This House Believes

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Fresh Snow Crab from Kjeans- The perfect picnic lunch!

I dropped in to Kjean’s a few weeks ago to conduct a follow up interview with owners Kenan and Jamie.  When I had visited Kenan at the start of our project he told me about all the changes that were coming.  He told me that Veal Parmesan was being added to the menu and that he was on his way out the door to go and pick up daiquiri machines.  These were his new weapons in the crusade to battle against the affects of the BP spew.  I was eager to see how he was doing, as well as a little apprehensive about discovering who had thus far been winning the battle.

When I walked in the door Jamie was taking orders behind the counter.  There were customers in line waiting to be helped.  I could hear Kenan in the back shuffling fish.  There wasn’t a daiquiri machine in sight.  In short, nothing had changed.  Then I noticed the menu on the wall.  When I had first visited Kjean’s the menu had been unmarked, and now it stood as a testament to the affects of the spew.

Everything you see marked up contains shrimp which are no longer caught close by. Everything marked out contains oysters which Kenan can no longer obtain locally.

At first the prices had been marked up.  Everything that included either shrimp or oysters was raised in price by several dollars.  The menu looked like the sort that had been posted thirty years ago by chintzy owners who had Sharpie adjusted the prices as decades wore on.  The problem is, Kenan had had these new menus created just several weeks before the spew.  The story of how things went was most clear when I glanced at the oyster platter.   First it had gone from $13.95 to $16.00, then it disappeared entirely as Kenan’s oyster supplier closed his doors in early July.The Oyster Platter is currently unavailable

I asked Jamie where the daiquiri machines were.  She sort of rolled her eyes and smiled and told me that Kenan does things on his own time.  I was a little disappointed, but then I realized that they didn’t seem to need them.  Business was strong, customers were in line, and Kenan was so busy that he couldn’t come out for an interview.

As I looked around the seafood house (it really isn’t a sit down sort of place) I noticed the counters that Kenan had shellacked with Saint’s memorabilia. When the Saints had won the SuperBowl, changing decor had been a priority.  It was nice to walk the counter and see the photos of our city’s most recent victory.

I also noticed that Kenan and Jamie have a sign hanging over the kitchen door that says “This House Believes”. As a New Orleans establishment that is still battling on, both post Katrina and post BP, this sign takes on a whole new meaning.  This establishment obviously believes in the continued success of New Orleans as a whole and as I see happy customers leaving with bags of crawfish to take home for parties, I can’t help but think that the spirit of believing is reciprocal.

The sign hanging over the kitchen at Kjean's

Exploring Their Connections

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One of the objectives of our Restaurant Row Recovery Project is to try to better understand how restaurants have played a role, if any, in the relationships with, and within, the neighborhood and the Greater New Orleans area.

Obviously, as businesses, they compete to provide a service in exchange for an established price. From the other side, the consumer provides the restaurant owner and his employees a means of financial support. Bottom line is that these are businesses, and profitability is fundamental to their survival. But these local establishments seem almost as dependent upon their relationships as their bottom line. After interviewing some of the owners, employees, and customers of the Row it quickly became apparent that there was much more to this story.

For starters, most of the restaurant owners interviewed by my colleagues and I have described a type of local connection fundamental to their supply chain. Some, like the owner of EcoCafe, actively engage in more grass roots community networking, by striving to buy from local farmer’s markets as much as is absolutely possible. Others like, Paul Ballard, founder and CEO of WOW Café and Wingery, as well as PJ’s Coffee, are supplied by larger firms, but are nonetheless local. Frank, owner of Rinconcito, went so far as to express a sense of loss when he mentioned decreasing his seafood order from local supplier Vincent Piazza, Jr. & Sons Seafood Incorporated due to the BP oil spew plunging the demand for seafood. These all serve as examples of restaurants playing the role of consumer and local patron, but also express how each strives to maintain a connection to place.

Afternoon Delivery

The bartender and daughter of Delmy Cruz, owner of Fiesta Latina, echoed what Paul had said about being there not just to make money, but to serve a community in need. This got me thinking about what we, as consumers, need to have in a restaurant relationship. What is it we expect to get out of a restaurant beyond a quality meal? How are those expectations met? I know I enjoy going to the places where I know the staff. Making a connection to the people who work in my favorite haunts is fundamental to it actually becoming one of my favorites.

