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RESTAURANTS
Basil Leaf; 1438 S. Carrollton Ave., uptown; 504-862-9001. Thai.
Bella Luna; 914 N. Peters St., French Quarter; 504-529-1583. Nouveau Continental.
Cobalt; 333 St. Charles Ave., central business district; 504-565-5595. Regional American.
Creole Kosher Kitchen, 115 Chartres St., French Quarter; 504-529-4120. Varied, kosher.
GW Fins, 808 Bienville St., French Quarter; 504-581-3467. Seafood.
Galatoire's, 209 Bourbon St., French Quarter; 504-525-2021. Creole.
Lemon Grass, 217 Camp St., central business district; 504-523-1200. Vietnamese.
Stella!, 1032 Chartres, French Quarter; 504-587-0091. French/Asian
Sun Ray Grill, 1051 Annunciation St., Warehouse/Arts District; 504-566-0021. Nouveau Southwest.
MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT
Cafe Brasil, 2100 Chartres St.; 504-949-0851. Especially Latin-dance nights.
Creole Queen Sunday Gospel Brunch Cruise, Riverwalk Dock at Spanish Plaza; 1-800-445-4109; 1 ¾ -hour cruises board at 11:15 a.m., April through October. Adults, $45, children 3 to 12, $25.
Donna's Bar & Grill, 800 Rampart St.; 504-596-6914. Especially Monday night jazz jam session.
Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne Ave.; 504-947-1078.
Funky Butt, 714 N. Rampart St.; 504-558-0872.
House of Blues Sunday Gospel Brunch, 225 Decatur St.; 504-529-2583. Book way ahead. Shows at 9:30 and 11:45 a.m. and 2 p.m. Adults, $30, children 6 to 12, $15.
Le Chat Noir; 715 St. Charles Ave.; 504-581-6333. Tuesday night tango dancing. Lessons at 7:30 p.m., $5.
Maple Leaf Bar, 8316 Oak St.; 504-866-9359. Everything new and hot. Loud, no chairs.
Mermaid Lounge, 1100 Constance St.; 504-524-4747. All things musical; klezmer sometimes.
Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl, 4133 S. Carrollton Ave.; 504-482-3133. Bowling and live dance music Tuesday through Saturday. Wednesday night, swing; Thursday, zydeco.
O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Centre & Pub, 514 Toulouse St.; 504-529-1317.
Palm Court Jazz Cafe, 1204 Decatur St.; 504-525-0200.
Snug Harbor, 626 Frenchman St.; 504-949-0696.
Storyville, 125 Bourbon St.; 504-410-1000.
OTHER GREAT SCENES
National D-Day Museum, 945 Magazine St.; 504-527-6012. Chronologically organized three floors of exhibits, film, oral histories and relics from World War II.
New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, 419 Decatur St.; 504-589-4806. Free jazz lectures, concerts, walking tours.
FOR THE DOGS
Chi-wa-wa Ga-ga, 37 French Market Place; 504-581-4242.
Three Dog Bakery, 827 Royal St.; 504-525-2253.
RESOURCES
New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, 529 St. Ann St.; 1-800-672-6124; www.neworleanscvb.com.
Lagniappe; Friday arts and entertainment supplement to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Gambit Weekly; www.bestofneworleans.com. Free weekly music and arts magazine.
OffBeat; www.offbeat.com. Free monthly music and arts magazine.
Access New Orleans (HarperCollins, $19.95). Street-by-street guide to city's best.
More sushi and club jazz.
Surely Sigmund – an uppity poodle in a leather vest – and his swank human companion would have found the Big Apple more fetching than the Big Easy.
But then, New Orleans was full of surprises on a recent visit.
During a leisurely five days in the city of brass bands, cream sauces and raucous street boozing, we sniffed out an entirely different personality that most visitors miss. By skipping the standard guidebook picks, seeking advice from locals and visiting during a relatively quiet period when no major festivals were in progress, we got to know a New Orleans with an astonishingly diverse selection of music, food and other innovative activities, free of crowds and price gouging.
• Instead of fat-filled Creole dishes, we sampled lean Asian/French cuisine, fresh seared seafood, hearty but healthful nouveau American entrees, piquant Vietnamese and Thai, and even kosher cooking.
• Instead of the familiar Dixieland band scene, we found hot Latin salsa, poignant Irish ballads, steamy blues, cool club jazz, rollicking Zydeco (at a working bowling alley, of all places) and some of the most soulful gospel this side of the Promised Land.
• Instead of the usual French Quarter "Maison-this" or "Chez-that" hotel, we chose quieter and more interesting lodgings at the pet-friendly Monaco in the central business district, a brisk 10-minute walk from the Quarter. Housed in a recently redone Masonic temple, the Monaco goes wild with faux-mink bed throws, cougar-print bathrobes, and biscuits for pets during turndown service. (Guests with no animal companion are issued a live goldfish in a bowl.)
