Nawlins

The heat and humidity rolled down the aisles towards and then over me, it had surged into the plane as soon as they opened the cabin door. I was standing in my row nervous and excited. As I walked out of the airplane the sounds of good music was the next thing to engulf me—good music in a public space seemed strange. As the golf cart bar rolled by a sense of being somewhere different certainly filled me, and yet I felt like I had come home. It was my first trip to New Orleans and although I had never been there before, in this life, the sense of New Orleans as my spiritual home remains to this day some twenty seven years later.

The first concert I ever went to had been some six years before that—the Meters (from New Orleans) opening for the Stones at Madison Square Garden. When I went to New Orleans for my college interview at Tulane, I didn’t know that New Orleans music would become the sound track to my life. I certainly did not even have the glimmer of the idea that New Orleans food would become a central part of my career.

I’m a very different person, fortunately, than I was at Eighteen and went for that first visit. Different than I was a year and half later when I started Tulane. Yet the house mate I moved off campus with in the fall of ’82 I’m honored to still consider my best friend. We’ve had our ups and downs but I’m glad she still puts up with me, especially since my cooking put 15 pounds on her that first year we lived together. I don’t use butter and cream as my two main ingredients any more, although I think pure pasture raised organic dairy is a key to true health.

After becoming a Sous Chef in New Orleans I moved away to chase my culinary dreams. Yet no matter how far I wandered or how far my cooking evolved, I still do know what it means to miss New Orleans. And right now I hope I won’t miss her forever. I haven’t been able to visit this year, and as with an old relative the fear that you won’t get to say that last goodbye is with me now.

Perhaps it is crazy to build a city that averages six feet below sea level. It certainly is crazy to not do everything in our collective power to save the most unique culture in America. It is crazy to have our most famous river upon which New Orleans sits so dysfunctional that pre-Katrina Louisiana was losing 18 square miles of land annually.

When I go to bed I will say a prayer for my darlin’ New Orleans. The place that has led to more of my dearest friendships than anywhere else; the place that has led to more of my biggest smiles than anywhere else; and the place that has led to more of my greatest culinary creations than anywhere else. I’ve changed a lot since even Katrina three years ago, yet New Orleans will always be one of my homes!