Summer: finally here
I finally got out and had a real weekend. My college friend Monica who was in town for a bachelorette party. She invited me to tag along for lunch at John Besh’s Restaurant August. The service was solid and the meal was fabulous: to start, a salad with crawfish and citrus fruits and for the entree, braised lamb with eggplant ravioli and heirloom tomatoes. We also tasted five desserts: chocolate doberge cake with blood orange sorbet, peach upside down cake with blueberry ice cream, fruit ambrosia with lemongrass sorbet (which was excellent), chocolate napoleon with dark and milk chocolate layers and a blackberry flan-like custard blackberries — my fave. Chef Michael even came out to thank us.
There were three festivals going on at the same time, which is no unusual feat for Louisiana. However, this weekend all three were lined up in a row along Decatur Street in the French Quarter. Treats from the Louisisana Seafood Festival and Creole Tomato Festival were supported by the sounds of the Louisiana Cajun-Zydeco Festival. Louisiana wins for best festival/fair food. No corn dogs, but instead Creole tomatoes stuffed with shrimp remoulade, crawfish, blue cheese, whatever you want. In between volunteering and finishing my bike, I stopped at the festivals. They were a good stop for lunch and time with Monica.
On Saturday night, the band I wrote about, the New Orleans Moonshiners were playing at dba on Frenchmen, followed by the Zydepunks. Alex and I went, watched, unwound from the week — he worked and I looked for work — with summer brews and a giant burrito from the taco truck. The bachelorette party met us there on their way to forgetting the upcoming wedding. Sunday was lazy, with the Sunday Times, coffee and brunch, capped off with a cookout with my roommate’s college friends.
A full, varied weekend — another example of the neverending options in this city. Bourbon Street is easily accessible but so is everything else, if you can just remember when and where it is.