The Big Easy Trip
After Christmas with no family around and no basketball games, we decided to take the City of New Orleans train from Memphis for a mini-vacation and family food fest—The train ride was seamless—rather a nice way to travel other than it leaves at 6 am from downtown Memphis. Memphis looked pretty shabby as we left and as we got further into the weekend in NO it looked like a resort area. When we landed and checked into our room at the Royal Sonesta we immediately took off for Pat O’Briens—it was good as usual and while Dean had a traditional hurricane, I had a rainbow drink and Cam, the traditional margarita—we decided on a one drink limit because we were on the Concierge floor of our hotel and had happy hour to anticipate. The happy hour was indeed happy as we could sit outside on a balcony and drink white wine and eat wonderf cheeses and crab au gratin—The only kind of cheese they didn’t have was St. Andre. The cheese board was a nice piece of slate that I found intriguing because they could write the name of the cheese on the piece f slate. Dinner reservations were for Galatoires where we wanted a real New Orleans meal. It was an exercise in gluttony—Dean had mass quantities of crab au gratin that would have fed a basketball team. I had stuffed eggplant that turned out to be a large lump of dressing w/shrimp in it—I am sure there was crab and eggplant somewhere but it was enormous. Camille had lemon fish w/artichoke, crab and mushrooms—also rich as it could be. We started then to reconsider our reservations for the rest of the weekend. We had scheduled a jazz brunch at Arnaud’s for Sunday am and then just couldn’t pull the trigger on another meal like we’d had at Galatoires. Saturday we walked around the quarter, had muffalettas at Central Grocery and went to the Aquarium. This time at happy hour we paced ourselves better and didn’t fill up before dinner—Dinner on Saturday night was early at 6:30 so we had a much lighter and less filling meal at August—reported to be the best restaurant in the city but it could have been in any city so I thought it lacked any NO ambience. We took a cab there but realized we could have walked so we did walk back, changed clothes and headed for a stroll down lovely Bourbon Street. Everyone just had to have a frozen drink to walk down the street. Dean and I had pina coladas and Cam had some funky margarita like drink that I detested.
Finally the last meal in New Orleans (for a long time as I am concerned) was chosen and it was hands-down the best overall move of the trip. Dean had puppy drum, Camille a marinated in champagne tomato salad and I had grits and grillades that were great—The best part of the whole meal was the very best milk punch I have ever had—Remembering how awful the food on the train was Camille decided to run to the Central Grocery and get us some muffalettas to go so we could have edible food on the train—good move Camile. So shortly thereafter we headed back to the hotel which I highly recommend the concierge level and got our luggage and headed for and boarded the train where this story stops for awhile.
A great portion of our time in New Orleans was spent trying to think of a particular cheese and even chacha couldn't answer. The correct response was St. Andre. It goes great w/pinot for you pinot lovers out there. It looks so good I think it might even be good w/cabernet as well. I am featuring St. Andre on my blogsite this week I am so crazy about it. P.S if you haven't tried chacha, you should. You can text the site and ask most any question and you will get a text response quickly. We also use the site to settle a lot of sports arguments that arise at the dinner table. www.chacha.com or text your question to 242242.
