Food, Family and Friends: The Experience of Food in New Orleans

The tendency for a culture to identify itself with a certain type of food is commonplace throughout the globe. Understanding the culture in New Orleans that has produced a need for communities to express themselves through food, and to identify themselves with a food however, holds a place set apart in United States culture. A sense of pride in neighborhood eateries, not just in the food that they provide, but also in what they give back to the community, gives these places the identity they provide the community. The thought then that a community can act as more than just marker, it can serve as a microcosm for the city at large. Allowing for the study of food, friends and family this is the story of my discovery of three distinct versions of one unique style of food and the people that they are connected to, all within a fifteen-block radius of each other in one of New Orleans most storied neighborhoods. To understand three distinct views on Creole food, complete with their evolution and eventual separation, the people who support them and their relations to the community fabric. To be able to find this all literally around the corner from one another became my greatest surprise. A crawfish boil, Dunbar’s Creole Cooking and the Upperline Restaurant and their constituencies serve to remind me how much a microcosm of New Orleans my neighborhood of uptown really is.
Of course it did not start out so simple. I always knew I wanted to discuss food, I mean this is New Orleans after all, who wouldn’t want the opportunity to go around town and sample some of the best food in the world? I remember my first days here in New Orleans, the heat was almost inescapable, yet almost every weekend the people were outside gathering in the park or on the streets in what seemed to be impromptu celebrations I later found out were crawfish boils. Finding reprieve from the heat by standing over an open flame was definitely not for me. The restaurants lining Magazine Street and Prytania were where I initially found my comfort. These neighborhood-centric restaurants seem to meld perfectly with the fabric of this area, and I felt like I could spend the rest of my days before sampling all of the cuisine offered on just these few streets…And in uptown I was happy. Of course, I had to travel every day across town to studio, sure; but every evening I came back home and I was comfortable. This was all true, up until one weekend almost a month into the semester when we were spending the night in the French quarter on bourbon street, when I was forced to confront the issue I had been avoiding in my mind, and the way I came about it is in fact truly random. Talking to a friend of a friend on bourbon street I was confronted with the phrase “Its just New Orleans” and I realized, that If I continued on the path I was on, indeed it would be just New Orleans to me as well. In my mind as I played over these words I thought well if its just New Orleans is it just Bourbon Street? or is it just St. Charles avenue? The fact is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. No one neighborhood in this city can successfully define it, just as no one street can define a neighborhood. After hearing our friend utter those words "its ok, but its just New Orleans." after visiting, almost exclusively, Bourbon Street, I couldn’t help but agree. If you're going to visit one street in one neighborhood of a major city and attempt to make assumptions about the city based on that one experience, it is going to be "just New Orleans". If I stayed in a hotel in the quarter and never ventured out to experience the rest of the city I would probably walk away saying the same thing. The fact is that while certain neighborhoods certainly contain restaurants considered more sophisticated than those in other areas, the value of all areas of the city is ascribed in their human connection. In order to experience a city fully, some understanding of the method in which the parts of this place are assembled is necessary. While it may not be practical or imperative that one visit every district within a city, it quickly becomes evident in a conversation if a person has any real interest in a city through the extent they go to understand and explore all that it has to offer. While New Orleans may be best experienced as the sum of all its collective parts, the fact that the city is a collective is not to be overlooked or ignored. Each neighborhood within the city has a very distinct feel about it, complete with its own unique individuals, architecture and especially… food.
