Gabrielle Langholtz on the Brooklyn Gastronome

"It’s that guy in the band with the big plastic glasses who’s already asking for grass-fed steak and knows about nibs."

The Rings of Saturn

The Ninth Ward neighborhood in New Orleans has been on the tip of many tongues over the course of the past two weeks. This area, also known as the Bywater, is the part of the city that has been under the most water since Katrina hit and the levee broke.  Just down-river from the French Quarter, this is an historical neighborhood that many famous residents have called home: trumpeter Kermit Ruffins, the musical Lastie family, poet and author Kalamu ya Salaam, and rock-and-roll legend Fats Domino, who was rescued from his house in the Ninth Ward just last week. But on the corner of Saint Claude Avenue and Clouet Street, there is another star in this neighborhood’s galaxy.

In Her Own Words

“Because, as I say again, [when you make a drink,] if you don’t put the love and tenderness in there with that, it’s not going to taste good.” – Floria Woodard

Originally from Mississippi, Floria Woodard headed to New Orleans seeking opportunity. She found it as server at The Court of Two Sisters (the first African-American server at that), but she eventually set her sights on the bar. Thirty-eight years later, Miss Flo is still behind that bar, serving cocktails to the locals and returning tourists who seek her out at this well-known French Quarter restaurant.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Miss Flo’s story resonates. Hers is the story of an African-American woman from Mississippi, who set out on her own to find a job and make a new life for herself. She ended up in New Orleans, and the service industry answered her call. The state she left—the state of Mississippi—is where I live today. It might also be the state that Miss Flo returned to in order to escape New Orleans and Katrina. We can only hope.

Basilica Casamento and The Patron Saint of Oysters

The city of New Orleans has long been compared to the Italian city of Venice. Both places were built on watery slabs, defying common sense, yet stimulating our imaginations. Still reeling from the storm, I am forced to think of New Orleans’ sister city and of the power of water meeting stone.

The Basilica San Marco is the jewel of Venice, but its arches and domes weigh heavily on the piazza, tons of marble and bronze slowly sinking into the canals. Inside the basilica, hundreds of years of floods and high tides have left their mark. Watery forces have pushed on these floors so regularly and for so long that you feel drunk just walking through the door, solid waves of marbled mosaic fooling your eyes and feet with each step. Perhaps the waves have tired of Venice, and they have finally come to push against New Orleans.

Waves of immigration have brought scores of Italians to the Crescent City and other parts of the South for generations, and New Orleans was where a good many of them decided to put down roots. The Casamento family was one of those families. In the early part of the twentieth century, Joe Casamento arrived in New Orleans and opened a restaurant on Magazine Street, putting his family name above the door. Serving fresh seafood and above all, fresh oysters, Mr. Casamento quickly established a reputation for serving some of the best seafood in town.

No Money, No Eggs

Each day as I walk out my front door, my gaze is forced upon a small painting that proclaims "NO MONEY, NO EGGS." Between the words is an amoebic blob of white paint, holding a round yellow center: a perfect egg, sunny-side up. The artist, seventy-one-year-old Alfred "Big Al" Taplet, is a native of New Orleans. Or was. The wrath that Hurricane Katrina wrought on the Crescent City has left behind so much heartbreak; I can only hope that Big Al is not among the many human casualties left in Katrina's wake. What’s certain, though, is while we mourn the lives of so many, we are also beginning to realize the cultural casualties washed away by the storm. For me, this one painting is a symbol of so much—so much that we are only beginning to let ourselves acknowledge.

As a documentarian, it is my job to seek people out and listen to their stories. As a documentarian of the foodways of the American South, it is my job to visit with the people of this region who grow, cook, and serve food and drink. Big Al's painting is a reminder of how food is so relevant to the culture of New Orleans—in art, in music, in daily life—and of the continued heartbreak the world will experience as these losses are laid bare. Of course, as the citizens of New Orleans try to find shelter across this great country, they are seeking shelter for their culture as well, bringing New Orleans to all of us. In this we can certainly celebrate. But for now, we are forced to consider the losses.