Paul talked about his amazement with the response to first opening after the storm. He said he had never heard so many heartfelt thank you’s in his life. He recalls seeing people piling their MREs (Meals-Ready-to-Eat distributed by the military in the wake of Katrina) on the table while they ordered their first familiar meal in weeks. Paul says he will always remember how happy people were to be in one place eating wings of all things. To them, the folks at WOW were heroes. They brought back something familiar. They brought back a little bit of normality and Americana: beer, wings, and college football.

Above all, these examples go to show how restaurants can often play a much larger role in the neighborhood beyond providing substance to an already nourished population base.  They can serve as counselors, organizers, entertainers, neighbors, and sometimes friends.  Of course, for our study group it doesn’t hurt to have a tasty baseline from which one can operate.

Telling Their Own Story

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I will start with the obvious: chefs and restaurants are trendy.  Above all, chefs in fancy white tablecloth restaurants have become important players in the making of the symbolic economy (that is the one in which you buy things—a sports car, a zucchini, a house, shoes—because it means something to you, not just because you need it).  Eating in their restaurants, reading and watching their interviews and TV shows and buying their cookbooks and other products are all part of the process by which we consumers make ourselves into the kind of people we think we want to be.  Through all of the media they create, these restaurateurs tell their own stories and make themselves into who we think they are…and help give meaning to our own dining and cooking experiences.

The process through which some of the more savvy chefs define themselves is fascinating to watch.  One of the difficulties faced by social scientists who want to study restaurateurs is precisely that they are great at telling their own stories.  They are good at connecting with the desires and ideas that permeate our societies.  The stories of chefs’ lives, of the highs and lows of kitchen life, of the creative process in the restaurant, of difficult customers or unusual settings to prepare a meal all help create a kind of template that the rest of us can use to frame our lives, culinary or otherwise.

There are no famous chefs or media stars in our Mid-City restaurant cluster.  But there are stories to tell, as we have already documented here.  Perhaps more importantly, the restaurateurs are, in many cases, already telling their own stories.  They use web pages and social media, along with more traditional media, to create this narrative.  Restaurants like Mandina’s and Brocato‘s have quite elaborate web sites, outlining their histories, including pre and post Katrina events, details about rebuilding and links to outside writing or video about them.  Of course, they also include menus, addresses and hours as well as contact information.  Not all the neighborhood restaurants have web sites (we list those that do on the right side of the blog) and not all of them have extensive information.  Some of the restaurants also have Facebook pages and some may also use other social media as well.  I am linked to several of them in this way and mostly get regular—and mouthwatering—reports of daily specials.

Still, the media are there and the restaurants are beginning to employ them to do more than simply announce specials.  They are using them to tell their stories and thus shape the way we think about them.  This is rapidly becoming an important part of how we can think about forces shaping the neighborhood and city.  The manner in which the restaurant owners represent themselves through their web sites and social media shapes our knowledge about them and will eventually help contour our understanding of the neighborhood beyond their doors.  All of this raises a lot of questions: why do some restaurants pursue this while others do not?  (In our study, restaurants catering to recent immigrant populations seem less likely to have extensive web sites, for example.)  Who reads the sites and what do they take away from that?  As restaurants reach out in this way, are they fundamentally changing the dining experience?

The fact that the people we are studying are telling their own stories through these public representations raises another set of issues as well.  What kinds of insights do anthropologists (or other social scientists) have that might be different from or complementary to information presented by the restaurants themselves?  If we are going to make our work useful, we have to be able to put the restaurant stories into a broader context.  We have to show how the restaurants in our cluster fit into and shape the contours of the city’s broader culture and history.  As the summer winds down and we start to look closely at our data, we will be concentrating on this.  The restaurateurs continue to tell us their stories, both directly and through their public representations.  Our job is to put this together and see if something emerges that gives us new ideas about restaurant clusters, neighborhoods, Mid-City and New Orleans.  Stay tuned!

Minh-City Cafe

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One of my research adventures took place at Cafe Minh. It is located in what used to be Michael’s Mid-City Grill before the storm. When the latter restaurant did not re-open Post-Katrina, Chef Minh Bui decided that it would be a fitting abode for his Cafe Minh.

