Forget the Hurricane, an obnoxious, overrated concoction responsible for a lot of New Orleans' drunken madness. Instead try a Pimm's Cup, a fizzy, citrusy and all-around refreshing cocktail that's available in just about every NOLA bar.
The key ingredient is Pimm's No. 1, a gin-based English appertif containing quinine and a secret mixture of herbs (supposedly only six people know the recipe). Next something bubbly such as Ginger ale, 7-Up or sparkling lemonade. And then a slice of cucumber and sometimes strawberry and mint.
A farmers son named James Pimm first produced Pimm's No. 1 back in 1823. Pimm owned an oyster bar in London and he served the drink as an aid to digestion. Somehow the drink made it's way to New Orleans in the 1840s.
The bartenders at the historic Napoleon House make the best Pimm's Cup around. Grab a stool at the bar or gather around a table in the patio out back and order up this NOLA favorite.
The beauty of the Best Western Plus St. Charles is its quiet location away from the drunken madness of the beloved yet touristy French quarter. On a leafy avenue lined with century-old mansions, this hotel sits in the Garden District. Yards overflow with camellia bushes, ginger blooms, and jasmine vines, and streets move through tunnels of crepe myrtles and oaks.
You can easily walk to Magazine Street lined with antique stores, vintage boutiques, coffee houses, and divey restaurants dishing up jambalaya and grits. Be sure to stop by Tee-Eva's for crawfish pie and pralines. You'll also want to step inside Lili Vintage where a well-edited selection of cocktail dresses dating back to the 1930s hang on the racks.
Lafayette Cemetery is about a 10 minutes walk from the hotel. It's small but packed with over 1,000 family tombs, many of them above-ground and some dating back as far as 1833. The most famous cemetery residents are fictional. Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat has a fake tomb here. Consider joining a guide and taking a Save Our Cemeteries Tour.
Want to head downtown? Easy. Hop on the charming street car that takes you right downtown. You'll want the St. Charles Line and bring along $1.25 to pay your way.
And after you've explored the city you'll certainly want to return to your room, which is guaranteed to be clean and tidy. In the morning, a hot breakfast with fresh waffles and fruit is included in the price of your room.
This fall I'm going to New Orleans with two girlfriends for a long weekend. Eating will be the focus of the trip and we're immersed in coming up with an itinerary outlining where we'll have morning coffee, where we'll go for po' boys at lunch, and where we'll splurge one night on a special dinner.
Here's a look at some of the places we're considering and we're looking to add more:
Fancy restaurants Restaurant August (fancy, probably the best food in the city) Cochon (assuming no vegetarians among you)
If you look at a satellite map and zone in on southern Louisiana, you'll see that the Mississippi River branches out into several water channels. Before dumping into the Gulf of Mexico, the channels run through skinny fingers of land, and on the last day of our road trip we take Highway 23 down one of these peninsulas to Venice. A two-hour drive from New Orleans, the town is the most southern community on the Mississippi accessible by automobile and many refer to it as the end of the world. Our drive through the lower Mississippi River delta immerses us in a landscape that's long and flat, vast and mysterious, even mystical. The land rises only an inch or so above sea level and it is so low-lying that at a distance it disappears into a blend of sky and water. The road is surrounded on either side by levees, which serve as protection when the Mississippi water level rises, and as we drive I feel as if the smallest wave could cover us in water.
Highway 23 also offers a front-row view of Hurricane Katrina damage. The storm hit southeastern Louisiana on August 29, 2005, and it completely destroyed Venice and nearby towns, leaving them 10 to 20 feet under water. We pass demolished homes, fire stations, and grocery stores with sunken roofs, broken windows, and fallen walls. Rusty cars are piled high in open fields; dejected boats clutter the roadside.
