Against the Tide

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When I applied for a position on the Restaurant Recovery Team I knew that a great deal of my research would be centered on the affects that Hurricane Katrina had on the local businesses that I would be studying.  I guess you could say I was prepared for a little bit of “distanced heartache” in my interviews, after all, it has been five years and those we are interviewing have all made it back to the row.  Angelo Brocato’s even has a little bronze plate on the door as you exit, reminding customers of where the waterline was when the floods came.  Although this reminder of disaster might seem a bit morose to those who aren’t from here, I see it as a “Hey look, we made it!” sort of thing, an attitude that this city has got down-pat.

Knowing of the resilience of New Orleanians, I was excited to meet with Kenan and Jamie, husband and wife owner and operators of Kjean Seafood at 236 N. Carrollton Avenue.  I had known prior to my initial interview that the building had needed to be entirely rebuilt post- Katrina, and I was eager to hear a “post-K success story” first hand.  What I learned from Kenan was heartbreaking to hear because although he did rebuild after the storm, he is now undergoing an even bigger struggle in dealing with the BP oil spill.

Kenan explained a bit about the history of Kjean’s.  The name, he says, is a combination of his own and his sister Jean’s, who was the initial co-founder of the establishment.  They chose this catchy combo not only because it was a clever way to lend credit to both, but, as Kenan explains, because the state has trademarked the traditional spelling of “Cajun”, and its usage is subject to a $5,000 annual tax.

In any case, Kjean Seafood was quite successful- it had opened in 1992, and two months before Katrina, the business and building were entirely renovated and paid off.  Then the water came.  Kenan tells me there was six feet of water, and considering that it was making a filthy gumbo out of his refrigeration rooms for several weeks, no one was willing to try and clean up the mess.  They made the decision to tear down and rebuild entirely.  When I asked Kenan why he decided to rebuild he told me that after being his own boss as a fisherman since the age of fourteen, he just couldn’t see himself working for someone else.  Makes sense to me.

This time, things are different.  Kjean’s business has been terribly affected by the BP spill. Customers walk in and ask, “Where are those oysters from? Those shrimp oily?”

Kenan makes light with his regulars and quips, “Naw, Baby, we scrub ‘em real good with Dawn first and they’re good as new”.  Never the less, although his seafood is perfectly safe and comes from unaffected areas, such as the deep gulf where no oil has reached, business is suffering.

Kenan’s got a plan. I tell him I’m writing about the local businesses and he tells me, “I’m gettin’ Daiquiri Machines tomorrow, could you please make sure and put that in there? Don’t forget to write that down.”

Daiquiri machines and a revised menu are in the works. Instead of just seafood, customers will soon be able to order icy cool refreshments, meatball po’boys and veal parmesan. For now, things like oysters will be off the menu as Kenan’s supplier was hauling in his last day’s catch on the day we met last week.

Although Kjean Seafood has once again met adversity, I hope that with the understanding and support of local residents and the resilient attitude of the owners, we are looking at yet another “against all odds” success story in the making.

Within Reach of Restaurant Row

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About two weeks ago I moved to the end of North Carrollton, just beyond our “Restaurant Row.” Even in the short time since then, I have begun to sense the almost gravitational pull that these restaurants have on me. As I pass by this area everyday (often twice a day!), I find myself making plans to eat, eat, and eat some more. And why not, with the variety I have to choose from?

I’ve begun to mentally catalogue a list of meals and where I might get them from. I’ve even put forth the effort to make time for breakfast at Taqueria Guerrero, and I am one of those people who blatantly refuses breakfast. Yummy Yummy has become one of my favorites for on the go, and Angelo Brocato’s is simply great at any time of day!

Fortunately, I have been informed that it is not just I who am tempted by such goodness. Friends of mine from St. Charles to South Carrollton to North Carrollton all seem to enjoy the convenience of having such an array of restaurants. My theory: It’s either a really good thing or a really bad thing to have this much food so easily within reach. For me, it’s the former.

Finding the roots of place

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Every place has a history. Every home, office building, restaurant, and street has a starting point. The buildings that house the restaurants of Mid-City are no different. The people who own and operate these neighborhood haunts have a history too, a narrative they are eager to share. But this is only one portion of the building’s (and neighborhood’s) narrative.

An article that appeared in the Times Picayune by R. Stephanie Bruno tells how tracking a building’s history simply takes time and little leg work, but all the information needed  is publicly available.

Some have argued that with the birth of the information age, and the growth of the internet, libraries are becoming like ghost towns. Figments held together by skeleton crews whose city and state budgets seemingly perceive them as costs instead of valuable and unequaled resource centers. I was one such person who saw the library as an antiquated place. I thought of libraries as creepy, dusty variations of Breakfast Club detention halls. I was wrong.

