Photo Essay

This is where my food vacation started.  Upon getting home I had to go to the oral surgeon and get two wisdom teeth removed, so the role of food in the beginning of my break was to annoy me.  I didn't eat anything except for soup and ice cream in the beginning of break, on account of the stitches.  However my food frustration didn't last forever and I was eventually able to diversify my diet, and to be honest time flies when you're on vicodin.

After a few loopy days of soup and ice cream my mom hired me to help her in preparing a dinner for some of her friends' birthdays.  This was great for me because I knew I'd get snack on and make some great food, and getting paid a little made the deal even sweeter.  Less enjoyable duties included setting the table, seen here.

Though I don't frequently help my mom prepare multi course meals, this job was indicative of the role food plays in my family in general, where eating and cooking is also something that brings people or our family together.  My family is passionate about food and for me part of going home is getting to experience that again.

The first course of the meal was home made potato gnocchi, which required us to bake some potatoes, put them through a ricer a couple of times and then make a dough with some flour and egg.  After that we rolled the dough into strands and cut them into gnocchi sized pieces, heres a picture of my masterful rolling technique.  These things were so damn good, mostly due to their being perfect vehicles for unnecessary amounts of butter.

Sauteed onions with butter sauce and fried sage leaves was served with the gnocchi.

The second thing we made was an oven roasted cauliflower dish.  It was roasted with lemon and olive oil and then my mom threw some spices and capers in it, im not sure what really went into it though because I was still cleaning the stuff from the gnocchi while it was being made.  

This was an appetizer my mom cooked up without me.  These are little filo cups, kinda like mini pie crusts, that are filled with buttery lobster, called lobster bites, (imagine lobster roll meets crumbly mini pie crusts).  

Last but not least on the menu was roast leg of lamb.  The lamb was cooked with a bread crumb crust that contained orange marmalade, cranberry jelly, garlic, dijon mustard, and some things I forgot.  Though the recipe sounded sort of strange, it actually turned out really well and gave a sweet but also sharp accent to the lamb.  

Patois

Having worked behind the scenes at a fancy restaurant I was immediately interested in examining the reviews of Restaurant Patois, which seemed to hold a standard and price point that reminded me of the River Cafe.  As I began reading and trying to analyze the reviews in terms of the role it plays in the community I noticed a number of things. 

First off, Patois is predominantly given a four and five star rating, asides from a few concise reviews every now and again that criticized it with misspelled words.  Secondly, I began to notice the types of people who ate at and reviewed Patois seemed to be predominantly either foodie tourists or people who weren’t concerned about the cost of the meal as much as they did of the alcohol: “The only aspect of the meal that I did not enjoy was the wine service” (Susan W.).  In terms of the audience indicated by the reviews the that Patois plays in creating a community is minimal compared to the New Orleans institution type restaurants I’ve attended.   Not only is Patois’ primary target group not the residents of the city, but it sometimes plays a negative role in the community, like harboring enmity between it and less wealthy or educated people: “The worst dinner ever .The ribs were burned and tasteless(Burn taste)” (Deniz S.).  Nonetheless Patois does seem to have one redeeming aspect in terms of its role within the social and food communities of New Orleans, that being its Sunday brunch.  Patois’ Sunday brunch attracts a lot of locals, who praise it highly as well.  One local reviewer cited it as a favorite place to bring guests of the city, saying of the brunch, “what better way to break someone into New Orleans then forcing them to eat rabbit while washing it down with a mimosa or a French 75” (Whitney J.).  Ultimately what seems to hold Patois back the most is its service, which causes most of its three star ratings.  One customer complained that “I asked the waiter to describe one of the dishes and the response was: ‘what do you mean’ followed by him taking the menu from my hand and reading me the description” (Katherine S.).

Ultimately Patois fails to live up to its reputation and the standard of a New Orleans institution because the role it plays in the community and its culture is an estranged one.  Not only does Patois seem to fail to make itself a place in the community by catering to tourists, but it abandons the food’s integrity by abandoning the people of the city that pioneered the very same cuisine and style of dining it claims.  