As I could have expected, what I am attempting to do is the exact opposite of the realization that I came to that one night in the quarter. Only through my understanding that All of the parts of the city work together to create what New Orleans truly is, could I allow myself to experience and catalogue all of these pieces in order that I could allow myself to think of uptown truly as a microcosm of the whole, rather than the whole. Equality of place, however, does not equal sameness. Whether the unique fare of the city is experienced at the pace and virility of a food festival or through a sit down meal at their favorite neighborhood restaurant, what you notice as you travel through one if its neighborhoods in particular, uptown; the things that distinguish it, are the subtleties only made apparent when the effort is devoted to notice changes in atmosphere and attitude from place to place within a city. While no one style of cooking in New Orleans can claim supremacy over the others, certain neighborhoods associate themselves with distinct mutations within a larger culinary species, which I found extremely interesting. The differences within a style of food preparation, which can denote difference between upscale or everyday are the things that serve to denote neighborhoods and social classes all as a result of the slight variations in the food they all enjoy. Uptown is rich, the third ward is poor, the french quarter is a party, the bywayter is artsy. All of these connotations, associated with place in this city, lend themselves to the development of an understanding of and indeed an interpretation of a New Orleans cuisine that is part of the greater whole’s identity. What is even more interesting than understanding a collection of neighborhoods by their one-worded identities, is the ability to find all of those characteristics within one neighborhood, studying it as a microcosm of the whole. Further more what defines these areas physically, the means and methods that people use to separate themselves from other communities with different values became the point of departure from just eating and observing. With these connotations in mind I set out to experience this style and the divisions within it as pertain to each sect within the “neighborhood” of uptown, and with which such strong associations have been laid out.
Neighborhood to neighborhood, more often than not, you will not have to look far to receive a unique interpretation on an even more unique style of southern Louisiana’s cooking. Brown Cajun gumbo, red Creole gumbo, jambalaya, etouffe are all part of the cuisine that has identified this place as the food capital of the United States. The Contribution of the Acadian culture is felt and expressed best through the phrase "work like hell to make your money, then spend it all having a good time", When I ran across this quote from a Les Blank film, It instantly struck a chord with me. Meals are meant to be enjoyed and shared amongst neighbors. These gatherings embody the spirit of food as a community affair. Crawfish boils are a regular occurrence as days become longer and meals become events. Pushing the end of crawfish season, in mid September, I found myself driving around town aimlessly. All through uptown, Metairie and the Lakefront, I drove, hoping that some sort of adventure would strike me as unique and provide an experience completely in and of itself New Orleanian. Ambivalent to the mission of this story I came upon what appeared to be a party in the streets around Carrolton Avenue, a wholly uptown neighborhood, and yet somehow wholly distinct… and I couldn’t pass it up. The opportunity to impose myself in this situation was incredible. I spent the better part of an afternoon at this crawfish boil, talking to people and learning about this uniquely Acadian interpretation of a larger national tradition of barbeque-ing. Being a person who does not normally do well in situations where I know nobody and where interaction is forced, I had a blast. Unfortunately, as I was not expecting an experience like this I did not have any of the tools to document it accurately, so my experience is through the somewhat romanticized veil of my recollection. This block party was gathering of neighbors celebrating the end of summer. But to them the opportunity to come together, eat, drink and spend an afternoon telling stories about past, the flood, and of course, the last great meal they shared, is invaluable. When it came to eating, unfortunately I couldn’t eat nearly as much as I wanted to, my allergy to shellfish really put a damper on my day. I still found time to sample as much of the crawfish, the gumbo, the jambalaya and the red beans and rice as I could handle. While this was a community gathering, and almost everyone in attendance had contributed something, when I asked that the people point me in the direction of the “chef” so I could thank whoever individuals for the amazing food I had just eaten, over and over again I was pointed in one direction. Agnes, whose last name has since escaped me, was born in the late 1930’s in the same 17th ward neighborhood she still lives. By her own description a Creole, Agnes is the oldest of seven children born to a dockworker and a homemaker. When asked about the role she played in the upbringing of her brothers and sisters, one of the first comments she made regarded helping her mother cook for all of them, as she pointed to the pots and pans and grills in this front yard we found ourselves in. To watch the expression on her face as she saw the people eating and enjoying this party was to see the face of any proud mother watching her children succeed. As our conversation continued she brought me through her history, her marriage, her children, all throughout tying her cooking into each stage of her life, without my prompting. She offered her favorite dishes, her children’s, friends, and family’s favorite dishes and even some of her secrets. It was at this time that I understood, food permeates life, food improves life, food defines life. Days in New Orleans are not measured by the rising and the setting of the sun, rather by the celebration of meals, with events of the past placed in order in relation to occasions involving food. While understanding a meal’s relationship to the community whom take part in it is only the first step in understanding the culture in uptown as it pertains to the larger city, I couldn’t help but notice that this contained the most visceral connection between people and food. The people all take part in the preparation and enjoyment of the food. Celebrating what they stand for, who they are, and where they’re from this gathering answered for me some important questions as to why and where this type of gathering came from, and how it contributes to the communities relationship to their eaten environment.
