Home Sweet Home.
Back in the friendly confines after four days in the Big Easy.
Nawlins, Louisiana.
Home of the 43rd annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
And my first trip ever to the city that never sleeps.
Sorry New York.
But this place takes the cake.
It’s a cross between Manhattan, Las Vegas and Tijuana.
The last time I stayed up this late listening to people scream, my wife was in labor.
But I’m not complaining.
I had the time of my life.
So where do I start?
The Bruce Springsteen concert.
The French Quarter.
The Midnight Palm Readers.
The 2am street musicians.
The 10am Bacon Bloody Mary.
That’s it.
I’ll start with food.
Was there really any other choice?
Ok, there are three things that I’ve always heard about New Orleans.
Music.
Food.
And it’s very dangerous.
BE CAREFUL!
Oh, it’s dangerous alright.
If you can survive four days in New Orleans without blocking one of your arteries you’ve really accomplished something.
I knew going in it was going to be a food fest.
But I honestly had no idea.
Most our daytime eating was done on the grounds of the Jazz Festival.
That’s where they have 70 different food vendors.
Offering more than 200 different types of food and drink.
And we are not talking corn dogs here people.
We are talking real food.
If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the list of food that we ate at the festival.
Remember, this is just the food that WE ate.
And you may want to sit down for this one:
- Crawfish Bread (twice)
- Cajun Jambalaya
- Cochon de Lait Po-Boy
- Guil’s Gator with Fried Jalapeños and Onions
- Crawfish Sack
- Oyster Patties
- Crawfish Beignets
- Fried Soft-Shell Crab Po-Boy
- Creole File Gumbo
- Trout Baquet
- Grilled Chicken Livers with Pepper Jelly
- Cracklins
- Fried Sweet Potato Chips
- Crawfish Monica
- Sno-Ball
- Handmade Ice Cream Sandwich
And a fresh-squeezed lemonade.
To wash it all down.
Now before you call Jenny Craig on me.
We did this over three days.
And there were two of us.
And if you think our list is long, you should see the list of the foods we didn’t try.
It wasn’t due to a lack of effort.
I literally had no more room left in my shirt.
And that’s saying something.
This place was off the charts.
Everything was affordable.
Everything was fresh.
And everything was absolutely delicious.
Ok, the chicken livers were a little sketchy.
For me.
But the security guard lady positioned right next to that tent loved them.
“It’ll make you curse your momma out,” she said.
How could I turn that down?
So I didn’t.
I must admit the first bite was pretty good.
Ok, kinda good.
But a few bites was all I could tolerate.
So I shared the rest with the security lady.
Which made both of us happy.
Sharing food at the festival seems to be a common practice.
Even if you don’t know the people.
I did it several times.
I saw this guy with a paper bag full of something.
You could see the grease stains coming through the bag.
Which got my mouth watering.
So I just had to ask what he was eating.
“Cracklins”, he said.
“Cracklins?”, I mumbled.
“YOU NEVER HAD CRACKLINS!”, he barked.
“Where you from?”
So I told him.
And he quickly offered me a sample.
How could I pass?
So I bit into this crunchy, greasy, bite-sized piece of ... godknowswhat.
That’s when he informed me what I was eating.
According to cracklin.com:
(and yes, there really is a cracklin.com)
cracklin is a fried piece of pork fat with a small amount of attached skin.
With my most sincere apologies to my Jewish ancestors, I must admit the first bite was amazing.
Salty.
Crunchy.
Greasy.
Everything you want in a festival food.
Then I took another bite.
And the grossness kicked in.
I couldn’t imagine eating an entire order of these here cracklins.
But to my new friend of ten seconds, it was a bag full of heaven.
Thankfully I stopped there.
With that one piece.
Come one, FRIED... PORK... FAT... SKIN.
Who created this dish, Jack Kevorkian?
Now I’m not saying the rest of this food was healthy.
Au contraire, mon ami.
There was more fat on this menu than on the set of Mike & Molly.
And that’s saying something.
But when it comes to food, fat=flavor.
And the flavor in these dishes was absolutely incredible.
I could go on all day, but how about I give you my top three bites:
At a quick glance, this mound of delight appears to be from the Mac & Cheese family. But add the Crawfish and you are on your way.
According to the creators of this dish, they also add “a lot of heavy cream, butter and cajun seasoning.”
Really?
#2: Crawfish Bread
This is to Grilled Cheese what the Monica is to Mac & Cheese.
Same family, different twist.
Amazing French bread, split in half with cheese and a bunch of crawfish shoved in the middle.
Every bite is better than the one before.
We loved it so much, we did it twice.
The literal translation of Cochon de Lait from French to English is... suckling-pig.
I don’t care what you call it.
I call it AMAZING.
While I was in New Orleans I had Cochon de Lait on my pizza.
I had it by itself.
And at the Jazz Festival, I had it on my Po-Boy.
This sandwich is made by Walker’s Southern Style BBQ and runs about $8.
I think.
They season the meat, then do 12 hours of slow hickory smoking.
A few years ago, Esquire magazine named this sandwich one of 30 best sandwiches in the country.
What are the other 29?
The sandwich is smoked bone-in pork butt with cold cabbage and a homemade horseradish sauce.
On French bread.
What else.
I threw some hot sauce on there too.
Because that’s what you do in Louisiana.
Then I slowly enjoyed every bite.
I even texted a picture to my wife.
Who didn’t make the trip.
It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to print her response.
Now I wasn’t the only one to enjoy this treat.
Not hardly.
Every time I walked by their booth, the line was deep.
But within seconds, each and every person was enjoying a mouth full of suckling-pig.
Actually, they're right, Cochon de Lait sounds so much tastier.
Actually, they're right, Cochon de Lait sounds so much tastier.
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