promising that the net problem would be solved shortly; ultimately we had to move to a new suite. When I checked my e-mail there on Wednesday, I got a "could not deliver for four hours" message from the mail with the exams. By then, though, I figured that someone would have called me on Tuesday if things had gone completely tits up.

Anyhooo, just as I finished the exam, M arrived, and shortly thereafter AMB and KJ made their presence known. We obtained AKS and headed for the convention center to obtain our nerd guides, etc. Nerd badges had previously been delivered to our homes. These have convenient bar codes on them, so you might think that they could do something like, oh, I don't know, scan them to determine whether one had picked up one's program guide and Official Bag of the Hag. Nah, not the Hag. At the Hag, one was supposed to realize that there was one square on the sheet of labels that acted as one's ticket for such things. Of course, all the other squares said VOID . . . In any case, none of the three of us had the magical combination of items to obtain a full complement of schwag. Me, I got asked if I really needed the program guide by the uberhelpful drone.

We had already serendipitously run into the vacationers in our party outside the convention center, and we turned our attention to food. Although our original destination had been the Crescent City Brewhouse, we first came across Gordon Biersch. We were so starved and AKS feet were in such a bad way that we descended upon the place, cawing. The garlic fries were good, as was the dip. There was wailing and gnashing of teeth when the special sausage platter was unavailable. The beer was . . . weird. The dark beer tasted watery. Even the Märzen wasn't up to its usual standards, although my pivo was good. Ultimately, though, it was just a Gordon Biersch, and we were in New Orleans.

After refueling we made our way to Canal and decided to ease into the French Quarter by hanging at the Pelican Bar at the Sheraton where we held court the night before our wedding. J and AKS . Service at the bar was our first real look at the weirdness that is the service industry in New Orleans at the moment.

Every single business in the Quarter has "Help Wanted" signs up. The demographics of wait staff, clerks, etc., have shifted noticeably, and often it's clear that there's high turnover and a certain tentative, transient feeling about employment. (That shouldn't be construed as a slam on those in the service industry at all. We never had bad service. We often had . . . weird . . . service.) In any case, our party was incomplete when we sat down, as J and AKS had returned to change the latter's shoes (um, you understand she needed company, not help). The four of us got our first round successfully, in spite of some confusion regarding the vodka-y or gin-y nature of Tom Collins (further data collected on this issue seems to support string theory at least with regard to cocktails, their contents, and their glassware).

When were 6, we could not attract the attention of a server for love nor money. When we did, he seemed to be some kind of . . . understudy . . . or something. We assured our waitress (who'd been slammed with a few large parties of folks attending an Avaya conference) that someone had already taken our order. About 10 minutes later, the understudy returned and asked for additional information in strangely hushed tones. The main server arrived and seemed irritated by this. Another 15 minutes passed and J did some recon. The bar was another source of trouble, but again our waitress seemed to be advocating for our lubrication. Still, it was another 10 minutes before they began to arrive, piecemeal. Subsequent rounds were fine, though it turned out that at least 2 of us were unaware that our tasty champagne/pomegranate liqueur drinks were $15/piece. The bar bill was bracing, to say the least.

After a stop for Blistex at the Everything Shoppe at the End of the Universe, we continued on down Bourbon street, obtaining the mandatory frozen slurpee drinks (and apparently mandatory free shots to go with them) as we went along. We walked along past Maison Bourbon finishing our drinks, then made our way back to monopolize their nonsmoking section and hear the set. AKS and I split a Tiger by the Tail (which made our server cranky with us; fair enough, I was being obtuse and should've ordered a diet coke for us to share as well to save her any hassle with The Man as the cover was folded into drink prices), having learned our lessons the night before.

Jamil Shrif was on trumpet, once again, but he was missing his Jazz-Man-to-White translator on clarinet. He'd been replaced by a guy on both sax and clarinet, plus an awesome stride piano player. My grandfather was also no longer on drums and had been replaced by a young hipster who—and I am not making this up—seemed occasionally to be napping on a snare during the set. The bass player seems to have made it through the night, but one does wonder if Shrif is living on the tonalli of his fellow jazz men.

After the set, we were all winding down, so we made our way back to the warehouse district and our respective hotels. I, for one, slept like the dead.

I hadn't set an alarm on the grounds that J was likely to be up and about for the early sessions. I would have sworn that I heard just that around 7 AM. Og sprang from bed and into the shower. Shortly before 8, sie was clothed respectably enough to present a poster and ready to go. When sie opened the door, however, sie realized that the Professor was, in fact, still abed (leading hir to wonder fleetingly who had been in the shower). That was soon remedied, and we two hit the breakfast buffet, which was filling enough, but not terribly exciting. Worse still, the freaking coffee urns were empty, which makes Og smash. J herded hir out to the terrace, though and later did obtain the banishing juice.