Visit to the Camellia Grill

My weekend assignment was somewhat of an eye-opening experience for me in terms of dining in New Orleans and the differences the experience has from finding food in New York City.  Now, living in Brooklyn, which I should add is not nearly the most busy part of New York, I'm used to being able to find food at two or three AM, but apparently that isn't how things work down in New Orleans.  By the time I was ready for my Sunday dinner extravaganza to begin, I was shocked to find that most places are closed pretty early on Sunday, so I didn't get any food until Monday.  When thinking about this and being hungry I started to think about the reasons for that discontinuity between these two city cultures, and decided it must be reflective of the different cultural demographics in the two cities, though I'm not sure what exactly is the cause.

Anyway, moving on to Monday night I headed to the street car at around 8:30 to go to the Camellia Grill for a meal at what I would say is a New Orleans institution.  The first thing I noticed about the Camellia grill was the counter, it's huge and has a shape like this which is conducive to the environment that sets the camellia grill apart from many places I've been before.  Because the counter is shaped such as it is, it brings together the visual focal points of multiple groups of people to a common ground occupied by the gregarious waiter that develops conversations and jokes with the customers.  This communal and even somewhat familial environment is exactly the M.O. of the Camellia grill, and part of what makes it such an institution and destination for hungry tourists and New Orleanians, the other part of course being the food.  But it is this anachronistic down-home belief in service and satisfaction, that has become uncommon elsewhere nowadays, that gives the Camellia grill its character.  

On to the food though, the other important aspect of this New Orleans institution is the menu, which first appears to be a pretty simple diner menu but holds many more surprises than one would expect.  There is a surprising amount of innovation in the menu at the camellia grill, which I particularly noticed in their omelets, which are unlike any i have encountered before.  In addition to the traditional formula of beaten eggs, the Camellia grill blends the eggs in a blender to make them extra airy, in addition to adding what I think is pancake batter.  I have always enjoyed the combination of pancakes and eggs, but when they're cooked together the matrimony of the two is what I would call super delicious.  Another popular item with unusual components or preparations is the pecan pie heated on the grill, though I was too full to try it by the time I finished my meal that I have pictured below.  

I ordered a western omelet, (ham, peppers, onions) with hash browns, and an order of onion rings that I unfortunately scarfed down before I remembered to photograph.  The omelet was fantastic, light and fluffy yet wholly filling and pancakey.  The onion rings were also good, and had the slightest taste of beer in the more cooked rings, possibly the secret to their success?  The familial atmosphere and omelet put me right at ease immediately, the waiter even started referring to me as little brother, much to my chagrin.  

After finishing my meal I was extremely full and ready to leave and search for a more comfortable place to sit.  What made my experience of the Camellia Grill so satisfying was that it was everything people said it was, and that combined with the comfort of the food and environment made the experience very gratifying and felt like a successful venture.  

Crunchtastic Homage to the Choco Taco

Comfort food may mean a great number of different things from one person to the next, but to me comfort food means things that my parents never let me have as a child.  After a characteristic lunch at the Orleans Room I found myself still hungry, so I decided to put a bunch of tasty sugary things that are perfectly enjoyable individually into a delicious hybrid desert item.  I call this innovative desert (by which I mean most likely not truly innovative) the Crunchtastic Homage to the Choco Taco, (Pictured Below).

For the waffle I used the standard OR waffle procedure, involving putting the batter in a cup, and then in a waffle-maker.  This waffle portion of the desert served as the "taco shell" of my rendition of the Choco Taco, as a substitute for the waffle cone shell.  After that I added cookie dough ice cream on top of the waffle, and put some corn syrup based maple syrup on top.  Finally I added Cap'n Crunch on top and pushed the cereal into the ice cream so it wouldn't just fall off of my fork and annoy me.  

After thoroughly enjoying my creation I though a little bit more about where my food came from and had a few interesting realizations.  Firstly I realized how much of my desert was corn based.  The Cap'n Crunch and the syrup were essentially composed of corn and corn processing byproducts, which was kind of funny to me because I think of corn as a vegetable and not a garnish for a desert.  Also, I realized how disconnected I was from this meal despite the fact that I prepared it by myself.  In no way did I have any sort of idea where the ingredients making up my desert were from, or what conditions they had been stored, processed, and transported under.  However, asides from the unhealthily disconnected relationship between me and my desert, it was delicious and thats really the most important thing.