After doing some preliminary research on the information super highway, I made the trek to my local Civil District Courthouse and headed to the Conveyance Division and began getting my hands dirty. As I traced the property titles of my selected restaurants I noticed changes in font, typesetting, and continuity. The newer titles were printed and typed by modern machines that made every title and abstract concise and uniform. Then things started getting interesting. The titles I found dating back to before the roaring 20’s contained calligraphic signatures and other various personal touches that allowed me to follow families through marriage, birth, and death.

The New Orleans Public Library serves to facilitate the next step of my research in that they house the original surveys of the properties in question. One in particular was dated 09-09-09, and was done by hand and easel with water colors faded from over a century of aging. The buildings on the page came to life. They portray a time forgotten by many of today’s current residents and diners. The digital images crammed onto a scrollable screen did little to inspire the awe that the dedicated artistic talent poured onto the canvas. I did not experience the true wonderment until I was turning brittle pages, and recognizing family names generations old.

I have found treasure, and it has been at the library, waiting to be rifled through for over a hundred years. Local libraries and searches on the Sanborn maps will help provide further information if you are interested in searching your own home or haunt. As well, the Polk directory services to list other directories by state and year for further information. Check out the Times Picayune article highlighted above about finding more information on your particular place.

Welcome to the Restaurant Row Recovery Project

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New Orleans is a restaurant town.  Tourists who come here know that, of course.  In fact, restaurant owners say that people often come for the music and leave talking about dinner.  Yet one of the things that makes the city’s restaurant obsession distinctive is that it exists at least as much for locals as it does for visitors.  There are bistros and neighborhood joints everywhere, it seems, often in places where tourists never tread.  You can get a great po’boy or have a wonderful plate of seafood in nearly any neighborhood in the city.  These are mostly local restaurants, not the casual dining and fast food chains that define eating out in much of the United States.  In an era of increasingly homogenized dining, New Orleans’ restaurant obsession—and the broader culinary culture of which it is a part—seems like an anomaly.

We want to figure out what makes it work.

Based in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Orleans, we are a team of researchers (1 faculty member and 4 intrepid undergraduates) trying to understand the links between a collection of restaurants, the surrounding neighborhood, and the distinctive culture of New Orleans.

The neighborhood is called Mid-City, a mixed-income, ethnically diverse part of New Orleans full of interesting people and an amazing array of architecture.  We are specifically focused on the restaurant row that runs roughly from the Little Tokyo at the corner of Bienville and N. Carrollton down to Juan’s Flying Burrito near the corner of Carrollton and Canal, while taking a little detour down Canal toward Mandina‘s and The Ruby Slipper, in one direction, and toward Café Minh in the other.  This takes in nearly two dozen eating establishments…a fascinating collection of dining opportunities and small businesses (if we pushed the geographical limits a bit more, we could bring in several other restaurants, but we only have so much time).

The area has long been characterized by a significant cluster of restaurants and bars.  Some have been there for a long time (Mandina’s has been a restaurant since 1932 and the family has had a business in the spot since 1898), while others are very new (Yummy Yummy Chinese Restaurant opened in 2009).  Even before the 2005 floods devastated the neighborhood, the restaurants were a diverse bunch, including both old-line Creole Italian restaurants, sushi, French haute cuisine, fast food and a famous purveyor of tamales (Manuel’s, now departed).  Many of the old restaurants are still there and they seem to be thriving.  There are also new restaurants that reflect the city’s changing demographics, including three Latino restaurants, a Vietnamese restaurant (with a Chinese history), and others.

When the floods cleared, the recovery began and the restaurant cluster seemed to lead the neighborhood in rebuilding.  Angelo Brocato’s Ice Cream and Confectionary was one of the first to reopen in the area, in September 2006, 13 months after the storm and 101 years since they first opened in the French Quarter.  It seemed like the businesses came back, renovated and reopened even before many of the people in the area came back.  There is still a shuttered strip mall, which once housed a Chinese restaurant, a daiquiri shop and a few other businesses, as evidence of the destruction.  But there is also much that is new.

This is where we are conducting our research.  We are out there interviewing restaurant owners, managers, cooks, waiters and busboys.  We want to know their stories and the stories of their businesses.  We are researching the history of the area, trying to determine when the cluster developed, what facilitated it, and what sustains it.  We are taking pictures, making videos, writing notes and collecting artifacts.   This blog will serve to showcase our intermediate findings, our thoughts, questions and insights.  We’ll put up a picture or two.  Maybe we will make you hungry enough to go out to eat at one of these restaurants (careful, many of them are packed at lunch and dinner already!).

We think that this restaurant cluster is a key part of New Orleans culinary culture.  Our results will show how the restaurants are connected to the neighborhood, the city and to what makes this place distinctive.  We are working with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum to put together two exhibits (one on-line, the other on-site) in the fall that will showcase our findings.  And, of course, we will endeavor to write-up and publish our results.  There will be much to say!

Posted by David Beriss