bourbondandy

I first visited that storied, decadent metropolis on the Mississippi back in 2001, attending the Mardi Gras celebrations and lingering there for a couple extra days to apply the 3 Rs (rest, relaxation, and rehab). In the few hours left before my outbound flight was due to take me homewards, I decided to have lunch at Galatoire’s, one of the city’s most prestigious and celebrated restaurants.

New Orleans bars and restaurants are justly renowned all over the world, and I had made the most of my week-long sojourn following up on the many recommendations given by friends and guidebooks alike. But somehow, over the course of the Carnival madness, I had neglected to visit any of the 6 so-called “Grande Dame” restaurants, high-class institutions noted for their French and Creole cuisine. All were known to be steeped in tradition and very pricey—the kinds of places where a tie and jacket were de rigueur and where the town’s movers and shakers made a show of hanging out. Perhaps, then, as a first-time visitor of modest means (except in the way of ties and jackets) I felt a tad bit intimidated at the prospect of entering such lordly establishments. So dinner was definitely out; but lunch I was willing to try.

Galatoire’s, founded in 1905, belongs historically to the middle tier of the 6 ‘Grande Dames’—the others being Antoine’s (1840), Commander’s Palace (1880), Arnaud’s (1918), Broussard’s (1920), and Brennan’s (1946). Galatoire’s is not credited, as some of its sisters are, with inventing a signature New Orleans confection like Cafe Brulot (Antoine’s) or Bananas Foster (Brennan’s). Yet it retains the top star status among the sextet. Its address on the Big Easy’s most famous boulevard and puke canal, Bourbon Street, may have something to do with it. But even more important, no doubt, is that it once counted among its regular customers the playwright Tennessee Williams, who famously plugged it in A Streetcar Named Desire when Blanche and Stella go over for a bite while Stanley hosts a raucous card game back home. The girls were smart: if Stanley in his ripped wife-beater had wanted to follow them to start yelling at Stella, he never would have made it past the stringent dress code. And if they happened to be there during Happy Hour, then they could be so Happy Together.

In my own case, without the company of a Blanche or Stella to help ease my mind, I simply had to toss the dice and go it alone. But no matter! Cuirassed in suit and tie, I left the blue sky behind me and went in.

As would strike me on subsequent initiations into the public inner sanctums of the rich and powerful, this one was far more pleasant and less forbidding than I had previously imagined. Not a velvet rope or supercilious maitre-d’ in sight as I entered the clean but modest foyer. The 2 uniformed lackeys I found there were engaged in some good-natured banter and simply waved me on through to the adjoining dining room. There a cheery waiter showed me to a table in the middle of the long white room wrapped in low-hung rectangular mirrors. Spread around me was a modest-sized crowd, including both family types with well-behaved kids and what I took to be businessmen having tête-à-tête working lunches. (In the surrounding flow and eddy of conversation, I overheard one guy saying he wouldn’t “invest a dime” in some business or other.) Somewhat mollified now but still apprehensive about the price of admission, I again tossed the dice by ordering a Bombay martini as I opened the gilt-edged menu.

First good sign: The prices were clearly printed next to each menu item. (When price hiding occurs, you know you’re about to get hosed.) Second good sign: There were some single-digit figures among them. These were mainly for small salads and appetizers, but no matter! A light lunch was all I really wanted anyway. (These were still the days when the airlines cared enough about their coach passengers to comp them a decent meal, thereby obviating the necessity to stuff oneself prior to long flights—a need that prevails in our own less fortunate times.)

Among the appetizers, many with exquisite-sounding French titles (lending prestige, no doubt, to what might just seem banal or gross in plain English—Some baby slugs, madame?), I espied the dish with the million-dollar name-tag: Oysters Rockefeller. I have been an oyster fan for all my life, and the few times I had sampled this New Orleans specialty (many years earlier) had left a delicious impression on my mind and palate. Plus the idea of eating millionaires in this monied environment (“Eat the rich!”) appealed to me greatly. So I cast my vote for the Rockefellers, the millionaire mollusks it had to be!

Perusing further, my eyes lit upon a dish I had only vaguely heard about but had never actually seen on a menu before: turtle soup. Suddenly, echoes of Lewis Carroll poems and Cole Porter lyrics filled my head. It was like a long-extinct dodo bird had been exhumed from the natural history books and plopped down in front of my very nose. Sinatra intoned:

Is it that good turtle soup

Or merely the mock?

Perhaps I should have asked the waiter. But no, I thought, a classy joint like this wouldn’t dare hoodwink its well-heeled clientele. So I decided to order this unique culinary curio. Where else could I ever do so—in all of my life?

A baguette of near Parisian perfection was the first victual to appear on my linen-draped table. If the role of the bread was to pose a kind of question (as, say, “How is the weather?”), then the arriving martini provided a crystal clear answer. (My third “R” was about to get rained on.) After a couple sips, a wide and shallow soup vessel appeared, presumably bearing the amphibious delicacy. I took another sip of the potent elixir. Nothing about the steaming dish before me said “turtle”: no greenish hue, no turtle shell used as a soup bowl, no signs of body parts or head poking out of the broth and winking at me. I slurped some more gin. To be frank, it looked more like squash soup (which I heartily disdain). Preliminary soupspoon explorations seemed to confirm the comparison. Sinatra was now chomping at the bit:

Is it that good turtle soup..?

But I refused to be mocked. A taste of the tawny substance raised new hopes. By dipping in torn-off morsels of bread, I grew even fonder. By the time I had finished, I was ready to shake hands with the turtle.

But now the main course, the Oysters Rockefeller, took center stage. Oh pearl nest heaven! Bivalve delight! Those green-bearded moneybags broke the bank and swamped whatever claims to glory the poor turtle might have.

