Dessert

"I think people are spending too much time thinking about what they put in their mouths rather than what comes out. Stop eating so much! We’re become a generation of people chewing their cud, eating all the time! No. Eat your breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and be happy."

--Mrs. Leah Chase, of Dooky Chase restaurant

This was the local legendary chef Leah Chase with Times-Picayune food editor Judy Walker at the party for Kit Wohl's new cookbook New Orleans' Classic Desserts.When I asked Mrs. Chase for a photograph and Judy Walker explained it would be on the Internet, Mrs. Chase said: "The Internet! I don't know anything about the Internet, but I know I need to be on it. Just don't put me up in the men's room."

Another food event: Willie Mae's Scotch House

Got a note this a.m. from Mary Beth Lasseter of the Southern Foodways Alliance:

John Egerton, a guest at the TW festival in NOLA, has been reading your blog and suggested that I get in touch with you to let you know of a special event planned for Sunday night, April 1, after the festival. Several guests of TWF, including Egerton and Calvin Trillin, will join the Southern Foodways Alliance to celebrate the re-opening of Willie Mae's Scotch House in the Tremé. The rebuilding of this restaurant began last January, has cost over $200K, and has been led by a volunteer crew from all over the nation.

On Sunday night, we'll have a dinner (it's sold out now) and a film screening (which isn't). If time/space are available, might you mention this film event to your readers? Info on the film screening is available here. To read more about the rebuilding effort, visit here.

We hope that you, and others, might join us for a celebration on Sunday night. And, if your time allows, stop by Willie Mae's on Monday for a plate of fried chicken.

That is tempting. As you can see by the pre-storm photo, the Scotch House was basically a small living room with a few tables, and the one time I tried to go there, I couldn't get in. Fried chicken, smothered pork chops, red beans: as a good friend of mine once remarked, "That isn't soul food--that's food food."

Feeling Riche

Currently sitting at Riche in the Harrah's hotel with about six other journalists in town to cover the Fest...folks from Philadelphia, Lexington, Washington D.C., and parts farther afield: Corinna Metcalf from The Washington Times, Joseph Blake (formerly of the Philadelphia Inquirer), the married travel and antiques writers Angela Wibking and Virgil Fox, the former New Orleans travel writer Patti Nickell, who is thriving in Lexington, Ky., and Bonnie Warren, who reps the hotel and writes for a lot of local publications. (Photo: Bonnie's lobster bouillabaisse.)

This is typical Festival stuff--people have spent 10% of their time talking about books and 90% of their time drinking wine, yakking politics, gossiping, and chowing down.

Steak frites, mac-and-cheese, and a nine-onion soup. The best thing was escargot served on flatbread with chèvre, like a little snail pizza. And the service: outstanding. (Full disclosure: I ain't paying for this one, but believe me: it's good.) Verdict? Chef Todd English knows what he's doing.

After the meal, a couple of us went into the 528 jazz club next door to hear the excellent John Boutté, who has a voice like Sam Cooke, or maybe Jackie Wilson--but jazz-inflected and New Orleans through and through. Midway through the set my old neighbor Margarita Bergen appeared at our table with news; she's a columnist for Bayou Buzz and her biography lists her as the diva of culture, entertainment and epicurean delights of the New Orleans area," which is as good a description as any. (Photo: Joseph Blake and Margarita Bergen.)

And now it's 5:30 am, I have insomnia, and there's a whole day of master classes, plus a play and a reception at Tennessee Williams' old house tonight....

Festival eve

Tonight's the kickoff party for the TW Festival. The major donors and swellelegant folks will be getting together at the Palm Court Jazz Café for dinner, drinks, and music. I'll be spending the day at the Audubon Zoo and then checking into my hotel. Having dinner with some visiting journalists at Riche, the new Todd English restaurant in Harrah's, and then plan on checking out 528, the jazz club next door.

TENNESSEE AND HIS WOMEN: AN EVENING OF LITERARY REVELRY
Wed., Mar. 28, 7:30 pm
Palm Court Jazz Café, 1204 Decatur St.
$150

More schedule updates

Fri., Mar. 30, 5:30 pm: "A Fireside Chat with John Mariani" is sold out.

Sun. Apr. 1: The winner of the 2006 Festival One-Act Play Competition, Cary Pepper's Small Things, has been moved from noon to 11:00 am.

Deep-fried pickles and art museums

If there's one good reason to come to town a few days before the Festival, it's to squeeze in a few more meals and a little more sightseeing. Yesterday I hit Liuzza's, a Mid-City institution that got creamed by Katrina and finally reopened last July. It's classic New Orleans blue-collar Italian fare--shrimp-and-artichoke soup, gumbo, po-boys, red beans, and all the comfort foods that mean so much to people here, particularly after The Thing. I had a smoked sausage po-boy and a plate of Liuzza's surprisingly light and completely addictive fried pickle chips:


Waddled off that lunch with a walk up N. Carrollton Avenue, where the streetcars are running again--but they're the old olive-green streetcars from St. Charles Avenue, not the bright-red ones that normally run up Carrollton (they were flooded). Green streetcars on N. Carrollton? I guess you have to live here to understand how wrong that looks.

Over in City Park, I thought about going into the New Orleans Museum of Art to see "Femme, Femme, Femme: Paintings of Women in French Society from Daumier to Picasso," their new exhibit on loan from the government of France. But it was late in the afternoon and the weather was too perfect, so I walked in the museum's sculpture garden instead. Whatever damage Katrina did there isn't visible; it looks better than it did before the storm. And there was a new, post-K addition: George Rodrigue's Blue Dog, which, surprisingly, looks more natural in the Louisiana landscape than it does on the wall of an art gallery.