While the devastation is apparent, signs of rebirth are even more discernible. The community has worked hard to rebuild and new construction is everywhere. We drive by countless new homes, most of them lifted high up off the ground on stilts. The kids spot a shiny new playground, constructed with funds from Project Rebuild Plaquemines, a nonprofit organization established after the hurricane to assist with restoration of the area. A sign reads: "This park is dedicated to those whose lives were forever changed by Katrina--those who lost so much and those whose generosity helped to restore what was lost. Let it be known that this storm has marked us and changed us, but we have persevered." It's a gorgeous playground but nobody is there. Where do you grab a bite to eat at the end of the world? The Riverside Cafe in Venice is one of the few places. We walk into a dimly lit room with deer trophies decorating the walls. A few men wearing rubber boots that ride up past their knees sit around picnic tables. We're clearly the only people eating in the restaurant who don't work on a fishing boat or an oil platform. We order some fried catfish, which tastes as if it was just pulled out of the river. Our waitress, Leslie Smith, tells us the restaurant was under 15 feet of water after Katrina. She says that's why the mural of a swamp on the back wall is faded. It was painted by a French man who traveled through town, bedded down with the cafe owners, and paid for his keep by painting the back wall of their restaurant. "We're so glad the mural survived," Smith says. "It's special."
Smith was born and raised in Venice. She moved up the road to Belle Chasse after Katrina hit but eventually came back to her hometown and now teaches at the K-12 school that she attended as a child. "Why did you come back?" I ask her. "There's no place like home," she says. "And that's how 90 percent of the people who lived here before Katrina felt. People wanted to come back. They moved into tents because their homes were demolished. They wanted to live here on this land." We drive 10 miles down the road beyond the cafe, past a marina where some fishing boats are docked. This is a popular spot for sport-fishing, and the few outsiders who do visit this part of the world come to catch fish. As we head further south, water laps up against the road and sections are under several inches of water. Egrets and cranes wade through the small lakes. The birds get thicker and thicker and we have to drive slowly. The road suddenly ends. A sign reads: "You have reached the southern most point in Louisiana." We stop to take photos of the sign. A crab scurries across the road. We drove over 2,5000 miles to reach the mouth of the river--and taking a few photos of the sign doesn't satisfy us. I want a more poignant conclusion to our trip. We decide that we'd like to rent a motor boat and travel further down the river and so we follow signs to Bud's Boat Rentals. On the way we meet a friendly pelican who probably would have let me touch him if I tried. It turns out that Bud's doesn't rent boats to families like us. Rather the business runs supply boats between Venice and the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We learn this from Roy Mareno, Jr., who is sitting behind a big desk. The dark gray clouds outside start dumping rain and so we give up on our plans to find a boat rental. Instead we pull up chairs in Mareno's office. He's a bivocational minister, working as a manager at Bud's and as a pastor at a church in nearby Port Sulphur. When he tells us about his town he's passionate and intense. I can easily picture him speaking to his congregation. Mareno tells us about enduring Katrina and about the tight-knit community who pulled through the storm. We ask him why people would want to come back to this area that's so vulnerable and clearly exposed to Mother Nature's forces. That's when he starts to tell us about the fish he pulls out of the water and the alligators that come out in the early evening and about the cranes that are pink because they eat so much shrimp. He was born and raised in Venice and he cherishes the area's natural beauty. He's not leaving. We have been following the river for over two weeks; the river has worked its way into our souls and at the end of our journey it somehow seems fitting to meet someone who has a deep, spiritual connection to the river. Listen to a sound bite from Mareno here:
This isn't my best pie photograph but I can assure you that the pictured pecan pie from the Camellia Grill in New Orleans is the best slice that I ate along the Mississippi River. If only I had a professional photographer along with me on my road trip, he could have brought alive this decadent dessert. Instead, I'll attempt to describe it. The sweet custard filling is thick with chunks of fresh pecans; the crust is buttery, flaky, perfectly crisp. Our waiter warms the pie on the grill and then tops it with a heaping scoop of Blue Bell French vanilla ice cream. Our family of four fights like cats and dogs for every single bite. If we weren't traveling on a budget of $150 a day, we certainly would order a second slice. Rating: 5. The Camellia Grill in New Orleans's Uptown District, only a block from the banks of the river, has been dishing up Southern fare since 1946. It's an old-school diner but has a lot of class with white marble counter tops, cloth napkins, and bow-tied waiters. It's the sort of place where you belly up to the counter and order a big, sloppy burger, a chocolate freeze, and of course a slice of pecan pie. But before you dig in, you put your napkin in your lap.
Forget the Hurricane, an obnoxious, overrated concoction responsible for a lot of New Orleans' drunken madness. Instead try a Pimm's Cup, a fizzy, citrusy and all-around refreshing cocktail that's available in just about every NOLA bar.