Is it the cocktail

This feeling of joy..?

For sure that lucid Bombay bomber helped ease the pain, Frank, and I later found out that the original recipe for Oysters Rockefeller—in true New Orleans style—had called for some dashes of absinthe (which probably meant its local substitute, Herbsaint, at the time of my Galatoire’s adventure); but all in all it was a superb repast for around $30, and one I’d fondly remember for all of my life. (And nobody but you, Frank, would see it any different.)

Before leaving I went upstairs to check out the bar, but—fortunately or unfortunately ?—didn’t have time to get thoroughly crocked. One additional item worth mentioning is the journey to the airport where I found myself ensconced with a stuttering cab driver. As is typical among white guys driving cab in New Orleans, he was hell-bent on using that half-hour cab ride to tell me his whole life story. He was ba-ba-ba-ba born in Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba Baton Rouge…

Years later, while on another Crescent City excursion, I had ducked into Muriel’s, a large and reputable establishment just off Jackson Square. I was sitting at the bar and nursing an Old Fashioned when I began feeling a bit peckish. (In the food heaven that is New Orleans—so long as you’ve got money in your pocket—hunger is a friend whose every whim should be gratefully humored.) Consulting the menu, I again came across that talismanic title: turtle soup. (Cue Sinatra.) Recalling how my earlier introduction to this delicacy had been obscured by those succulent, scene-stealing oysters, I thought I would give it another try.

Is it a fancy

Not worth thinking of..?

Old Blue Nose voiced his doubts again, but I had to ask myself: How many bars in America can one sit at and wet one’s whistle while partaking of turtle soup? It was settled! A few sips later I was set up with bread, linens, and utensils; and I was well into my second round when Yertle the Stew finally showed. This one looked pretty much like its predecessor, though perhaps with a more reddish cast. The barman, who was overseeing the operation, said in his Southern gay drawl, “You’ll have some sherry, won’t you?”, and without awaiting my reply, began dousing the bowl generously. “Of course, you will,” he simpered with authority, “it wouldn’t be turtle soup without sherry.”

Please note that in most recipes calling for the admixture of an alcoholic beverage, the booze gets cooked and simmered along with the rest of the ingredients, and consequently loses most, if not all, of its alcohol content. The resulting dish may be gentle as a Virgin Mary. But this guy was pouring booze in a dish that had completed the cooking process and was now starting to cool down. This turtle was gonna kick!

After compliantly enduring the Turtle Nazi’s ministrations, I calmly had at it. Wow! He was right; the sherry really added nicely to the flavor and zest. I again applied the bread dippers. Yeah! You can quit with the riddles now, Frank (unless they’re named Nelson): This was at-long-last-LOVE!!!

On my next and last-to-date visit to the land of turtle soup—which took place in February—, I made a point of trying out the precious porridge in as many establishments as I could. My traveling companion, who is no vegetarian, none the less winced at this behavior—as if I were committing some kind of environmental atrocity. But I assured him that the endangered giant sea turtles, which served as models for the costumes famously worn by some of Seattle’s WTO protesters in 1999, were quite safe from my dining habits; whereas the critters used in making my current dietary obsession (i.e., snapping turtles) could be found in great abundance in Louisiana’s swamps and bayous.

I was eager to demonstrate to my friend the proper etiquette required for such a fancy delicacy, and I got my first opportunity when we had lunch at The Palace Cafe on Canal Street, which is owned by one of the members of the Brennan clan. In this elegant high-ceilinged setting, as the waiter wheeled up the cart with the soup tureen and transferred it to our table, I let out with the catechistic question: “Is there any sherry in that?”

“Why, yes,” he responded with obsequious aplomb; and then, producing a bottle from seemingly out of nowhere, asked: “Would you like some more?”

To which I readily exhaled: “Yessss!”

Glug-glug-glug.

It had the desired effect.

This same scene repeated itself, with minor variations, over the course of the next few days—at another luncheon, this one held at the original Brennan’s in the heart of the French Quarter; at a fabulous dinner beneath the stars at the famed Court of the Two Sisters; at the modern wrap-around bar called The Swizzle Stick (another Brennan family outpost) in Loews Hotel, where I found the soup to be a bit chunky and less tasty than at the other venues; and at a repeat lunch at Galatoire’s, where I learned that the beaker sitting on my table, which I must have overlooked on my previous visit, contained the prized sherry. And the same scene played out on 2 separate occasions at the French 75 Bar at Arnaud’s, where the talented bartender Chris Hannah was kind enough to serve me barside (which I guess is slightly out of the norm there). At one point some female tourists popped in and enquired if the restaurant served vegetarian food. While I wasn’t certain about that, I assured the good ladies, while pointing at my soup plate, that the turtle soup there was made exclusively from “free-range turtle.” As the women were leaving, I overheard some of them repeat the catchy phrase.

Since returning to the Pacific Northwest, I still sometimes get a yearning for “that good turtle soup” that Cole Porter immortalized in song. Sherry alone, I’ve found, hardly does the trick. At the same time I now seem to take long baths a lot rather than quick showers, and I’ve started the habit of lugging my gear around in a large leather backpack—which, surprisingly, seems to go well with the combination of bowler hat and turtleneck sweater that I’ve also been sporting lately. Yet I don’t seem to go out much these days, and some of my friends have even accused me of “living in a shell.” What I barely remember from the weird dreams I’ve been having lately are swampy surroundings and lots of greenish colors. I don’t know what’s come over me, but it’s probably just a passing phase. All I know is, if there are any WTO meetings to demonstrate against in the near future, there’s a certain costume I really want to wear…