With his roots in Vietnam, Chef Minh got his New Orleans start cooking at places such as Emeril’s and Commander’s Palace. After mastering his skills, he developed a Vietnamese-French fusion cuisine that contains hints of local Creole cooking. His first restaurant Lemongrass was opened next to Angelo Brocato’s on Carrollton Avenue. A second location of Lemongrass located in the International House hotel was opened, and a third restaurant called 56 Degrees was also opened in the Whitney Hotel. Before Katrina, both the Carrollton location and 56 Degrees closed. After the storm, Chef Minh decided he wanted to return to Mid-City and opened Cafe Minh at its current location.

Cafe Minh fits perfectly in the Restaurant Row even though it is not physically in line with the others. About a block into Canal Street, it is still in close walking distance of the area, however. One thing we can recognize about the Restaurant Row is that even though there may be similar types of food (for instance, Wit’s Inn, Venezia, Theo’s, Papa John’s and Domino’s all have pizza), there is still enough variety throughout the restaurants that they are all able to survive. Among the Asian restaurants, you may find that Little Tokyo, Doson’s Noodle House, Yummy Yummy, and even Cafe Minh have similar items on the menu. Yet because of the creativity of the chefs, the different environments of the restaurants themselves, and the specific cravings of those searching out food, co-existing is not a problem for these places.

Another similarity I have noticed between the Asian restaurants is that the owners or head chefs all learned to cook in their birth countries. This seems to come full circle as they originally learn to cook in the authentic way of their birthplace, then they end up drifting into another type of cuisine (whether it be another Asian cuisine or something completely different), and in the end, they come back to their original style of cooking, adding a bit of their own flair. That little bit of flair and originality is what sets each of these restaurants apart from the other.

During my visit, I discovered that the food at Cafe Minh is excellent, however, when one typically thinks of the item he or she is ordering, one might not get exactly what they are expecting. For instance, when I ordered the fried eggplant, I did not expect it to be topped with mozzarella, on top of tomatoes, on top of a bed of lettuce, on top of toast. It was amazing nonetheless. This is an example of Chef Minh’s genius at work.

For dessert I had the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, and it was divine. Colorful and divine.

Also, while visiting Cafe Minh, I immediately noticed all of the artwork on the walls. With the high ceilings and ambient lighting, I almost felt that I was in an art gallery for a moment. The bartender even told me that the artwork is rotated by several local artists throughout the year.

When wandering Mid-City and you find yourself wanting something different than the norm, try stopping by Cafe Minh. If anything, the experience is one you’re unlikely to find anywhere else on Restaurant Row.

Paul Ballard, A New Orleans Inspired Wingman

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Wow!

This past week I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Paul Ballard, president and CEO of WOW Café and Wingery. Mr. Ballard is a larger than life kind of man with a captivating grin and a presence that leaves listeners hanging on his every word. His strong family ties and love for all things New Orleans were evident within the first several minutes of our encounter. We were just sitting down at a table overlooking a rainy Orleans avenue sipping cold brewed coffee when Mr. Ballard first surprised me by immediately thanking me for our interest in his company. For the first time in a long while I did not feel as though I were pestering someone who had more important work to do than indulge the curiosities of a budding young anthropologist. It was also about this time that I learned Paul was a title that Mr. Ballard was more comfortable with.

Paul is a first generation New Orleanian, who grew up in a music store, Tape City USA, owned by his parents. They operated locations in Metairie, the CBD, and on Carrollton Avenue. Paul said it was a big day for them when then franchisee Nancy Bounds opened the Mid City location. “It was exciting for us to be back in the neighborhood”, Paul said with a smile. This excitement, he later claims, was one of the main reasons he and his brothers, also his partners in WOW, thought it was important to get back open after the storm.

Paul graduated from Tulane University with a degree in History and an intention of going on to Law School. It was while he was attending Tulane he met his wife, and future mother of his 4 children (the youngest only a matter of weeks old). Like many of New Orleans’ college students he found work at several bars and restaurants around town. Sal & Sam’s, which he defined as New Orleans Italian fine dining, required he wear a tuxedo and understand the importance of a good sauce, a notion that stuck with him as the WOW franchise began to grow.

