By: Marica Mackenroth

With recent news of a tomato health scare, we at NewOrleansRestaurants.com think that it’s a perfect opportunity to shed some light on our beloved Creole tomatoes.

Grown only in certain parts of southern Louisiana, Creole tomatoes are revered in a city known for good food. This tasty fruit – yes fruit – has become the basis for so many southern dishes that locals have created an event in which to celebrate it – the annual French Market Creole Tomato Festival, held every year in June.

At the festival this past weekend, people took in cooking demonstrations, tasting sessions, recipes and even got down to some local music. There were even people dressed in giant tomato costumes looming about.

As we assure you, our local tomatoes are perfectly safe to eat, we invite you to support our Louisiana farmers by cooking up some pasta, seafood stuffed tomatoes, or even some salsa. You’ll be doing a good deed, and hey, your taste buds will thank you.

By Marica Mackenroth

Typically the start of the work week brings things like morning traffic or football to mind.

In New Orleans, this is true, but it also makes our tummies growl, as Mondays in the Crescent City mean that it’s time for red beans and rice.

While it’s hard to get meals around here without a side of tradition, this Creole dish is welcomed in restaurants, diners and domestic homes alike for its simple spicy goodness. Commonly cooked slowly over time and served over rice, give yourself a splash of Tabasco sauce and a slice of buttered bread and you are set to give your taste buds a treat. You could also go a step farther, and throw in some smoked sausage and cornbread.

Like crawfish, “red beans” as we call it, is served at large gatherings like Super Bowl parties and Mardi Gras. You can also find it at almost any festival or fair in New Orleans, as it’s easy to make in large quantities while keeping its rich, flavorful integrity.

So why does this dish get its very own, designated day of the week? Well, legend has it that it’s because years ago, ham was the customary Sunday meal and Monday was typically washday. Put those two together, and you get a savory, ham-based concoction that could sit on the stove and cook while women were busy doing the laundry.

These days you don’t have to wait hours upon hours to feast on your beans. Modern day society has created “ready made” cans of red beans that you can simply heat up and serve over rice, with “Blue Runner” being the favorite brand amongst locals.

Be sure not to look over the option when you dine in the Big Easy, as many restaurants take tasty spins on the dish.

Remember, there has to be a reason Louis Armstrong signed autographs, “Red Beans and Ricely yours.”

By staff writer, Sal Mannino

New Orleans is a city that is famous for its food. It’s the #1 reason visitors love to come to New Orleans and a big part of why we locals are so proud to call New Orleans home . The city is full of restaurants, Creole, French, Cajun, Italian…just to name a few. However, for locals and visitors alike, a popular tradition in New Orleans is the Oyster Bar.

The Oyster Bar isn’t like the fancier restaurants in the city. No reservations are required at this type of eatery and it is not unusual to have a wait in line before seats open.

Acme’s Oyster House and Felix’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar are both timeless New Orleans establishments in the French Quarter along with the Desire Oyster Bar in the Royal Sonesta and the Redfish Grill. Uptown on Magazine Street, locals flock to Casamento’s. Ask five people which is their favorite oyster bar and you will get five different favorites.

The atmosphere is very basic in appearance…an oyster bar, bar stools and either tables with red checker tablecloths or black and white checker tile floors. Another reason oyster bars are so popular is the showmanship by the oyster shuckers…it’s like watching an artist at work with a sharp knife…quick with their hands using the sharp blades to pry open the oyster shells.

Then there’s the presentation. Either a half dozen or a dozen served on the half shell over ice, with horse radish, hot sauce and ketchup on the side to make your own cocktail sauce to your personal taste. Lemon slices and saltine crackers will also be included on your tray.

All of these Oyster Bars also serve a variety of seafood dishes such as fried oysters, fish, shrimp and soft-shell crab or, for bigger appetites, there’s the seafood platters (a combination of all).