We headed down to the convention center for several highly disappointing talks. (There's nothing like hauling your ass out of bed for an evidence-based medicine session only to have each of the speakers begin by saying "I don't really know much about evidence-based medicine . . ." Yes, I can see why our session wasn't chosen.) After concluding that things were unlikely to get any better, we headed for the Starbucks for something approximating real coffee and to check e-mail.

After these sessions, we were free until the poster sessions at 4:30 PM. We headed back to the room to check on the status of AKS. Unfortunately, she was still asleep, and M had just finished lunch and needed to return to the public wifi areas to work. KJ and AMB were up for food, though. We joined them at their hotel and meandered Quarterward in search of lunch.

As we were passing a place called "Cafe Orleans," Leon Redbone urged us to give it a try. (Seriously, white fedora, sunglasses, gnatty hair and facial hair. Smoking in the doorway of the open-air dining room, which proudly advertised its nonsmoking status.) I was starving but kept trying to recall that we were Brigtsen's bound that night. So despite the fact that I was yearning for the taste of New Orleans, I limited myself to the red beans and rice. Others sampled the Po Boy offerings, a shrimp basket, and the fish special.

The weirdness that began at the door continued inside. The waiter/owner/manager person was oddly lackadaisical about taking our order and seemed to take umbrage when we asked about the price of the fish special, telling us that we needed to remember that we were in New Orleans it might cost a bit more, but the seafood was going to be outstanding. We're totally on board, dude. It was just a question.

There was also some oddness about the drinks. First, my diet and J's regular Coke (Pepsi, as it sadly turned out) got switched. Later, the drinks waiter (a young, silent Black guy) was trying to be helpful by refilling KJ's iced tea and even more helpful by refilling J's, which was, of course, Pepsi. When the W/O/M person returned, he asked where the Pepsi had gone. We explained and said that a replacement was on the way. Absolutely stonefaced, the W/O/M said, "You're kidding me" in a tone that suggested our drinks dude was not long for this world. We all tried to assure him that it was no big deal, but he stalked off, leaving us to worry for the drink guy's life.

About a second and a half after they delivered the boys' desserts, 80s music started blaring from the other half of the dining room. I mean BLARING. And the the W/O/M person was there, completely bustin' a move. Have I mentioned that I had only a diet coke and coffee? And that everyone else saw this, too? I guess it was their way of politely informing us that they were closing in between lunch and dinner. And yet, when we walked by even later in the day later in the week, other patrons were lingering over their coffee. Maybe they didn't like my David Byrne Big Suit jacket and they agreed with me on the Pants Remorse front.

During lunch AKS had called, so J picked up a giant coffee for her and cabbed back to our hotel. The rest of us headed for the 9 West outlet on canal, I for potential boots, AMB for a potential purse, KJ for moral support. I was unsuccessful, but my compatriots hit pursedirt (um . . . that sounds wrong).

The time for posterage was growing nigh, so I walked back to the hotel in the hopes of meeting up with the other members of Team Turtleneck. They were enjoying a drink at the Renaissance Bar, so I headed to schwag town on my own, finally obtained by program book, and scored the last conference bag known to nerd. I then took up my station by my poster and tried hard not to seek out the myriad of errors that I felt sure were in the poster courtesy of my sleep-deprived brain.

Soon I was not fixating on my own shortcomings, but trying not to cackle over the irony that I was between two NCBI posters. The Not-Cackling Agenda became even more challenging when the vast majority of the people who stopped by (and I'm glad to say I had a lot) to chat about the research were, themselves, NIH researchers who had a gratifying appreciation for the research approach, the sheer amount of work it took to do it, and the fact that the NCBI site seems specifically designed to keep people from getting at the data. Among the stoppers by was J, Jr., who is J's former student; he was with us in LA. I had spied him from a distance, but because he is the direct-from-factory minion (at least appearance-wise), I was not sure. However, 'twas him, and it was nice to catch up with him.

The two hours of the session went pretty quickly, despite the fact that my feet were complaining pretty loudly about standing on the concrete for so long, (I know why the carpet runners end just outside where the presenters will be standing, but my feet don't get it.) Back at the hotel, it was time for a quick change into girly clothes appropriate to Brigtsen's. But that's a story that deserves to be above the fold, so I'll pick up with it in my next.

