Crescent City

I've fallen for Anthony Bourdain. I know, I know. He's too old. He's too famous. He's too married. I can't make up some fantasy where he's here in the midwest, driving around with his television crew from No Reservations, and he ends up with a flat tire and, when I pull over to help, he immediately notices my wit, charm and big boobs and sweeps me off my feet to a life of really, really good food and exotic travel.

The New Orleans episode of No Reservations was on this week. Like with Intervention, I've become addicted to this show. And that episode really drove the needle home.

I do love New Orleans. I love the idea of it. I love the history surrounding it. I love the fact that it has been inhabited and claimed by so many nations. And I love the fact that, despite those claims, it has really been owned by none of them. I love historical novels about the city. The tales of pirates and bayous and criminals and the quadroon balls and Storyville and the Garden District and vampires and the Irish and the Italian store owners who put out plates of snacks to feed their customers, even in the 1800's.

My parents took me there when I was around ten or eleven. We took my grandmother the week before Christmas and New Years. I don't remember the flight but I do remember the drive into the city from the airport. Mostly because I remember trying to catch glimpses of cemetaries. I was entranced by the thought that they had cemetaries above ground. Even at that age, before my demented and rather grotesque sense of curiosity had fully developed.

I remember wanting to go to the voodoo museum and my parents saying no. I remember that they'd never let me walk around alone. We stayed in the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, in a hotel called the Richeleau. I think it made it though Katrina. I hope so. It was my very first taste of luxury and I loved it. I loved the tiled hallways with the scrolled metalwork. I loved the beautiful wood lobby that led out into the small gardens that so many French Quarter homes have hidden away. I loved the smell of the city and the way the road crews would come in the morning to spray off the streets with huge water hoses, erasing signs of debauchery and decline.

My parents wanted to go to Pat O'Briens. If I remember, they went to New Orleans for their honeymoon, although it might have been Vegas. I do know they went there as a very young married couple. There is a picture of them in Pat O'Brien's, drinking from hurricane glasses, not yet so drunk as to be sliding out of their chairs but certainly a bit glassy-eyed.

I didn't want to go. I was mortified. I lived in states where minors weren't allowed in bars. A trip to the liquor store was exotic enough. My parents were the bad parents that took their young daughter to a bar.

And it was great. The dueling pianos, an idea that has been exported to every town, to its detriment, were amazing. I remember writing song suggestions and putting them in the fishbowl on the stage. I'm reasonably certain they called a woman on stage to sing "The Unicorn" complete with hand motions. I drank a Shirley Temple out of a hurricane glass.

At dinner one night, we went to an old-style restaurant. I don't think it was one of the big ones: Antoine's, Commander's Palace. We did go to the Palace at one point, but for lunch, I think. This place was old-school and may have been Italian, now that I think of it. Professional waiters with crumb scrapers that they used between courses. The tiles on the floor were the alternating white and black that I now dream of for my kitchen. I cannot remember what I ate, but I do remember, at the end of the meal, the waiter brought me a snifter of liquor, with three coffee beans floating in it.

It was sambuca. I don't remember whether I drank it. I think not, since I still won't eat black coffee beans. But I do remember what the waiter said.

"The beans? They represent three things that we wish for you: health, wealth, and happiness."

I felt very grown up that night.

Now that New Orleans is gone. The television program showed vast empty fields where shotgun houses stood. The restaurants are empty, as are the streets. Crime is up and the population is draining away.

I still want to go back. It is an amazing place, filled with history and interesting people and could have a dynamic future as a shipping port, just as it used to, depending on the vagaries of the American economy.

Even more so, I wish the people there what the waiter once wished me: health, wealth and happiness.