Recently GQ magazine sent it's resident food writer, Alan Richman down to New Orleans to investigate our restaurant scene and the aftermath (of course) of Katrina. The article is very long, spread over 8 glossy pages in the magazine but you can read it here. Controversy was immediately created and the writer blasted in the local paper and local blogs for the smear type campaign his article really was. Though each of the articles here are long you should check them out.
A friend sent me the story and the responses. In writing a response to him I realized I was writing a blog, so here goes.
This controversy was one I had totally missed. I really don't read glossy mens magazines so I missed the article there. I might have seen the coverage of his criticism in the Times Picayune but I tend not to read the newspaper.
(NOTE: I am correcting earlier statements that I have made about the Times Picayune. I duly apologize for impugning the work of the Times Picayune staff who worked tirelessly after the storm to put the paper back together and report the grim situation here in New Orleans under what must have been horrific conditions. On that same note I have previously written about the TP articles written by Chris Rose that were a god-send to those of us who had been evacuated to various parts of the country. He put a voice to things that most of us felt and made the situation human, a skill most reporters lack in this day and age. The TP has worked hard to report without prejudice every angle of the storm and it's aftermath to great success. They have definitely been a huge factor in the city being able to heal and come back together to rebuild our lives and our great city)
Most of us living here are oblivious these days to the endless parade of reporters who tramp their way through a few blocks of the 9th ward and declare the entire place as hopeless. They report their "findings' which only serves to hurt the city because their sheep-like readers will take their word for it and abandon one of the greatest American cities ever to exist.
Dismissal of the French Quarter entirely is all I need to know about this story but I did read the entire thing. Those "characters" that are mentioned, the ones that make the quarter nothing more than a copy of Tijuana are part of what makes this city great and what's wrong with stumbling out of a bar in the morning? If most places in this country had the relaxed attitude about alcohol that New Orleans displays you would see a people who could actually handle drinking responsibly. Our decaying walls in the quarter withstood the worst natural disaster to ever hit the country. While I agree that Bourbon streets tacky t-shirts shops and strip clubs may be a bit much for some people, one doesn't have to travel very far in NY or LA or Miami to find the exact same strip of businesses. The only difference is that we aren't so prissy as to not throw theatres and wonderful restaurants right in the middle of the hoopla.
All of that said, I agree with a few of his points. Restaurants here are like many businesses, offering half hearted products and services. People here are tired. Tired of the storm, tired of looking at the damage, tired of talking about the storm. It makes me angry when I hear someone say "well, since the storm" as an excuse for a service they no longer offer or a dish they no longer serve. Occasionally someone will be at my bar and say "I was here a few years ago and it was more fun" and I will, fighting back an urge to punch them, say "well you know, since the storm.." And I catch myself. Of course I can make a pretty decent argument that the "fun" level of New Orleans still exists even if it's been reduced to shorter bar opening times and infiltrated by an exhaustion that we can only begin to explain.
There is one thing that I think is missing in this discussion of the death of New Orleans cuisine. The entire US suffers from a problem that hasn't escaped New Orleans, namely the people who eat out. Here I think the problem lies more with tourists than locals but I know many people who still eat red beans and rice on Mondays and fish on Fridays. In general people want the same thing most times and don't want to try something new. They want to know if they order trout meuniere that it's going to taste exactly as it did at the last restaurant and the one before that and the one before that. Many chefs pride themselves that the dishes that are served in "traditional" New Orleans restaurants haven't varied in their recipe but they do change. They change as the world changes. Does trout caught today taste the same as trout caught ten years ago. Do the herbs that grow in the ground taste the same from every seed? Pollution and ingredients mean that fresh food is an ever changing product. Processed food-stuff that many restaurants serve today is faithful to it's followers. It's hard to screw up frozen fish sticks.
While New Orleans has long been associated with a world class cuisine, it was a reputation that was somewhat deceiving. Chefs have long been an integral part of New Orleans and the influences by different cultures that exist here (including those wacky Canadians) combined to make our city's food scene a true melting pot. Restaurants are part of a bigger culture that exists here and few other places. They were and are a social place, where the social elite mingled with wide eyed tourists and fiercely loyal locals who spend time arguing over the French bread served at favorite restaurants. Yes these things and places still exist, it's part of the culture of New Orleans. Old families still have a waiter at Antoine's and Galatoire's. I've eaten at Galatoire's several times with members of old Louisiana families and I've never seen a menu. These folks just know what they serve and often the waiter takes a glance at you and knows what you'll want. We eat in seasons here and until the storm we were a people mostly dependent on our local waters and bayous to feed the city. Our streams and waterways gave us opportunity to eat foods not widely available other places, even NY with it's four star restaurants on every corner. While a family BBQ in the north might bring up arguments of the best way to stack coals, throw a crowd of Orleanians around a pot of boiling crawfish and listen to that discussion. It's almost as involved as the argument of who has the best fried chicken and when your roux is the exact right color.
If the roux at Herbsaint isn't what this food critic/journalist expected, then I suppose the restaurant owes him an apology. I personally don't enjoy my food being vertical but that seems to be the wave of the future in every white linen restaurant in the country. I usually don't enjoy having to decipher four languages to get a handle on Cuban/Asian/Russian fusion foods but that seems to be what you can expect at restaurants in big cities today. The writer puts it best when he says that people either get or don't get New Orleans. Here is a perfect example of someone who doesn't get it. The restaurants that he does claim to enjoy he equates to basically being one roomed shacks by the side of the road in an otherwise desolate neighborhood. That he didn't insist on eating his meal perched atop a FEMA trailer surprises me greatly. One gets the idea he threw on a backpack, loaded his shotgun and set off to shoot himself a Po-Boy for lunch.