Panted: The Big Easy, Day 1

We are proud to bring you another installment of Telecommuniculturey on Location, this time in New Orleans.

I had two big concerns about this year's trek to "The Hag": (1)That I would have a poster full of intronic sound and fury, signifying nothing; (2) that I would have no pants. To be sure, if one is going to be pantsless, New Orleans is about the best place in the US to do it, but the prospect of being nude and surrounded by an army of geneticists is not a happy one. I don't need any input on the polygenic, partially heritable nature of my massive thighs, for example.

I declared my poster "done enough" at about 5:45 AM on Sunday morning and sent it off to the 24-hour Kinko's for printing. I then collapsed into bed for about 3 hours of quality sleep, woke up, and began doing circuits of the house like a particularly stupid sheep in need of a sheltie. These included stops at the computer in the fevered hopes of getting JUST ONE MORE THING done in between wandering upstairs and down as I threw utterly random articles (which, mercifully, included a few pairs of consignment pants that more or less fit) into a suitcase.

My flight left shortly after 4 PM, and I needed every second of the time leading up to it for pointless fretting, psychotic dreams of making up "a few" new slides that could be printed in NO and inserted into the poster, and packing. At some point, the M asked if maybe I should eat something. I think I looked at him rather desperately and said, "No?" I had, for the previous 10 days or so, been subsisting on fast food salads. My ever-impeccable timing meant maximum potential exposure to E. coli. Coincidentally, I'm sure, much of the work for the poster was done from my bathroom where I was joined by all 100-lbs of nonhuman animal flesh in the household. This may be more than anyone needed to know.

Midway was a freaking madhouse for some unearthly reason, and the usually very efficient Southwest people had some evil harpy at the entrance to the line mucking up the works. In theory, she was making sure that we were appropriately sorting ourselves into lines of those with boarding passes and and those needing to deal with tickets, boarding passes, etc. In practice, she stopped every single person and scrutinized obvious boarding passes for no obvious reason other than a need to exert power over the masses and slow us all down.

The flight was entirely full and the person occupying the middle seat in my row had no sense of fucking personal boundaries. He sat slouched with splayed knees and elbows firmly planted on either armrest, jutting well into my space and the space of the person in the window seat. The joke was, eventually, on him, though, for lo! I am a continental knitter, and even with my short needles, asshole's going to get poked.

The original plan had been for me to head to the hotel, divest myself of all worldly goods (which, again, I remind you, triumphantly did include pants), and join J and AKS at Arnaud's for dinner. However, as I learned upon calling the Professor from the pachinko cab (every time we went over a bump, the dome light came on and there was a jangling noise. I suspect because my door did not actually, in the most literal sense, close), he'd pushed the reservation and we'd all be able to head over together.

Because Team Turtleneck is a model of efficiency, within 45 minutes of touchdown, we were sitting in the beautiful (and mercifully more casual) jazz dining room at Arnaud's, looking out on Bourbon street, listening to the world's most perfect jazz trio, and had sazeracs in hand (well, J and I had them, AKS had a Manhattan). The tone of bourgeois cruelty for the week was set at Arnaud's. You see, their Table d'Hote menu seems like it would transport you to a very happy place indeed before depositing you in hell by way of payment. But that feeling only lasts until you see the a la carte menu, at which point you realize that you are already in hell because you can. not. choose.

We ultimately put on our brave faces and realized that it was simply not practical to order three of everything. We settled for an appetizer each, oysters for the table (after reflecting that it was a rare occasion, because no one present was going to be grossed out by them), and entrees, of course. Taking maximum advantage of the "no M to gross out" factor, I ordered the Escargot en Jaunty Chapeaux; J went for the alligator sausage; and AKS, I believe, went for the gumbo? I know it was between that and the shrimp bisque, but NO leaves one pleasantly awash in delicious soups and stews, so it's hard to remember.

For the oysters, we went for some on the half shell (ZOMG, unbelievably fresh, delicious, and totally without need for condiment of any kind) and the Oysters Arnaud, a sampler including one each of all their baked options. The latter were good across the board and some were transcendent (yes, dear, groin-grabbingly transcendent). If they were less memorable than the raw, it's likely because we let them sit a bit too long and possibly because (as I would learn later in the week at our return to the New Orleans Cooking Experience) the oysters this year are unusually tiny thanks to various aspects of Katrina fallout.

