Upon my first arrival in the French Quarter of that famed city, on a dark, chilly Halloween night, New Orleans captured my heart in my first few minutes there. My first impression was of the unique architecture - there have been many who have written about it better than I can, but it's a mixture of mostly Creole townhouses and Creole cottages, both heavily influenced by Spanish and French architecture, sporting porches the width of the house and heavy artistic ornamentation and latticework. I have never to this day experienced a city which hit me so viscerally just upon first sight. The second thing to grab my attention was the amount of people that were out on the streets and sidewalks, the feeling of an almost hive-like city, except that nobody seemed to be in a hurry.
We hadn't been in the city more than 10 or 15 minutes before strangers were pulling us into a side street strip bar and feeding us free sangria, and the rest of my time there was at least that exciting and crazy. I lived on the streets in New Orleans for a total of probably 6 months over the next couple of years of travelling around, and it was always one of the toughest places to leave. It gets a hold on you, and one of the main pincers it uses is the breadth of magical food there. A walk past the restaurants and takeout places and bars that have kitchens is enough to delight and beckon any hungry traveller that comes through. The main traditional foods of New Orleans are: Po'Boys, Gumbo, Crawfish (either etoufee or straight from the shell, twist the tail, suck the head!), Jambalaya, Red Beans and Rice, Mufulettas, King Cakes, and Beignets. I have had all of these regional specialties at one point or another in that city, and I highly recommend that any foodie in the region takes the time to search out these delicacies and get a great sample.
With my history with this city, I have some patterns that exhibit themselves anytime I first get there. This visit was no different. We arrived in New Orleans at about 4 in the afternoon and found ourselves a parking spot just on the other side of Canal St. from the French Quarter. This happens to be the same block and almost the exact same parking space that we found on our last trip there. We spent some frustrating minutes trying to get the new fangled parking meter machines to accept our money before finally succeeding. One of my bandmates had never been to the city before, and even the ones that had been there before hadn't had much time there to explore, so we were all interested in stretching our legs and seeing some sights before we had music work to do. Also, by this far into the tour, it's always a good thing to get a couple of hours away from your good friends with whom you happen to share very close quarters with almost a third of your waking hours.
I know the Quarter well, so I walked the boys down a few blocks of the world famous tourist trap called Bourbon St., before leading us off on side streets towards the mighty Mississippi river and my favorite side of the Quarter, between Royal St and Decatur St. Folks split off from the group one by one to wander by themselves until it was down to just me wandering down past the French Market, reliving old times, seeing familiar blocks and remembering the faces of the people I have known there. I made what is fast becoming a traditional first stop for me, at a NOLA fixture called Molly's At The Market, a right proper dive bar. They have locally brewed Abita beers on tap, an eclectic collection of bric a brac, photos, and randomness covering all of the walls, and a bathroom you can trust for all duties (get it?) if you go early enough in the day. Molly's also has, in my experience, ALWAYS had an incredibly hot tattooed lady bartender working. I have literally never been there when that's not the case. And as a final bonus, the place has a small kitchen in the back courtyard which serves up freshly made, cheap fish tacos, plus a couple of other food items.
I am always on a food quest and I knew that I'd be writing this blog, so of course I gave the $1.50 or so for a fish taco. I have had these in several places, prepared many different ways. Some of them are great, some leave me wishing I had stayed away. To be honest, Molly's was kind of in the middle. It was a generic white fish used, decent tasting but nothing especially good or bad. The taco was assembled right there in front of me from fresh ingredients, and I do appreciate that, but it was lacking in spicing and flavor. I used some of the hot sauce they had on hand, but again, the heat was there, but not much flavor. Luckily enough, I wasn't expecting too much, so I wasn't too disappointed. Also, smoking is still allowed in bars in New Orleans, so I was stoked to be able to eat my taco while drinking a stout from Abita, and then have a smoke as soon as I was finished without having to move. Hell yeah!
While at Molly's I ended up meeting back up with my bass player, Matt, who had a beer with me while we chilled and played around on our phones. After a little while I knew it was time to continue moving around. NOLA is a city where I do not like to be in the same place for too long. My next stop was a place that has been a tradition to me since my second ever night in the city: The Moonwalk. Matt accompanied me there.
This spot goes by several different names: The Moonwalk, the levee, the boardwalk, Waldenberg Park, and who knows what else, but it'll always be the Moonwalk to me. The spot I'm talking about is a walkway on top of the levee on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, right at the edge of the French Quarter. On one side it ends at the Governor Nichols Street Wharf. On the other side at the ferry landing (I think - I've never been all the way to the other end of the thing.) My habit is to show up at the Moonwalk sometime in mid-afternoon, usually with at least a beer or two in my pocket, but more frequently with some whiskey, and find some crusties to drink with. It's not necessarily a plan, but it is just what happens. This day was no exception. Matt and I had walked no more than 150 feet along the levee before we ran into 3 crusty kids chilling and passing a bottle around while hitting up passersby for smokes. Hell, that's my scene. We stopped and introduced ourselves and pulled up a piece of pavement to pass the time.
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| Looking right from the Moonwalk |
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| Looking left from the Moonwalk |
We hung out and shot the shit, me with my mind wandering in and out of the conversation, thinking back to years ago when I drank on this very spot with people I haven't seen in years. I remember climbing the fence to get onto the wharf with Shrew. I remember Spoo getting so drunk my second night in town that he fell into the dirty, dirty water of the Mississippi and got sick for a week. It's always a trip for me to go back to places I have a real history with, but I enjoy it. A few minutes into our sojourn another guy rode up on a bicycle who obviously knew the folks we were talking with. He had a flexible cooler made of cloth attached to the front handlebars of the bike and a banjo strapped onto his back. We found out to our delight that he had homemade (and very strong) Jell-o shots in the cooler, which he was selling to tourists for $5 each but to locals and crusties for $1-$3 sliding scale. I gave up a couple of my few remaining dollars in the week's budget and supported local business.