Paul also recounted his experiences as a bartender at Rosie’s Big Easy on Tchoupitoulas. “Having been around for the progression from 4 track and 8 track players to LPs and so on, working at Rosie’s, just down from Tipitina’s, was a blast. We grew up around the music”. He went on to say how he feels very connected to New Orleans culture. He spent parts of his childhood all over this city, and says that when he sees a WOW in some of his old stomping grounds he cannot help but feel good.

Paul’s narrative is a great example of how culture reshapes itself. He grew up part of New Orleans music and food scene. Now he and his wife are raising their own children in an entrepreneurial environment. They are exposing them to an avenue that is clearly one of the cornerstones of New Orleans identity: food. Hot wings and beer may not be the first thing you think of when you think New Orleans food, but the Ballard family has dedicated themselves to creating and spreading representations of New Orleans. I will explore more of this next week when I discuss the connections that Paul has established over the years including his links to PJ’s Coffee founder Phyllis Jordan, and Chefs George Rhode and Paul Purdhomme.

“This is NOT a Cannoli” (But What Is?)

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The very first day I went in to Brocato’s I was overwhelmed by the sheer variety of confectionary delights.  Some things were familiar to me as things that are distinctly Italian even though I myself may not have had them before.  There were jars of candy coated Almonds, a variety of biscotti to choose from, spumoni, and rum cake. Then there were the cannoli.  Or at least I thought they were cannoli.  However, they were listed as cannocini with a small sign below, distinctly stating: “This is NOT a cannoli.”  I was intrigued, because knowing what they were not did not help me in figuring out precisely what they were.  They appeared to be Italian cream filled cylinders, and I was failing to distinguish the difference.

My confusion regarding Brocato’s wares involved their frozen treats as well.  During our interview, Arthur Brocato repeatedly referred to his frozen concoctions as “Italian ice creams”.  I had considered them to be gelatos and ices.  When I looked to their website for clarification, I noticed the following: “For the true connoisseur, Brocato’s offers a complete selection of “gelato” (Italian for ice cream) featuring all natural imported Sicilian flavorings from chestnut to moka to amaretto.”

So, according to Brocato’s, “gelato” is Italian for “ice cream”.  Not being convinced that there wasn’t a bigger difference, I scoured the internet, and after looking through numerous Chowhound posts, Wikipedia postings, About.com answers and endless other streams of running commentary on the subject, I gathered that the general consensus is that gelato actually contains milk and cream as opposed to just cream and that the fact that is seems to be superbly creamy in comparison to its ice cream counterpart has more to do with the fact that it is mixed slowly enough that air doesn’t whip in, allowing for a much denser creamy texture.  As for the cannocini: when I finally gathered the determination to display my ignorance of Italian desserts and ask for the difference, I was told that they are filled with sweetened custard filling rather than sweetened ricotta as the cannoli are.

I bring up the cannoli and gelato examples not because I wish to nitpick Brocato’s selections and word choices but because I think they serve as excellent examples when it comes to the endless debate on authenticity. If Brocato’s chooses not to call its Italian Ice Cream “gelato”, does it make it any less authentic? Furthermore, if one is to consider the new twists to old tradition, such as spumoni cheesecake, then where does authenticity come in to question? Are we to assume that if it isn’t traditional it isn’t authentic?  If that’s the case, then nothing new or innovative would ever fit the definition, we’d be stuck in time forever, slaves to authenticity.

Several people have asked me how I feel about Juan’s Flying Burrito (another of my research subjects on the row) when compared with El Rinconcito or Fiesta Latina.  In other words, is Juan’s “authentic” Mexican food?  I would say that it all depends on the definition of authenticity.  I come from a place where a burrito is food to be held, lunch packed to go.  At Juan’s the burritos barely fit on the plate and they are often drenched in sauces.  Grasping one would be highly inadvisable. Does it make them something other than a burrito? Not if Juan’s says that’s what they are.