I was so excited about the pastry caps on my escargot that I tried to eat the first one too quickly and got more tongue sizzle with my deliciousness than I had bargained for. As vehicles for butter, garlic, and herbs, they did their duty well, and the pastry caps were an awesome addition to that (plus, the wee individual cups? Such an adorable delivery system for slimy deliciousness!). I admit to coveting J's sausage. Um . . . I mean that in the literal sense, of course. That was some tasty gator with tastier Creole mustard. My brain continues to blank out on AKS's soup/gumbo, but it was delicious, that much I know. Oh! Wait! It was the gumbo, because there was something on top that needed to be sucked out. How I forgot that, I will never know. I'm tentatively blaming the Tiger by the Tail.

For entrees, I went pompano en croute; J went Crawfish O'Connor (which, sadly, was not en fuego tableside as we'd hoped); and AKS went with what we came to call "Hell Quail." Because, seriously, if you know that every possible food bribe under the sun is in your dish and you order it anyway, you also know you're on the express train to hell the minute you finish.

Each entree was beautiful in its own way. The crawfish was actually more of a comfort food dish than the menu's description seemed to imply, but it had a deep, rich flavor with very pleasant heat at the back. My pompano? Well, what can I say? It was a fish topped with scallop mousse inside a gorgeous pastry fish. Amazing presentation and the lightest, most deceptive (Me? Harden your arteries? Stop your heart cold at the dinner table? Would I do that?) cream sauce EVAR. And Hell Quail? Let's just say that Hell Quail made me forget my "No Organ Meats" rule and LIKE IT.

For dessert, there was excellent coffee, Strawberries Arnaud for moi, Ice cream/sorbet for AKS, and I'm blanking on what J had. I think it was a special, because neither the chocolate devastation nor the caramel flan look familiar.

As much as I enjoy the Food!Pr0n, any tale of this dinner is incomplete without mention of the awesome jazz trio. The jazz dining room is, seriously, one of the most pleasant spaces known to me. It's comfortable, visually pleasing, and they clearly made a compact with the devil to achieve acoustics capable of supporting a 3-piece strolling band that still allows diners to have a conversation. From subsequent peeks into the dining room as we strolled Bourbon later in the week, I gather that different musicians rotate through, with the upright-bass player possibly being the stable element. We had upright bass, awesome banjo (the drum was transparent and inside was a kind of diorama of dixieland jazz), and, I think, a curved soprano sax played by mini-Joss Whedon.

They started their set playing in the corner and eventually made their way around to teach table, playing a song or two for each. We got an awesome tango-infused version of St. Louis Blues medley-ified with Shake, Rattle, and Roll, which they got us to sing. They did many of the expected standards ("St. James Infirmary," "Jelly Roll," etc.) with the added bonus of "House of the Rising Sun." Both the bass player and mini-Joss were kick-ass singers, and I was tickled to be able to watch some cool slap bass up close, especially after not being able to see much of the blurry-handed prowess of Jimmy Sutton on Friday. Seriously, these guys were so good I took to pressing my face to the window and mewling pathetically in the hopes of hearing a bit more of them later in the week.

After dinner, we decided that a bit of a stroll to work off some of the meal was in order. We headed down Bourbon Street toward Esplanade and wound up at the Maison Bourbon, partly because we were lured in by the hot, hot trumpet of Jamil Shrif and partly by the promise of a drink called "Tiger by the Tail." AKS and I were definitely intrigued and did not regret opting to receive its newsletter. Well, I personally would later regret subscribing to its second issue hot on the heels of its first, but you can't blame the Tiger, man.

The weirdest note of the evening was that at 11:59 PM, the Maison was hopping, the set was coming to a smokin' finish, and the bartender was knocking out drinks with alacrity. On the stroke of midnight, the place turned into a pumpkin (celebrating with relief the end of Our Lord's day, I'm sure). We got the "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here speech from the Pod People who had replaced those who were joking and laughing with us a literal moment before.

Confused but still soaring on great food and music, we pointed Team Turtleneck back toward Canal. J abandoned us momentarily to secure black Mardi Gras beads for us. The minute he detached, before AKS and I could really get into our discussion of boas, three cute little Celtic men appeared from the Pocket Dimension and joined in, informing us that we both simply NEEDED those boas. Happy and oblivious, I was inclined to agree, but the Pocket Celts seemed disappointed and melted away when our male escort reappeared.

Upon return to our palatial suite, we somehow managed to stay up until 5 AM talking about the relative merits of Lt. Col. Man!Ho and MacGyver. I think I broke something in AKS pretty permanently when I gave my summary statement: "Look, I'm just saying that when the Zombie Apocalypse comes, I'd be presenting to MacGyver and bearing his children, because he's the one who's going to get you through."