Growing up in New Orleans, it was understood that oysters were best eaten during months that had an “r” in it, that is, January, February, March, etc. However, with great oyster farms now and an abundance of seafood in Louisiana, oysters can be enjoyed year-round.

Raw oysters on the half shell…as “Naturally New Orleans” as Red Beans & Rice or Café au Lait and Beignets.

By staff writer, Sal Mannino

The Crescent City Brewhouse, located in the French Quarter near the
river, is not only a really good restaurant but it’s also the only micro-brewery
in the Vieux Carre. Dining for lunch or dinner in a casual atmosphere
is relaxed and festive. You can listen to live Jazz on most nights or
just sit outside on the upstairs balcony overlooking the Mississippi.
Upstairs makes a great place for private parties. The house selection
of distinctive lagers are brewed daily on site and have won numerous
awards. My personal favorite is the Pilsner Brew, a light beer that is
one of many to select from.

Gordon Biersch Brewery, located across from Harrah’s Casino, has
great food in a casual atmosphere featuring American cuisine influenced
by International flavors. It also offers fresh beer specializing in authentically
brewed German lagers. With several large TV screens in the bar area,
it makes for a great place to gather for all sporting events. This venue
has become a popular meeting place for local businesses and its proximity
to the Convention Center makes it very convenient for convention delegates.
Private areas are available for parties and validated parking is available
in Harrah’s garage.

Hungry and thirsty visitors can’t go wrong choosing either the
Crescent City Brewhouse or Gordon Biersch for a really enjoyable dining
experience along with a fresh cold brew.

By John DeMers & Rhonda Findley

RHONDA: Creole vs. Cajun? John, you make it sound like Ali vs. Frazier or something. Is it a championship bout at the Louisiana Superdome, or are we talking great New Orleans cooking here?

JOHN: Maybe a little bit of both, I’m afraid. The fact is, we New Orleanians don’t mind telling everybody about all our history. But we sometimes get tired of insisting that most of us aren’t Cajuns from down on some bayou – and that our local cuisine that everybody lines up to eat isn’t Cajun either. Hey folks, it’s called Creole!

RHONDA: So, the way I understand it — Creole and Cajun cuisines are the creation of two distinct French-speaking groups who called south Louisiana home. Actually, there are a lot of experts who proclaim Creole and Cajun food America’s best indigenous cuisines. Some even proclaim them America’s only indigenous cuisines. Creole cuisine is the cooking of New Orleans! No matter how many times you’ve heard this city described as the heart of Cajun Country, both groups will tell you … New Orleans is not.

JOHN: Creole cooking is based on elegant French cooking – a time-honored pampering of royalty and rich people. The glorious sauces of the Creole kitchen are at least built upon the glorious sauces of the French kitchen. And no one around here is about to complain.

RHONDA: Yet Creole also has that “melting pot” thing going on. Seems like it borrows from anybody who’s spent more than 15 minutes in New Orleans. This mingling goes back to Creole cooking’s earliest days. In other words, it’s been grabbing good ideas since the very beginning.

JOHN: That’s for
sure. Way back in 1722, they had what became known as the “Petticoat
Rebellion.” About fifty young wives marched on Governor Bienville’s
mansion in New Orleans, pounding their frying pans with metal spoons and protesting their dreary diet. I’d agree: cornmeal mush sounds pretty dreary!

Bright guy that he was, Bienville put the women in touch with his own housekeeper, a certain Madame Langlois. She’d picked up a few tricks from the local Choctaws. She calmed the angry wives by teaching them how to use powdered sassafras for flavor in gumbo, how to make hominy grits, how to get the most from this region’s fish and game. So French tradition got real friendly with native American pragmatism, and Creole cooking was born.

RHONDA: According to the dictionaries, Creole comes from the same Latin root as the work “create,” with the French creating their creole from the Spanish criollo. Over time, this went from denoting a person born here of Spanish parents to a person born here of French parents. But Creole, you have to remember, can also mean a mix of black and white parentage, or even undiluted black. It can get pretty confusing. And to these French, Spanish and African roots, successive waves of immigrants contributed touches from everywhere – especially Sicily, Germany, Ireland, Greece and even Croatia.