Care for a Drink

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I was recently discussing the subject of booze with a friend, a topic most people know at least a little about, or at the very least have an opinion on.  He felt many people seem to have a negative view of booze in general.  This friend, as you may have guessed, is not from New Orleans.  I tried explaining to him drinking here is different.  I argued that in a place like New Orleans drinking, like eating, is a special thing and does not carry the same stigma as it may elsewhere.

Needless to say the conversation got me thinking about alcohol and New Orleans foodways.   There is a discernible booze focus in some areas of our fair city– Bourbon Street comes quickly to mind, as does drinking and parading which goes hand-in-hand for many Carnival attendees.  But outside of that where does booze fit into our perceptions of New Orleans foodways?  Does drinking in general have the same assumed negative connotation in New Orleans as it does in other parts of the country?  Is the stigma (if one exists) lessened when alcohol is consumed with a meal?  Does dining at a restaurant provide a positive opportunity to have a cocktail that is absent from home meals?

Many restaurants look to bar sales to improve their profitability.  Some places focus on alcohol sales to the point where food seems like the compliment.  WOW Café and Wingery is one such place where I believe drinking a beer at noon is acceptable because it was paired with a food that, to me, requires a crisp beverage.  Another place I learned a lunchtime draft is acceptable came during our group meeting at Theo’s Pizza, where again I found the food offerings to be complete when paired with a pint.

La Taqueria Geurrero is the only restaurant I am studying that did not have hooch on hand.  They will, however, hop over to The Red Door – a full service bar discussed more by our very own jyocom– to procure anything you may like.  The lack of bar facilities makes them unique amongst the restaurants I am studying.  Rinconcito, Fiesta Latina, Wow Café and Wingery, and The Carrollton all offer (or offered in the case of The Carrollton) full bar service.

Fiesta Latina is laid out in such a way that the bar area is elevated about 3 ½ feet above the dining area.   This provides some semblance of separation between bar and restaurant, but not much.  The separation in WOW Café and Wingery is nonexistent.  The bar is between the dining area and a large pass-through window that exposes several hard working cooks to the awaiting customers.

This is almost the exact opposite of Rinconcito.  Their bar room is large and stretches the entire length of the property front.  The dining area is situated in the rear of the building, and is separated almost completely from the bar by a moderately sized room that houses the pool table.  This layout almost makes it seem as though going from one room to the next is like going to a different place.

Feel free to share your own food, drink, and event pairings.  We would love to know what you are eating and drinking and how they go together with whatever you enjoy doing, especially if it involves the Mid City Restaurant Row!

Restaurant Criticism

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I wrote recently that I would not engage in any restaurant criticism here.  And I won’t.  But an essential part of our research is figuring out where the restaurants—past and present—of our restaurant row fit within the complex New Orleans culinary universe.  To that end, I have spent many hours lately digging around in old newspapers, magazines, guidebooks, newsletters, etc. to see how the restaurants have been evaluated over time.

Since the late 1960s, restaurant critics have played an important role in shaping discussions about restaurants and dining in New Orleans.  For this project, I am looking mostly at material about our neighborhood, written and published locally.  This is simply a way of making a very large amount of material more manageable.  For another project, I am also looking into restaurant writing about New Orleans more generally, including some of the early efforts to legitimize the genre and the way it has changed over time, as the idea of culture, useful criticism, careers and other factors have come into focus.

1973 Edition of The New Orleans Underground Gourmet

Many people in New Orleans would agree that Richard Collin, author of the “New Orleans Underground Gourmet” (1970, Simon and Schuster), was the city’s first real restaurant critic.  He was also a history professor at UNO, where his work in food writing was not terribly well respected, both because it was not really academic work and because it probably did not seem like appropriate behavior for a scholar.  UNO would look on such things differently today.  That said, there is a relatively clear relationship between art, film and literary criticism and scholarship in related fields, so that it does not seem unusual for professors to write analytic as well as critical pieces for both scholarly and popular publications.  The ties between academe and restaurant criticism are less obvious, at least from a disciplinary standpoint.  Especially for a historian such as Collin.