There is never any time like the present in the life of a documentarian; stories are everywhere, and they are always relevant, no matter what the time or place or circumstance. But how was I to know that the ten days I spent in New Orleans four months ago would ring with such consequence today. I went in search of beverages and bartenders, hot on the trail of the city's long history with the cocktail. But now, what has become of the man who made the best Sazerac in town? Or the woman who put everyone else’s Ramos Gin Fizz to shame (a drink which happens to be made using the white of an egg)? Right now, there is a displaced population of survivors without homes, without jobs, with no money and no eggs.

In honor of some of the people and places of New Orleans, The Food Section is featuring profiles of the bartenders and bar owners who were interviewed for the Southern Foodways Alliance's Bartenders of New Orleans Oral History Project.

MARTIN SAWYER, bartender
The Rib Room, Omni Royal Orleans Hotel
New Orleans, LA

With almost fifty years of bartending under his belt and thirty-four years working at the Rib Room alone, eighty-four-year-old Martin Sawyer has seen it all. He got his first job as a barback at the infamous 500 Club. A bartender friend recruited him for the job so Martin could help him make out drink orders, as Martin was one of the few young men in his circle of friends who could read. With the nickname "Professor," Martin studied up on cocktails and quickly became a fixture on the French Quarter bar scene. He had his picture taken with Louis Armstrong and served champagne to General De Gaul. With all that time tending bar, it is easy to believe that he would have had a few brushes with celebrity. What's hard to believe, though, is the number of cocktails this man has mixed over the years. With time, care, and a painstaking attention to detail, he has made mixing drinks a high art. All of these years later, Martin still makes his famous Mint Julep with the care and attention he did when he first mixed the drink almost five decades ago.

Each fall, the Southern Foodways Alliance (with support from the Fertel Foundation) honors an unsung hero or heroine, a foodways tradition bearer of note, with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. The SFA pays homage in two ways: we commission a documentary film and we make a monetary contribution. Months before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Martin Sawyer knew he was this year's recipient, and the documentary film about his life and work is now in post-production. While we are not aware of Mr. Sawyer's fate at present, our thoughts and prayers are with him and the countless others who are part of the service industry in New Orleans.

Find out how the Southern Foodways Alliance and other organizations are reaching out to service industry workers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Many thanks to Josh Friedland for the invitation to contribute to The Food Section.

Amy Evans, acevans@olemiss.edu
Oral Historian, Southern Foodways Alliance
Oxford, Mississippi

The Toll, in Lives and Culture

The scale of the wreckage caused by Hurricane Katrina is immeasurable -- at least for now. While the official death toll stands at 59 according to the New York Times, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has warned that as many as 10,000 people may have died. Add to this tragedy the huge refugee crisis, and the enormity of the event becomes difficult to wrap one's head around. The least that can be done right now is to help support the relief effort, and I have added links to the right to make online contributions to the Red Cross and America's Second Harvest.

Amid this enormous human upheaval, what happens to the culture of New Orleans? It's too soon to make a realistic assessment, but one must assume that a great deal of it has been permanently lost, submerged under so much dirty water.

This being a food blog, I have asked oral historian, photographer, and painter Amy Evans to contribute to The Food Section as a guest editor and provide some insights into the gastronomy of New Orleans and also consider what is now at stake at this dire moment in the city's history.

As the resident oral historian for the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), Evans has created a number of fascinating documentary projects exploring Southern food culture. She recently produced a project on the "Bartenders of New Orleans," which included her interviews and photographs. Based in Oxford, Mississippi, Evans has also created oral history projects on Memphis and Tennessee barbecue, among other regional food traditions and folkways, for the SFA Oral History Initiative. In recognition of her documentary work, she was recently nominated to SouthernArtistry.org by the Mississippi Arts Commission and named one of the "most fearsome talents" in the food world by Food & Wine magazine in 2004.