Good local recipes give way to neighborhood icons. In this way small business here in New Orleans takes on a special role. With one of the highest rates of small business ownership of anywhere I have ever been. The role of small business on the psyche of the average person here in new Orleans and the role of food then are very much intertwined for this reason. This connection between community pride through food and community pride through business ownership, along with the propagation of a a certain type of cooking which has infiltrated the larger United States as a symbol of the region, is what fascinates me, especially considering its humble origins as simply a method of bringing communities together to celebrate life. Heavily damaged by the flooding in September 2005, Dunbar’s Creole Restaurant operates as a testament to the power of food to identify a community. What is it about human nature that allows us to persist through tough times? Once more, what is the affect of food on the human psyche, why do the reopening of restaurants signal a return to normalcy for so many in this city? What does food identify about this city that causes people to see it as an icon and as a signifier of what was, and what could be? The history and causes of Creole food and its relationship to a sense of routine and everyday in New Orleans became the driving force during this part of my investigation into the significance of this one of a kind style of food; as a result this became a large theme in my interviews with the owner of Dubar’s Creole Cooking, Mrs. Tina Dunbar. The first day that I tried to grab an interview with this uptown pseudo-celebrity I failed, but did not leave empty handed. I could not leave Dunbar’s without trying the food though. The five-dollar special: beans, rice, and fried chicken; otherwise known as the laundry day special intrigued me. Since I could not ask Mrs. Dunbar at the time what the laundry day special was, or why it was called that, I decided to do some research in the meantime on the relationship between days of the week and food. If there is a relationship, I wanted to find out what it was, and what are that influence this. My research into the obvious “laundry day” revealed that the term comes literally from the old tradition of Monday’s being laundry day. It would take the woman of the household the entire day to take care of the family’s laundry, leaving no time for cooking the evenings meal. A result of this, Mondays in New Orleans are known as laundry day at restaurants, the dish of the day being red beans and rice. Able to be set on the stove and left all day for the beans to simmer in a tomato base soup with ham-hocks and whatever other Creole seasonings are handy, then poured over rice, this dish has become an icon within the city to its people. Restaurants all over the city offer this dish on Monday; many bars even offer it for free to their customers. A day or two later I went back to their temporary restaurant on Loyola’s campus and was able to catch a couple minutes with Mrs. Dunbar. Imagine if your grandma owned a Creole restaurant. That was what it was like talking with Mrs. Dunbar. She was one of the nicest ladies I have ever had the privelage to talk with. Mrs. Dunbar’s biggest point was that we as a people don’t recognize the role that food plays in the organization of our culture and our neighborhoods. One of her observations, a result of 20 some odd years of restaurant ownership is how peoples routines form around the food they eat. People will travel miles to eat a certain dish prepared a certain way, in her case, often times to show loyalty. Once again it is the case that the food is only the means, not the end. Meals are meant to be shared with family and friends. The small town feel of the place was characterized by a set of people with similar values and opportunities in life, they fed off of one another and supported each other, and will hopefully return to this place which now exists with a strong history. Its sense of place has been skewed since the flood and now it floats in limbo, not really so much a neighborhood as a remnant. As food progresses from the street into the restaurant, the mission remains the same, to foster relationships between people.
