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Breakfast at Penny’s Cafe in Violet

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 in New Orleans | 3 comments

Bebe takes a breakfast order at Penny’s Cafe in Violet, Louisiana. Photo by David Lansing.

To get to Penny’s Café from the Hotel le Marais, where I am staying, you take N. Rampart past the Louis Armstrong Park, following the curve of the Mississippi through the Lower Ninth Ward and into St. Bernard Parish, until you get to Violet.

There’s not much to Violet, Louisiana. There’s the old Our Lady of Lourdes Church, which has been boarded up ever since the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina topped the levee and destroyed the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet Canal, and maybe there’s a dollar store or two, and then there’s Penny’s Café.

On a wall next to the bathrooms at Penny’s is a photo taken after the hurricane hit on August 29, 2005. The photo shows what looks like a pitched roof sitting in the middle of a lake. That roof is Penny’s which was still under about 12 feet of water three weeks after the hurricane had passed. It’s hard to believe a business could come back from something like that, but here it is, still serving the #2 breakfast special, which is what I had—two eggs any style, sausage, bacon, or ham, grits or hashbrowns for $3.99.

The waitress, Bebe, calls me Honey. “Honey, you want sausage, bacon, or ham? I think the sausage is best.”

“Sausage.”

“Link or patty? I’d go for the links, honey.”

“Links.”

“Grits or hashbrowns?”

“Hashbrowns.”

“Honey, you want coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

You look around Penny’s and it looks like a Coca-Cola museum. There are Coca-Cola trays on the walls and Coca-Cola clocks and old Coca-Cola signs. Even the salt and pepper shakers are in the shape of small Coca-Cola bottles. Obviously Penny (who is in the back yelling at the cook) has a thing for Coca-Cola.

You can’t be in a rush for breakfast at Penny’s. Bebe will get to you when she gets to you, but there are a lot of other customers here, wanting their banana pancakes and their crab cakes with gravy and their crawfish omelettes. It all takes time. Which is just fine by me. It’s what I came to Penny’s for in the first place. Just to relax and sip endless cups of coffee. Like everybody else here.

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Looking for a Stupidity potion at the Voodoo Shop

Monday, December 3, 2012 in New Orleans

The display window at the Voodoo Shop in New Orleans. Photo by David Lansing.

I was walking around the French Quarter, over by Preservation Hall, not really looking for anything in particular when I came across the Voodoo Store. They had a display case out front full of skeletons and statues of the Virgin Mary, bottles of love potions and packets of herbs, charms, beads—all kinds of things. Up at the top was a sign that said Come On In And Shop For A Spell.

Well, I was intrigued.

There was so much weird stuff inside this shop I don’t even know where to begin. On a wall in the back were dozens of little bags of herbs and seeds and stuff for various spells and potions. There was stuff for finding love, losing love, and getting revenge on love; potions for finding lost dogs, lost loves, and lost hair; packets designed to bring you wealth or happiness or good luck.

A very large woman standing by the counter asked me if there was something in particular I was looking for.

“Well,” I told her, fingering each of the individual potions hanging on the wall, “it’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Uh huh,” she said. “Why don’t you give it a shot?”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure what kind of a potion I’m looking for.”

“Then let me help you. Does it have something to do with love…that’s our most popular.”

“No, mam.”

“You got enemies then?”

“Well, not exactly. It’s more like I’ve got these friends, see, that are…”

“They’re what?”

“Well, they’re stupid I guess is the best way to put it.”

“Stupid how?”

“Stupid in that they just say stupid shit and don’t even know they’re saying it. You know, about the government and the president and stuff like that. They mean well, but…well, I don’t know how else to put it—they’re what you might call educated Crackers.”

“I know the type perfectly well.”

“They sayin’ all the time that we’re the greatest country in the world and all like that, but then they just can’t help demeaning people. Makes no sense to me. These are the sort of people who are always saying, “Don’t get me started,” but the problem is you can’t never shut them up. And they don’t have a clue as to what they’re saying. They just like to rant. Know what I mean?”

The woman laughed and said she knew exactly what I meant.

“So then,” I said, “you got any sort of a spell that might work on people like that?”

“No, sir,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry I don’t. It’s easier to cure a bitch with ringworms than a stupid cracker.”

I nodded and then bought a potion for Peace. Maybe I’ll spread some of it on my friends’ dinner tonight when they’re not looking. Not that I think it will do much good.

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Beignets at Cafe du Monde

Monday, December 3, 2012 in New Orleans | 1 comment

Cafe du Monde in New Orleans. Photo by David Lansing.

When I get to Café du Monde, the takeout line extends out the side, around the back, and almost all the way down to the Grey Line Tours kiosk. Normally, I’d just go somewhere else for breakfast, but Christine warned me it would be like this. “The lines are horrible, but the wait is worth it,” she wrote me yesterday. And, really, how can you come to New Orleans and not make at least one visit to Café du Monde for café au lait and a box of beignets. Even if you’re not crazy about beignets—and I am not—you still have to order a box.

I’m not expecting much from either the coffee, which is blended with chicory, or the French-style donuts. Which is why I don’t get a table in the café. I figure this way I can sit on a park bench outside the restaurant, take a couple sips of my café au lait, a bite of beignet, and be done with it. Maybe feed the rest of the donuts to the pigeons all around. But, damn, these aren’t half bad. Hot, sweet, fresh. And the café au lait is much better than I expect as well. Before you know it, I’ve downed my coffee and am licking the powder sugar off my fingers from the last beignet. And thinking of going back for more.

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Swinging with Ingrid at Preservation Hall

Friday, November 30, 2012 in New Orleans | 1 comment

 

Ingrid Lucia

Ingrid Lucia with her band at Preservation Hall in New Orleans. Photo by David Lansing.

I’m sitting at the bar at Sylvain drinking a Negroni when I get a text from Christine: Do you want to go to Preservation Hall with me tonight? One of my best friends in the world, Ingrid, is playing.

Ingrid is Ingrid Lucia. She’s the standard New Orleans artist–incredibly talented and always broke. As Christine says, “It’s sad. New Orleans starves its musicians.”

Ingrid used to front a band called The Flying Neutrinos–jazz, swing. So, yeah, sure, I’ll go to Preservation Hall to listen to Ingrid. Christine says she’s playing three sets and maybe I could meet her there in time for the second show. Which is what I do.

So…Preservation Hall. Not at all what I imagined. I mean, it’s small. Tiny, really. Just a small room with scuffed wood floors and a few rows of folding chairs, a couple of women sitting on the floor, a few other people standing in the back. Maybe two dozen of us total. To listen to what is far and away the best jazz music I’ve heard since I’ve been in New Orleans. Soft, sweet, with this painful edge to it–very much Billie Holiday-ish. I love it. I love Ingrid. But listening to her and her band is painful. Because they are so good and making so little money doing this. Such an underappreciated gift.

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Champagne and fries in New Orleans

Thursday, November 29, 2012 in New Orleans | 4 comments

New Orleans bar food: Veuve Clicquot and fries at Sylvain in the French Quarter.

The photo above is crap (it was dark and I was using my iPhone) but what you’re looking at is a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a large plate of french fries, which I ordered last night at Sylvain on Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. This wasn’t a strange marriage between haute and poor that I made up; this is something that is actually on the menu. Right there on the bar food menu. Veuve Clicquot and fries. $50.

Is there any other city in the world where you could find Veuve and fries on the menu? I think not. God bless you, New Orleans, for knowing one of my fantasies even before I did.

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