New Orleans is for the Jazz-Cool and Famished

Perhaps Mardi Gras and the beads thing aren’t really for you. New Orleans gets very busy and very crass when the coloured necklaces get put on and thrown, and exhibitionist young women flip their tops up. That’s in February or early March. In the summer, it’s said to be so hot the tourists don’t bother coming, except, the taxi driver tells us, for the Japanese.

We chose to visit New Orleans for a few days in May, between seasons.

Mohammed, our taxi driver, was very good to us and took us on an introductory detour to see the SuperDome where some of Hurricane Katrina’s victims stayed.
The ghost of Katrina is omnipresent.

Mohammed’s best advice was to eat at the Palace Café on Canal Street, a couple of blocks from our hotel. There, we observed that the one café dessert that was universally popular and enjoyed by all ages was Banana Foster. It’s a mountain of fried bananas with ice cream, dribbled with booze and flame-melted sugar. The four of us split two orders of Fosters this first time just to test, but we had one each our second visit, and again on our last day.

We came to New Orleans for a short three and a half days, a trip we had arranged six months earlier. Why New Orleans? Well for me, it was jazz and Creole food, dinner at Antoine's and beignets.

The Snug Harbor club is a stand out in many travel references. It offers a variety of really good New Orleans jazz, and we were ready for the last hour that remained of the first show to hear drummer Stanton Moore along with his trio. When the club is busy, you pay $20 for the set and you leave between shows. You don't eat (you can order drinks though) and you keep your mouth shut. There are complaints by some that this isn't real New Orleans style hospitality (because you keep quiet and listen), but it gives you an idea of how serious the jazz is here.

Snug Harbor is a cozy cabaret-style club up one flight, and in a separate room from the bar which pipes in the show downstairs to a TV monitor. To be honest, aside from a great evening of ragtime at Fritzel’s the night before, my expectations had been deflated by the unachievable hype, noise, narcissistic crowds and  stench of Bourbon Street. And, oh, the homeless. But at Fritzel's we were witness to the steroidal piano playing of Richard "Piano" Scott.

All you need to know jazz-wise is that aside from a couple of reputable music venues on Bourbon Street and Preservation Hall on St. Peter, (where you show up a half hour early or pay double online to reserve front seats), you can skip the Bourbon Street scene entirely and not miss much of value. Most probably few will take up that advice —who goes to New Orleans to intentionally avoid Bourbon Street?

The musical action is, however, mostly elsewhere, and on Frenchmen Street in particular, just east of the south corner and effectively outside the famed French Quarter.

We arrived late for the 8:00 PM sitting at Snug Harbor but luckily got squeezed into the two remaining seats. Trudy was three feet from Stanton Moore’s left foot pedalling away at his bass-drum, and I was right behind her. The lady whose line of sight we now blocked asked me to move over one foot, please, which I did.  

It was packed. 90 patrons sat elbow to elbow right up to the stage under purplish-pink lighting, and it was whisper-quiet for the funk and modern jazz. What a great show and appreciative audience, and finally, exactly what we came for. It reaffirmed New Orleans as a jazz capital just as we were losing hope. 

The trio we saw had Moore on drums, David Torkanowsky on piano and James Singleton on double bass. Look them up and you will see an extensive list of credentials. Torkanowsky likes to reach over and pluck his piano strings. Moore offers lots of drumming advice online and James Singleton is one of those quirky pantomiming bass players that looks like he could crawl inside his own instrument. It is, evidently, his second skin.

When we arrived, the upper balcony of the club was bursting with high schoolers from Stettler, population 5728, the first of two busloads of Alberta music students. By a show of hands we learned that several were drummers. Asked what they were doing there, in unison (rehearsed perhaps) a few yelled back “Burn Trip!” which reminded us of the travails of wild fires burning back in Alberta.

While at Snug Harbor, our friends stayed on at Bamboula’s, further down Frenchmen Street. They listened to Dana Abbott (look her up too) who sang and strummed with her trio, a trumpeter and a percussionist. She sings something between Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin and Tina Turner, all three actually, absolutely dazzling rhythm and blues, a bit funky, razzamatazz.  Beautiful stuff.

Afterwards, we met outside, the sun had set and the four of us were joined by others to watch "The Young Fellaz Brass Band” playing on a street corner. They were about a dozen young male players blaring trumpets, trombones, tubas, clarinet and drum. Punchy, brassy, fabulous.

We reserved ahead to eat dinner at Antoine's, New Orleans' upscale 175-year-old French restaurant established by Antoine Alciatore. It sits on St. Louis between Bourbon Street and Royal. There's a book called Dinner at Antoine's that is very dated and not worth reading, but the first chapter gives an idea of what you'd be heading for. Antoine's is probably not the best restaurant in the city, but it is among the most memorable. It has 17 dining rooms, (which they told us do actually fill up during Mardi Gras) and you are welcome to tour around to find as many as you can. We found 12 or 13. The walls are covered with photographs and memorabilia, including Groucho Marx's beret, images of Presidents and celebrities, old menus, matchbooks and chinaware. It's worth a few minutes of browsing even if you don't eat there. As with several restaurants in New Orleans, dishes were invented at Antoine’s, things like Oysters Rockefeller. Their iconic version of Baked Alaska you have to order early, because it takes a while to prepare.

We were told twice that we should expect to gain ten pounds in New Orleans, including once by our cab driver, Mohammed. We pre-arranged for him to return us to the airport after our holiday was up. "Was I right about the food?" was the first thing he asked.

Antoine‘s, one of 17 of their dining rooms.