Throughout my research my focus has been on the role of styles of food within a neighborhood fabric, and not so much on the study of the hierarchies within a certain typology. This is where it gets architectural and interesting to me. Just as two architects can propose architecture of a similar style and scope, with one being considered more elegant; so two can chefs prepare food that may follow a certain datum and make reference to a style of cuisine, without producing the same dish. It is in this respect that as the uptown reflects the entire socio-economic scope of the city, so too does its food reflect the entire culinary tradition of New Orleans. While people may associate uptown with a certain type of lifestyle or a certain type of inhabitant, it is infact much more diverse, and covers a much larger socio-political base than is stereotypically thought. There is a saying, though, among people that I have talked to, that you could spend your entire life living in Uptown New Orleans and never see a an African American except when you are at a restaurant or when you leave uptown. I find this statement incredibly telling about the mindset of a certain group of people within a district of a neighborhood that exists in relative isolation in a city that is around 60 percent black. Uptown boasts its own grocery stores, parks, schools and restaurants, all some of the finest in the city, and by no accident In an area that was not severly damaged by the storm, with a relatively high standard of living, when the money returned, the businesses returned; as a result, life here seems to be operating pretty much as it had before the September 2005 with few exceptions. travel five or six blocks north of this area and you will get a different understanding. It is in this neighborhood situated between St. Charles avenue and Prytania that the Upperline Restaurant can be found. Considered one of the finest restaurants in the city, regardless of type of cuisine, “The original meaning of the word 'restaurant' was 'to restore' and, says JoAnn Clevenger, "Restaurants were originally more than just a place to find a meal; restaurants existed to soothe and bolster the weary soul with comfort and indulgence. Like the earliest restaurants, my goal for the Upperline is to be a haven for our guests, restoring their serenity after the daily hassles of the world with great Louisiana food, serious wine, and Creole hospitality." But Upperline is more than just a restaurant; it is a way of life and a strong fixture in the local community. From festivals and charity fundraisers, to theme dinners and business etiquette courses for some of New Orleans' most renowned universities, there is always something going on at Upperline.” gatherings signal vitality, in some form or another, when people gather together it is always a celebration of life. Food acts as the catalyst, even in this, a high end restaurant, and acts much in the same way a crawfish boil, or some red beans at Dunbar’s would. While its role as one of the most distinguished Creole restaurants is not to be overlooked, the unassuming building which it inhabits screams of the “everyman” nature of the food.
Only through the study of these three distinct sects within the larger blanket of New Orleans Cuisine could I come to an understanding of this city, as much more than a sum of its parts, it is a cooperative in the truest sense of the word. The fact that Creole and Cajun cooking is such a universal language in New Orleans, restaurants and festivals in one neighborhood are visited and in fact frequented by people running the gamete from poorest of the poor to the most wealthy families of Audubon Place. This is why uptown serves as the perfect microcosm of this city. My journey through uptown, from Prytania to Freret and out to Carrolton led me through a microcosm of a city complete with an extremely diverse population; all intertwined and collected under the common umbrella and culture of New Orleans. Succinct in its diversity, yet somehow distinct in their own traditions and family makeup, and the culinary traditions carry certain overtones all across uptown. These tones serve to establish a understandable datum and a continuity not commonly felt in variations of cuisine within the same locale, and certainly not the Midwestern cities I am from. Equality does not mean sameness, and it is in this respect that all of Uptown New Orleans is dependent upon the sum of its parts to continue to reinforce its reputation is one of the most diverse and distinct districts in one of the most diverse and distinct American cities. Resistant to flood waters and the sands of time, food binds the people of New Orleans. Whether it constitutes a community gathering or an evening on the town the beating heart of this city may be the music, but its soul is food.