Eating in New Orleans

What you see in the picture above is the perfectly fried chicken and glorious side dishes served at Willie Mae's Scotch House in New Orleans. This is a monument to what the Southern Foodways Alliance stands for. Willie Mae ran and owned the Scotch House, a neighborhood restaurant with amazing food. It was all but ruined after Hurricane Katrina. John Currence, chef/owner of City Grocery in Oxford, MS, and active member of SFA, spear headed the restorations efforts along with other SFA members who dedicated the last 1.5 years of of weekends to the restoration of Willie Mae's. She was able to see it reopen, but at 91 years of age, is now in a rest home. Willie Mae's grand-daughter has taken over the day to day operations and the kitchen is putting out exceptional food. You simply MUST go there if you are ever in New Orleans.

After stuffing ourselves to the gills, we then, of course, had a marvelous dinner at Rio Mar. We had met the chef, Adolfo Garcia, last year at the SFA symposium. He is so talented and puts out such pure and clean flavors of seafood. We were lucky enough to rendezvous with our friend, Seth Honeyman of Albany, New York, who, along with his pals, the Ecumenical Misfits of New York, are working on repairing a house for a family of 4. Seth donates his time, hard work, good humor and good cheer to the people of New Orleans, and we adore him!

The next day found us on the road, taking our lunch break in Ponchatoulas, Louisiana. It was far enough away from New Orleans to make it feel like we had left the big city, but happily it was still Louisiana. We selected a restaurant based upon the number of cars parked out front and totally lucked out! The restaurant, O'Donnell's, turned out some great food! We shared a tasty little cup of gumbo (the color of a deep browned nut) I had fried catfish (one of my all time favorite dishes!) with heavenly gulf shrimp strewn over it and Farmer Chef Jeff had a perfectly cooked piece of fish with
crab meat.

After we were done eating, feeling VERY full and sassy, we asked our server, April, what there was to do in town. She said, "There's not much to do here...go see the antique stores and visit the live alligator...so we did both! Here is the alligator.

We had seen signs all over this little town indicating it was the strawberry center of Louisiana. October isn't exactly strawberry season, so there were no fresh strawberries to be found. We did go to a farm produce stand called the Berry Stand. They had lots of canned items, such as chow chow, bread and butter pickles, local honey and their own strawberry jam. They also had a large freezer section with such a bean selection it made Farmer Jeff swoon with envy. We bought some local honey, a jar of strawberry preserves, some hot sauce, some freshly roasted peanuts (YUM!) and some boiled green peanuts. You can fully comprehend that a peanut is a legume when eating boiled green peanuts. They taste like and have the consistency of beans. Why was I so surprised?

Once we left Ponchatoulas, LA, we turned on our directional device, Maggie, and she delivered us safely to the Duff Green Mansion in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was a pretty new house when the Civil War (known down in this south as the "War between the States") broke out and the owners realized the best idea to save the house was to declare it a hospital. Luckily we didn't stay in the room that was once the surgery. Apparently there are some ghosts/spirits that visit that room. Hm...not the experience I was looking for. The house itself is beautiful and we loved staying there.

The next posting will include our dinner in Vicksburg and then the SFA Symposium. So much to write about, so little time!