I can’t remember who said this to me, but I always thought it was ironic. A friend came to my house and noticed that I have a huge cookbook collection, and said, “Damn, I thought you were into music. How come you didn’t go into the restaurant business? Look at all these cookbooks!”
Of course, my friend didn’t comment much on the thousands of LPs and CDs I had in my house. It just struck him (her?) that I had a huge interest in food. I have cookbooks from all over the world. My degrees are in Hotel and Restaurant Management. When I traveled for business, in my pre-OffBeat days, I’d always make it a point to buy a cookbook from whatever city or state to which I had traveled. I always thought that food demonstrated not only the culture of the area, but its “mentality” as well. I started collecting recipes and pasting them in a scrapbook when I was about 16 years old. I still have all those recipes, and ones I’ve collected from co-workers, friends and relatives for the past 45 or so years. It’s really cool to go back to look at old copies of the Times-Picayune’s cooking contest winners, or Tom Fitzmorris’s old “Menu” magazines, or to read over my Guatemalan friend Claudia’s recipe for curried coconut chicken, or my ex-mother-in-law’s recipe for homemade chocolate pie (the best!). Oh yeah, and I still have all the old LPs I bought when I was 16 as well!
So, yep, I’m somewhat of a minor-league foodie, and the opportunity to experience exotic and ethnic cuisine is something I look forward to. I wish we had more exotica in New Orleans. I haven’t tried Cafe Abyssinia, the Ethiopian restaurant on Magazine Street yet. I’m a big fan—and have been for years—of Bennachin’s African cuisine. A few months back, Joseph and I discovered Baru on Magazine and Amelia, which is where I had lunch today with an old friend. I was impressed, once again, with the delicious food and service. Great Caribbean food, different and delectable.
We were a bit anxious about lunching there because the place is small and we didn’t think we’d get a table. But those worries were for naught because we actually had no problem at all getting a table. I think they were glad to see us because most of Magazine Street is closed down from Washington Avenue all the way past Amelia Street. It’s got to be killing business on Magazine. The summers are slow enough. Hope they can drag themselves through the summer.
Visitors love our music. Photo: Brenda Anderson
I hope we all can get through this summer, frankly. It’s already 95 degrees outside, with no rain in sight to cool us off. Our trips down Decatur Street daily demonstrate that there aren’t a lot of people visiting the city right now. This weekend’s Oyster Fest and next weekend’s Vieux To Do (a trio of festivals including the Creole Tomato Fest, Cajun-Zydeco Festival and the Louisiana Seafood Festival) hopefully will liven things up. I can’t help but think, though, that these festivals attract mostly locals.
In this month’s edition of OffBeat, we feature a Backtalk interview with Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who talks candidly about New Orleans’ cultural economy and its festivals. It’s interesting reading, and the Mayor says clearly that his office can’t get involved in producing festivals. But I can’t help but think that perhaps we need someone in the Mayor’s Office who coordinates, develops and works exclusively with existing festivals and works to help develop new festivals. Now I’m not talking about a person who produces the festivals themselves, but someone who can be a liaison for the festival community and the Mayor’s office to coordinate city resources to encourage more festivals in the city, and then to use these festivals in a very targeted way to attract more leisure travelers to New Orleans. Scott Hutcheson (who is mentioned in the interview) wears way too many hats as the Cultural Economy staffperson to take on this job too.
I am thoroughly convinced that music and food are the best—and most obvious and unique—offerings we have for potential visitors. I’m not naïve enough to believe that in my lifetime we’ll ever be able to solve our education problems and employment problems to attract big industry here. This is a hospitality industry town. It’s a party town. It’s a festival town. So it seems to me we should be doing our damnedest to come up with ways to use these offerings to get as many visitors to the city as possible. If I’ve said this once, I said it a bazillion times: New Orleans is missing the boat when it comes to attracting people to the city, especially leisure travelers from overseas, particularly during the summer months. Music is the key component to the international visitor market. We’ve been passive too long. We need a strategic, concerted, targeted marketing effort for the next five years that will specifically focus on New Orleans attraction as a music mecca and festival center. We need direct contact with our prospective visitors, in line with the way a lot of people travel these days: booking and making plans via the internet. Can someone please show me a plan?