Collin stirred up quite a bit of controversy with his writing, in the various editions of “The New Orleans Underground Gourmet,” in his columns for New Orleans States-Item, and in a few other guidebooks about the city.  His reviews were subject to protest at a meeting of New Orleans restaurateurs in 1975, with accusations that he lacked objectivity and, worse, that his wife, Rima Collin (also a UNO professor), had a professional interest in seeing some restaurants better rated than others.  These kinds of accusations and debates go with the territory, as Frank Bruni, former New York Times restaurant critic, notes in his recent book “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater” (2009, Penguin). But the tone of the original confrontation with Collin seems to suggest that in the early 1970s, restaurateurs had not yet figured out how to make sense—and use—of restaurant writing.

However, it is also true that Collin, along with other critics in the early years of restaurant writing, did not hesitate to dole out cruel commentary on restaurants.  Although such commentary still exists, many restaurant writers in New Orleans tend these days to only write about restaurants they can say nice things about, ignoring the rest.  The reasons behind this are not entirely clear.  Perhaps they feel they can leave the harsh comments to blog writers, on-line discussion boards like Urban Spoon, Yelp, Chowhound, etc.  Collin, however, left us with some very amusing evaluations of restaurants in our neighborhood.  Some include restaurants that have since become veritable institutions in New Orleans, which suggests that despite restaurateurs fear, it is possible to survive and even thrive despite the critical barbs tossed out by food writers.  Here are a few pithy comments about defunct restaurants in our neighborhood:

On Hazel’s Po-Boy, 208 N. Carrollton (where Taqueria Guerrero Mexico is today): “Hazel’s serves cheap poor boys that lack distinction, as well as luncheon specials on paper plates.” (“The New Orleans Underground Gourmet,” 1973, p. 132.)

On Mid City Kitchen, 303 N. Carrollton (near the corner of Bienville and N. Carrollton, on the site of a defunct strip mall, unreconstructed since Katrina): “On some days this is one of the great places in town. On most days it isn’t.  Inconsistency mars the record of a brilliant Cajun burger, well seasoned hamburger poor boys, and excellent roast beef poor boys.  On the bad days you wouldn’t recognize them.” (“The New Orleans Restaurant Guide,” 1976, with Rima Collin, p. 165.)

All, of course, is not negative.  Collin waxed poetic about many restaurants.  In 1976, he wrote about Mandina’s “This is what good old New Orleans neighborhood restaurants once looked like.  Mandina’s still does.  A joy to look at and a joy to eat in.” (“The New Orleans Restaurant Guide,” 1976, with Rima Collin, p. 108).

Some evaluations change over time.  But one that stays remarkably consistent is Brocato’s, which Collin and every other critic I have come across has proclaimed magical.  He writes that the cannoli “may well be the cheapest miracle in the world.” (“The New Orleans Restaurant Guide,” 1976, with Rima Collin, p. 72.)  And despite my promise not to engage in any criticism myself, I will admit that I believe that this is still true, 34 years later.

Much can be learned from looking at the way restaurant writing has shaped our restaurants and our way of thinking about restaurants.  Please let us know of any memories you have about restaurant writing, encounters with critics or ideas about how it should be done.  Who are you favorite (and least favorite) critics?  Tell us about them.


This Week on Restaurant Row

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Yesterday,  the research team met for lunch to discuss our progress on Restaurant Row.  I anticipated  sitting down together and, after we each summarized our interviews and findings for our establishments, a coherent relationship between restaurateurs, patrons, and neighborhood would appear.

Ah ha! We would say, so this is Mid City!  Our meeting, of course, did not go this way – we all have formulated different impressions about the row and its significance in the area.  We don’t know how much camaraderie our restaurateurs feel with each other, or if they see one another as a threat to business.  Intuitively, one would think that proximity alone would cause these restaurants to compete, but I am not sure they do, or that they even have the same regular clientele.  The only owner to hint at the challenge of being a part of a restaurant row so well established was Monica of Eco Cafe.  Her breakfast/lunch coffeehouse has been open a little over four months at the corner of Scott and Canal.  When asked about her immediate business community, Monica told me it was at times very difficult and frustrating to be a part of.  She is extremely focused on environmentally sensitive products ; the Eco Cafe uses biodegradable products when possible, recycles, and composts with Nola Green Roots.  She is in the process of expanding the menu to cater to vegan clientele  – something I would think would set her apart from, rather than put her in direct competition with places like Brocato’s or the Ruby Slipper.  Frustrations aside, Monica said she loved Mid City and wouldn’t have started her business anywhere else. She is active in the community and intends to become more so by joining the Mid City Neighborhood and Business Associations.