This is a particularly good year to visit New Orleans. The 2003 Bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (wherein President Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of the fledgling United States through the 800,000-square-mile buy from France), brings with it a year-long bounty of related cultural events, art exhibits, walking tours and theatrical performances. If you like the hoopla, don't miss the annual Mardi Gras parades (this year, Feb. 18 through March 4), and the Jazz and Heritage Festival (April 24 through May 4). But if you want relative quiet, consider another time for your visit.
We found as many great dining and entertainment options during weekdays as the weekend, because, as writer Rick Bragg – an astute New Orleans observer – once wrote: "The weekend does not wait for Friday in New Orleans. There really is no weekend here, or, perhaps more accurately, no week between perpetual weekends. It's just livin' dahlin', one long kiss on the lips of excess."
That excess can be a lot less artery-clogging these days.
Determined to steer relatively clear of fatty foods, we delighted in the light Asian/French cuisine with a Creole zing at lacy little Stella!, on quiet upper Chartres Street in the French Quarter. Our candlelit window table overlooked the soft glow of streetlights, and chef Scott Boswell, a graduate of New York's Culinary Institute of America, visited each table for greetings and comments. The lobster-scented spotted Gulf trout with crawfish pearl pasta was both delicate and richly flavored, as were pan-seared diver scallops with truffle-scented new potato hash.
At GW Fins, an expansive split-level dining room and bar crafted from a former warehouse on Bienville Street in the Quarter, we shared the freshest of yellowfin tuna, seared rare, with ginger and wasabi, all laid out attractively on a bright blue rectangular ceramic platter. The Chilean Sea bass in a hot and sour shrimp stock with sesame spinach was equally pleasing, and we liked the restaurant's reasonably priced wine list, which offered several dozen creatively chosen vintages by the glass.
Cobalt, one of several innovative new New Orleans restaurants guided by the creative vision of chef Susan Spicer, specialized in regional American cuisine, so we hunkered down for comfort food: herb marinated chicken with seared wild mushrooms, parsley pesto and pinot noir reduction sauce; and a double-cut pork chop with mustard seed aioli, smoky smothered greens and slow-cooked white beans. Sassy live piano jazz, bright blue martinis and freshly shucked oysters served on a bed of blue ice added a playful tone. This was a classy place, but we were clearly meant to have fun.
Spicy grilled Southwest chicken, and Sicilian shrimp, crab and olive pasta sauteed with tomato and artichoke hearts were standouts at Sun Ray Grill. The versatile new cafe occupies a former cotton mill on Annunciation Street in the newly chic Warehouse/Arts District (a good lunch choice near the brilliantly designed National D-Day Museum and the much anticipated Ogden Museum of Southern Art, due to open midyear).
We went ethnic with piquant curry Gulf shrimp and wok-smoked salmon steak at Lemon Grass Vietnamese restaurant in the central business district; seared scallop dumplings and sesame-coated soft-shell crab at Basil Leaf Thai Cafe uptown; and beef carpaccio with capers and sun-dried tomato bruschetta at romantic Bella Luna, overlooking the Mississippi River.
We even got a little Jewish mothering – though no matzo ball soup – at the Creole Kosher Kitchen in the heart of the French Quarter, where pastas, vegetarian dishes and Persian specialties offer a glatt kosher alternative to the neighborhood's predominating pork and seafood.
Truth be told, we did cast cholesterol caution to the wind one Saturday afternoon at Galatoire's, the 98-year-old dean of New Orleans Creole bistros. The city's movers and shakers hold standing reservations at specific tables here, not just week to week, but generation to generation. They come to gorge on oysters Rockefeller, trout meuniere amandine, banana bread pudding, sweet potato cheese cake and cafe brulot (a flaming coffee drink spiked with brandy and orange Curacao).
We were as eclectic in our entertainment as our eating.
We sampled a seductive mix of musical styles with the help of the arts magazines OffBeat, Gambit Weekly and Lagniappe – the comprehensive Friday entertainment supplement to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which listed no fewer than 150 venues for live music one Saturday night.
"Even people who live here get overwhelmed by all the choices, so you just have to take a lot of naps during the day and catch as many acts as possible all night," said Pay Jolly, a native New Orleanian who passionately follows the city's music scene.
So nap we did, and here's where the moon found us:
• Dancing hot Latin salsa to Fredy Omar Con Su Banda at Cafe Brasil, a laid-back Frenchmen Street club where there always seems to be a party, inside and out – especially on Latin-dance nights. The place was steamy with sexual tension (what with all those gyrating hips), and I wouldn't dream of going back without a tight little red dress and matching 3-inch heels.