I'm very much looking forward to reading Amy Evans' posts to The Food Section in the coming days, and I want to express my deep appreciation to her for generously agreeing to guest-edit this site.

Photo: Carl Mydans, Marketplace in the French quarters of New Orleans, June 1936 (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection).

The Museum as Edible Complex

We paid the teenage girl three dollars for the audio tour, slipped the little listening devices around our necks, and we were off to explore the place. This familiar scene could have played out at the Met or any other traditional museum, but instead we were about to tour the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a sort of living museum and monument to sustainable food production.

A Slice of Belgium, West of the Hudson

Cooperstown, New York, is a mecca for baseball fans, but there is another, albeit less-traveled, destination only a short drive away from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Just a few miles from the center of town, but 3,624 miles away from Brussels, is the Brewery Ommegang, an outpost of artisanal Belgian beer making that bills itself as “the only brewery in America dedicated to producing all bottle-conditioned Belgian style ales.”

Ommegang, a Flemish word meaning “to walk about," refers to the Ommegang Pageant, an annual celebration in Belgium that commemorates a festival held in the 16th century by the Magistrate of Brussels in honor of King Charles V.

A wide archway at the entrance to the brewery, a pristine white oblong building located on a 136-acre former hops farm, marks two dates: 1549, the year of the first Ommegang Pageant, and 1997, the year that the brewery was founded by its original owners, Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield, who have operated a business importing Belgian beers into the United States since 1982. They selected the location in part because of Otsego County's history as a major center for hops farming. During the 1800s, as much as 80 percent of the hops produced in the United States came from farms in and around Cooperstown.

Brewery Ommegang is modeled on Belgian farmstead breweries, which, in addition to brewing and selling beer, sell agricultural products as well as breads and cheeses based on ingredients used in the brewing process. The Brasserie DuPont in Tourpes, Belgium, is an example of the typical Belgian farmstead brewery. Brewery Ommegang does not produce any of its own bread or cheese, but shares its spent grains with local artisan bakers and cheese makers.

Unlike German beers, which are made strictly with malted grain, water, hops, and yeast, according to a German Purity Law dating back to 1519, Belgian Beers are typically infused with spices during the brewing process. Orange peel, star anise, ginger, coriander, and other spices provide a complex balance of peppery, sweet, and citrus flavors to the beers produced at the Brewery Ommegang.

The brewery produces three styles of beer (Ommegang Abbey Ale, Hennepin Farmhouse Ale, and Rare Vos Brabant Style Ale), all of which are bottle conditioned, which means they undergo two fermentations, the second taking place in the bottle, so that the flavor of the beer continues to develop well after it leaves Cooperstown. In fact, the brewery suggests cellaring the beer as one would store and age wine.

The brewery is committed to Belgian culture, as well as beer making, and sponsors events throughout the year, from a "Waffles and Puppets" celebration in October to an annual evocation of the Ommegang Pageant in July. Tours and tastings are offered throughout regular business hours.

Brewery Ommegang, 656 County Highway 33, Cooperstown, New York (800.544.1809).

Chop Suey Sundae, Anyone?

The menu for The Chocolate Garden, a dessert parlor that was located in Venice, California, circa 1920s, is one of many historic restaurant menus that can be found at the Menu Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. The collection is searchable online by keyword, restaurant name, cuisine, and year. Many of the menus contain fascinating cover artwork reflecting the graphic design sensibilities of the periods in which these restaurants once existed. They also offer a unique window on the palates of the past. On the menu at The Chocolate Garden: "Chop Suey Sundae," 20 cents. According to the following recipe from the National Soda Fountain Guide, the concoction included raisins, dates, vanilla ice cream, flaked coconut, and chow mein noodles. More historic soda fountain recipes from the 1920s.

Ode to Pork

The Southern Foodways Alliance, an affiliated institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, has put together a website documenting, in images and words, 16 barbecue joints in and around Memphis, entitled Memphis Bar-B-Q: A Collection of Photographs & Essays by Amy Evans and Joe York. Photo by Amy Evans.