So we wake up all cramped in our presidential suite Saturday. Lets just say some people are not morning people, myself included, but I have gotten better. So we start venturing into the quarter and if you’ve ever been to New Orleans you’ll know their marketing ploys. Have people outside trying to drag you into their establishments. Well, we weren’t even in the quarter and we got pulled into this lil whole in the wall joint to have breakfast. Dixie’s Gyros had two ladies in there whipping up a home cooked breakfast. Which was a cozy little hole in the wall and it wasn’t too shabby. We did save a few bucks going to that joint.
This book grabbed my attention and I it is on its way!
So now that we are all full, I want to head on over to the French Market. Hearing nothing but good things about it, I wanted to check out all of the fresh produce and what not that would be available to buy. Well we didn’t get till around 10, so I was wondering if there would still be produce to buy. Well, with many, many stops on the way to the market I finally arrived! Well only the first booth was fresh produce, the rest of the market was more of a flea market than anything. LOTS AND LOTS of STUFF! Yeah, there wasn’t any junk that I saw was really worth anything for myself, except for this book, which with my trusty iPhone, I took a picture of and check it out on SnapTell and found it on Amazon for $25.55 instead of the $35 they were charging at the booth.
So now I wanted the Creole Tomato Festival to get started. Hear some good music, eat some good food and all that. So about the time we were getting hotter than everything and ready to go scoop up some lunch, the festival was starting to take shape. A little jazz band was marching through the market and into the festival area. Here is a little video I uploaded to YouTube:
Well, with everyone in our group is hotter than three levels of hell, its time to venture off to scoop up some muffaletta! Yes I was mega excited about this. Muffaletta from Central Grocery. It was an experience I must say. They had all of these import foods to buy and what not. Could probably spend some major bank in there and they had some cool foods in there. But with the line going out of the door, there is no time for shopping, cause everyone was hungry. Well, lemme tell you about the experience. Have you ever seen the “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld? Yessir! It reminded me of that, and he got especially grumpy when we bought some olive salad on the side. Knowing they were busy, but 15 seconds ain’t gonna hurt him for us to grab that. As we were walking out of the door a delivery guy from Leidenheimer’s was bringing in sackfuls of Muffaletta buns. Yes Leidenheimer’s is a local bread in New Orleans and it was mighty tasty. Too bad I left the leftover muffalettas in the cooler. Hope mom and dad enjoyed them! Sigh!
Well after eating that lunch a nap soon hit us. We slept for a few hours, enough to to drag on back out into the quarter. I thought I was feeling this twelve dollar burger from Dickie Brennen’s Palace Cafe. Well come to find out, the dinner menu didn’t sound very appealing. So onto Bourbon because Dad hadn’t walked down there yet. So we come up on to Dickie Brenne’s Bourbon House and yes the menu sounded like we wanted to try it out. I was worried cause I saw white table clothes, but oh well, its my birthday and I wanted a good meal!
Cool Fans in Dickie Brennen's Bourbon House
The fans were really cool, but I didn’t like the single point of failure. Being a techie person, yeah we tend to worry about points of failures, but it was might cool how the one motor and a really long belt ran the fans. So back onto the menu. There were two things that really peaked my interests, the Pork Porterhouse and the Pan Seared Tuna. So after the ole lady ordered and the waiter said to her, “Look you are at the #7 rated seafood house in the country. I would order seafood.” So she ordered the Redfish on the Halfshell, which was pretty tasty! Oh you probably wondering what I ended up with. Well after the waiter’s spill, I ended up with the Pan Seared Tuna. Which was might, mighty tasty. Was leery about ordering something that would still be cold in the middle, but it had great flavor and was just plain ole good.
The uber chocolatey cake.
Well, so dessert time came around, which surprisingly I still had room for it. After much debate I ended my meal with the Bourbon House Milk Punch. Yessir! It was lovely and the ole lady (I think she really likes it when i call her that. haha!) got herself a piece o chocolate cake with ganache. If you know her, she loves that ganache!
Sometimes listening to jazz makes me wish I still played my trumpet.
Now since we were in New Orleans, we couldn’t go there without kicking it at some jazz bar listening to some good music. I can’t recall the name of the bar, but I can recall the prices of the drinks! A bottled water was $6.75. UNREAL! I know you need to pay the musicians, but wow! $6.75! My draft beer was that price, and yes that was the cheapest drink(s) on the menu. But the music was good! That’s why we went to the place.
Well after taking in a few songs, we decided to just roam up and down Bourbon. Lets just say on a Saturday night you see some characters! The latex guys was a sight. But I didn’t get into anything too crazy. Oh yeah, we ended the night at Cafe Du Monde with some beignets and cafe au lait! Man that stuff is SLAMMIN! So back for another jaunt to the room for a night sleep, then one more day in the Big Easy.
Continued later.