• Nodding along to the folksy blues of Spencer Bohren at Snug Harbor, where the best of contemporary musicians always are on tap and nobody dares treat the performers like background music.
• Shaking our hips and faking fancy footwork to the accordion-and-washboard beat of Zydeco Joe and his band at the uptown Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n' Bowl. Thursdays, a rainbow coalition of locals and visitors, in tight jeans and cowboy hats, dance the night away. Dixie beers and the sound of bowling balls striking pins add an extra background beat, and the old-fashioned red Coke machine clanks out cold ones.
• Laughing and sniffling to the comedic and mournful ballads of the legendary Irish bard Tommy Makem at O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Centre & Pub, where dozens of ales and lagers were on draught and the mostly local audience mouthed every word to every song they weren't invited to actually sing along.
• Savoring joyful vibes and improvisational parings at Donna's Bar & Grill where, late Monday nights, local jazz luminaries come to jam after their regular gigs – and the house serves free red beans and rice at midnight.
We intended to stay through only one set of blues queen Marva Wright's performance in the Jazz Parlor of Storyville, but she had to belt out only one verse of "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" (possibly the theme song of New Orleans), and we were rooted to the club the whole night.
More? Of course, more. (Like I said, we took naps.) We caught some bawdy blues with attitude from local songstress Charmaine Neville at Cobalt; braved dense smoke to hear the cool club jazz of the Jason Marsalis Quartet at the Funky Butt; joined a group tango lesson at Le Chat Noir; enjoyed some quirky Yiddish Klezmer music at the Mermaid Lounge; and fled the very loud rhythm and blues of Alvin Youngblood Hart at the Maple Leaf Bar (we decided we were too old for a venue with no chairs).
For old time's sake, we did sample a little traditional New Orleans jazz at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe, where 91-year-old trumpeter Lionel Ferbos was worth the $5 per person cover charge (assessed even if you were having dinner). The cafe setting was a lot more comfortable than New Orleans' more famous vintage performance center Preservation Hall , where patrons wait in long lines for the privilege of sitting on hard wooden benches or on the floor, and no food or drink is permitted.
Sunday was not a day of rest, but it certainly was a blessed one. At the crack of 11:15, we joined the Gospel Brunch Cruise aboard the Creole Queen paddle-wheeler. As we glided along the Mississippi chowing down on pork roast, chicken piccatta, stuffed crabs and (just a little) bread pudding, gospel singer Betty Winn and her nine-member choir, One-A-Chord, in long white robes embroidered with gold harps, passionately entreated us to "Shout hallelujah, and let the Lord in."
The 1 ¾ -hour cruise left us craving more of those sweet soulful sounds, so we headed to the House of Blues in the French Quarter, where the Zion Harmonizers, one of the nation's oldest gospel groups, coaxed us again toward salvation – and we ate another brunch.
Had we had more time and energy, we would have perused some of the new galleries in the Warehouse/Arts District, taken one of the jazz-history walking tours run by the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park, or maybe made a pilgrimage to Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge, which has been kept as a shrine to the late singer, who recorded the mocking, 1961 hit song but always maintained he had a great relationship with his own wife's mom.
We might even have borrowed one of our canine hotel-mates for an outing that surely would have made them sit up and beg – a snoop around New Orleans' two exceedingly indulgent pet boutiques: Three Dog Bakery and Chi-wa-wa Ga-ga.
NEW ORLEANS – The dog checking in ahead of us at the Hotel Monaco didn't seem the gumbo-and-Dixieland-band type.
HOTELS
Rates are per room, double occupancy. They soar during festivals and major athletic events.
Hotel Monaco; 333 St. Charles Ave., central business district; 1-866-561-0010; www.monaco-neworleans.com
. From about $140. Great atmosphere. Packages with goodies for pets.
Hotel LeCirque; 936 St. Charles Ave. Book through New Orleans Fine Hotels, 1-888-211-3447; www.hotellecirque.com
. Renovated YMCA hostel in the Warehouse/Arts District. From $69.
Le Richelieu 1234 Chartres St., French Quarter; 1-800-535-9653; www.lerichelieuhotel.com
. From $95.
St. Charles Inn, 3636 St. Charles Ave., Garden District; 1-800-489-9908; www.stcharlesinn.com
. From $85.
Maison Orleans; 904 Iberville St. Book through Ritz-Carlton, 1-800-241-3333; www.maisonorleans.com. Most expensive of three hotels in two adjacent French Quarter beaux-arts buildings managed by Ritz-Carlton. From $385.
January 19, 2003
By JUDI DASH / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Judi Dash is a free-lance writer in Ohio.
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