Mid City Community Garden

Compost from Eco Cafe is used in Mid City Community Garden

Eco Cafe is quite a contrast to Venezia, the owner of which, Anthony, did not once mention a relationship the other restaurants or the neighborhood during our interview, except when talking about the past.  I got the impression that he used to feel more connected with the row and the residents, but that after the storm, many of his regulars moved out of Mid City and now commute to his restaurant.  As far as the Neighborhood Association goes, he told me that if I could tell him what the annual fee for being a member was, he would be able to recall if he was, in fact, a member.  I asked if he was, then, not exactly passionate in participating in the association with the other restaurant owners.  He laughed and said no.

My other establishments to research are Subway, which will not respond to my attempts to contact them (though in their defense, I am having just as much difficulty tracking down Jen and Erich of the Ruby Slipper – if you are reading please call me!) and the Red Door, a formerly rowdy, though reportedly calmed down favorite neighborhood bar.  I have high hopes for these last two establishments to really tie it all together for me.

Distinguishing Nationality and Ethnicity: The Food Factor

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Where does nationality end and ethnicity begin? On the surface there seems to be an easy answer. Nationality is expressed in the form of governmental controls in which the individual pledges some type allegiance and in turn receives protections and other social services. Ethnicity on the other hand seems to supersede those limitations by including anyone who speaks a particular language, shares in origin beliefs or customs, and/or claims heritage in similar roots. Ethnicity when framed in this way seems much more inclusive.

Foods, and more particularly food ways, seem to challenge the broad sweeping inclusiveness of ethnicity. Nearly all of the restaurateurs gracing our study area seem to strive to stand out as individuals while simultaneously maintaining an adherence to the broader expectations of their potential customers.

Part of the dinning decor at El Rinconsito 216 S. Carrollton Ave.

I began recalling that the meals I have eaten at El Rinconcito – Breakfast, lunch, or dinner – have all been served with soft warmed tortillas. This did not seem out of place prior to my Colombian trip– hence the lack of blog entries – where I feasted on amazing national and regional foods. None of which included even a single tortilla shell. There were close equivalents, of course, known as arepas, but their function seems closer aligned with the pita. Arepas are often stuffed with a meat, cheese, or egg, and either grilled or fried pre or post stuffing. The breakfast ones served on the coastal regions often contained fish or shrimp and were by far my absolute favorite.

Excited to share in this cuisine with my wife I quickly looked over the El Rinconcito menu when I got home and found that despite the obvious Colombian influence, the menu was lacking in the unique food stuffs I found in either urban or rural dinning. Warm tortillas now seem out of place when I go there. Despite their lack of belonging in the South American foodways, however, I do still eat every one.

La Taqueria Guerrero at 208 S. Carrollton Ave. New Orleans

Some locations, like Taqueria Guerrero Mexico, Angelo Brocato’s Italian Ice Cream & Pastry, and soon an Italian Pie, are able to easily present national, and even regional, foods because ethnicity and nationality have become synonymous within some categories. Other places, like Theo’s Pizza, Mandina’s, and Juan’s Flying Burrito all claim a type of individuality by expressing a possessiveness over their cuisine variations. Whether the claim is to a particular lineage or place many of the restaurants in our study area claim a similar possessiveness.

Menu for Fiesta Latina of New Orleans

Among the restaurants I am currently studying –Fiesta Latina, El Rinconcito, Taqueria Guerrero, and WOW Café and Wingery – each applies differing regional ties to their menus. Fiesta Latina claims to specialize in Mexican and Central American foods, while Taqueria Guerrero offers more familiar Mexican cuisine. El Rinconcito defines itself as serving Central American and South American dishes. And WOW Café and Wingery – a Louisiana original – has sauce selections named on ethnic expectations – Asian, Bombay, and Polynesian – as well as more regionally specific selections – Texas, Acadian, and Kansas City.

What I want to know is this: what are some national and ethnic foods that you are most fond of? How do the versions of those foods stand up when exported out of their original place of consumption and creation? Do restaurants need to adopt some form of homogenization in order to be successful?