JOHN: Okay, that’s some serious Creole. But what about the Cajuns people keep thinking we are? Well, they were a different French-speaking group living along the bayous – outside New Orleans. After all these years, the result is a Cajun cuisine that looks French in sophistication yet packs more punch and, on many tables, carries more surprises. Cajun cooking left the Mother Country earlier than the roots of Creole, so it’s simpler and more rustic than the food found in fabled New Orleans restaurants. In some country Cajun eateries, you feel yourself eating as the Three Musketeers must have eaten. Maybe: One for all, but all for me!

RHONDA: Come now, John. Didn’t you’re mother ever teach you to share? And really, that’s only the beginning of Cajun cooking. Not its current state. The international spotlight has convinced Cajun chefs they are no longer second-class citizens. In truth, they never were. Today they are some of the superstars in a city long dominated by Creole taste buds and chefs imported from France.

JOHN: I guess it just had to happen. Quite a few restaurants in New Orleans now bill themselves as Cajun, and almost every restaurant serves some dishes that are Cajun along with the New Orleans classics that are Creole. Some great dishes are cooked by both – and claimed by both, so it gets kind of like that Ali-Frazier bout again. Truth is, both Creole and Cajun cuisines appeal to New Orleans’ flair for food, for experience, for life.

RHONDA: And both of our two great local cuisines love nothing better than to reach out – and
feed someone!

By John DeMers

If you’re eating right now, you might be seeing us that way already. Gazing down hungrily into a bowl of dark brown seafood or chicken gumbo, butter-lush crawfish or shrimp etouffee, scarlet shrimp or chicken Creole, a heaping helping of jambalaya made from everything in the kitchen. You might like experiencing New Orleans by the bowl, as long as the bowls keep coming.

But as the author of a new cookbook titled New Orleans by the Bowl, I invite you to look a little deeper than what’s in front of you now. For New Orleans cuisine is, by many accounts, the world’s ultimate bowl cuisine. In more ways than one.

For starters, New Orleans cooking is “bowl cuisine” because it shows up at our tables so readily and dramatically in a bowl. As parts of that global tradition also called “pot cooking,” both the Creole and Cajun styles beloved in the Crescent City find their happiest expression in something other than a flat dinner plate. The best foods New Orleans has to offer are slow-cooked in plenty of liquid that becomes sauce or, better still, gravy, lovingly watched and stirred by people who probably learned more from their mothers, grandmothers and aunts than they ever learned in culinary school. The result, as I learned researching my book with chef Andrew Jaeger, is a collection of gumbos, jambalayas, soups and stews second to none found on the face of this earth.

In other words, dishes cooked in deep pots are best served in deep bowls. If you were born in New Orleans, as I was, you know this intuitively. If you are among our millions of visitors you learn it quickly, completely and forever. We’ll go with you to learn it, if you like. We’ll eat with you and drink with you. Every so often, we might even pick up the check.

Still, for true New Orleanians who have lived through the evolutions and profound social shifts of the past 50 years, the very words “bowl cuisine” can and do take on a meaning deeper than our next meal. The greatest truth of bowl cooking is that many old things go into the pot – and one new thing comes out. It’s a thing that seldom is perfect, a ragtag blend of effort, meaning, fallibility and passion, ever dreaming farther than its reach. But what comes out of this pot in New Orleans is something new. Something soul-satisfying. Something we might dare call admirable.

Into the pot that fills the bowls we enjoy here, the lives French, Spanish, African, Sicilian, Irish, German, Greek, Croatian and others are poured, in a real slow recipe requiring… oh, a little over 300 years. Out of the pot, and into our expectant bowls, comes a dish as full of flavor as it is of our deepest shared truths.