My frontman Swagger rolled up after a little while to join us for a couple of shots. He and I had done this before, on our last stop through New Orleans, within mere feet of the spot we were at now. We shot the shit a little more, pumped our show that night to the kids we were talking to, even though we knew the odds of them showing up to the bar uptown to be slim to none. I remember being the one on that side of the conversation. I missed so many good shows as a teenager running the streets of the French Quarter: GG Allin, NOFX (on the White Trash, Two Heebs, and a Bean tour), too many others to name. The drink is a powerful thing, and we are all slaves to inertia.
The clock rolled forward and it was time for us to meet up with the rest of the band back at the Jeep and head over to our venue for the night and take care of load-in. We arrived on site and the venue wasn't quite open yet, so Swagger and I - you guessed it - went looking for food. Just a couple of blocks from the venue (I used my intuition to guide our direction), we saw a good looking crowd of freaky people like us standing on the sidewalk outside of some kind of business. As we got in front of the place, we saw that it was a bar/restaurant called Juan's Flying Burrito. There was absolutely no way we could pass up a place like that.
The spot was jumping! Full of people and movement, with not an empty seat in the house, and hardly any room at the bar. We talked to the greeter who informed us that there was a 45 minute wait for seating but that we could order takeout from the bar. That sounded like a solid plan to us, so we wove our way through the crowd and snatched up the last couple available feet of real estate at the bar and waited for one of the kinetic bartenders to look our direction. Continuing on a running theme for New Orleans, the folks behind the counter were gorgeous and tattooed like crazy, so the short wait was not unpleasant. The two of us got in some serious people watching between the frenzied staff running all over the place and the knots of customers stuffed into every available space in the joint. It was like a symphony, each person an instrument, all moving around each other, slipping past, forming visual harmonies. There was a certain beauty to it.
When the bartender/server did look over, she had a smile and presented us with menus. My choice was easy: They have a burrito called the Gutter Punk!
$6.95 is a little steep for a burrito in my book, but I figured what the hell? I was happy about the experience I was having, plus I saw a couple of the burritos other folks had ordered coming through, and they were huge. Mine was no exception. After a few minutes of waiting while they constructed it, our burritos were brought out to us, packed and ready to take out along with our selections of hot sauce. We booked it back out of there and returned to find the venue had opened its doors and our bandmates and some other folks were already inside. I found a countertop and opened up this savory culinary delight, marveling at it's construction, then pulled out my phone to snap a quick pic......and my phone was dead! I quickly found a plug to charge it up, but wasn't going to be able to take a picture anytime soon and wasn't about to wait and let my food get cold, so I had to skip the pic, so much the worse.
But let me tell you - that burrito was everything I could hope for out of a $6.95 tortilla meat bag! To start with, it was a very large flour tortilla, obviously steamed just before rolling. The rolling job was perfect. It was about 2.5 to 3 inches in diameter, even all the way down, with perfectly folded ends to keep all of its guts inside during consumption. I have always been amazed by folks that roll burritos well because I am absolutely horrible at it, no matter how many times I have gone to a burrito joint or a friend's house and paid attention while they did a bang up job. All of the other ingredients were plentiful and well balanced. I was able to taste it as a whole, enjoying the simple combination of flavors that complimented each other perfectly. The texture was just what I look for, no pieces too big, but not so small that they turned into mush. The jack in the jack and cheddar cheese mixture had a sharp tang which provided counterpoint to the taco seasonings in the ground beef. The jalepenos were freshly cut and crisp, and the rice (which can sometimes make a great burrito into a mediocre burrito) stood out due to its being obviously slightly spiced while being prepared, and then picking up the other flavors in the meal well.
Overall, I was incredibly happy with my meal - happy enough that I finished the entire giant thing even though I was likely truly full at about the halfway mark. I didn't care. I wasn't about to leave anything that good to the trash can or a giveaway. If you're in New Orleans and looking for some food that isn't necessarily traditional Creole, think about heading just a little bit uptown from the French Quarter and stopping in for a burrito and a couple of drinks at Juan’s Flying Burrito, located at 2018 Magazine Street. I wish I could have stayed and eaten there as well.
The rest of the night was fun. The other band on the bill, The Ameriskins, were really funny and got super drunk during their set. We saw a friend of ours from back home that had just moved to NOLA, played a high energy set, then I got smoked up outside. We packed our gear up and headed over to our place to crash for the night, the house of a friend of our bass player. Of course, I kept with my normal tour habits and, even though I had my bedroll set up and occupied within a few minutes of arriving, I still ended up texting my girlfriend until close to 5 o'clock in the morning, even though we had a 10-hour drive to San Antonio ahead of us for the next day and were getting up at the ass crack of dawn to hit the road.
But that, my friends, is fodder for my next post - Food On The Road - Day 18 - San Antonio. See you all soon. Keep eating!
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Chestnut Growler plays drums for The Swaggerin' Growlers, a punk/folk band based in Boston, MA. He tours full time. This blog is about the food experienced on the road: the good, the bad, and homemade and the gas station sammiches. You can find the band here: www.theswaggeringrowlers.com/
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