Bayona

We had an excellent lunch at Bayona (chef/owner Susan Spicer is, btw, one of the food consultants for my new favorite TV show, "Treme" on HBO). Not sure it was worth the price, but lovely nonetheless.

The best part of the whole meal was the pork belly salad with watermelon (top picture). Pork belly with watermelon, avocado, red onion, arugula, and a balsamic thingey. Really, really delicious, and one of the better salads I've had in recent memory.

Next came scallops with crawfish dirty rice. Dirty rice is traditionally made with chicken livers, but here gone uptown with crawfish. Also yummy, though it only had two scallops.

Dessert was a lemon-lavendar semifreddo with a rolled almond cookie thing. I also had a cucumber julep.

So, the takeaway: go for the pork belly salad. Have two, in fact. I think I will add "scallops with crawfish dirty rice" to my home cooking rotation, to ensure I get more than two scallops, so that's a win in the "recipes for later" department.

Crescent Pie & Sausage

This was one of my favorites. We stopped in for a late lunch with my family; I wish we could have spent more time there.

Crescent Pie & Sausage makes their own boudin. That in itself is enough reason to stop by, but they also make a variety of other sausages. And they have a great bar--a lot of craft cocktails and infusions, rare beers, that sort of thing. In short, right up my alley.

I had the homemade boudin and merguez (lamb sausage) along with their housemade parmesan-and-truffle-oil chips. Wins all the way around. I also tried their bacon-infused-bourbon Manhattan, complete with bacon garnish, but I couldn't pick out any overt bacon-y-ness. A little smokiness, but nothing that was like "hey! bacon!"

But a minor point. I loved the rest of their menu, I'd really like to go back one day and sample more.

Acme Oyster Bar

Different kinds of oysters taste different.

This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people think an oyster is an oyster is an oyster. Case in point: ocean oysters vs. Gulf of Mexico oysters vs. Chesapeake Bay oysters.

(Note: these taste differences are only really apparent when you're eating them raw. If you're not eating them raw, well, you might as well be eating fish sticks.)

Ocean oysters (and yes, there are differences between Pacific and Atlantic oysters) are dense, pale, meaty, and taste like the ocean. Ideally, anyway. Like a faintly sweet mouthful of ocean water. These are the best.

Chesapeake Bay oysters (what I grew up on) are smaller, browner, and not very briny at all. They taste more like a mouthful of seafood; sweeter than ocean oysters. (But "sweet" in an oyster way, not in a dessert way.)

So while in Louisiana, I decided to get some Gulf oysters at Acme Oyster Bar.

I was disappointed.

Now, I know it's not oyster season. (You're only supposed to eat oysters in months with an "R" in them, because during the summer they put all their energy into reproduction and not into tasting good.) But hey, these were fresh, right out of the Gulf that morning, so I gave them a shot.

They were brown. Not oyster-colored. Brown.

And they tasted like mud.

Not like the ocean. Or like seafood. Or even really like an oyster. Just like mud.

Fortunately I was able to eat a crawfish po' boy instead.

Anyway, I still highly recommend eating raw oysters. Just stick to ocean oysters, and preferably cold-water oceans at that. (Maine/Massachusetts/maritime Canada/Washington State produce the best and most delicious oysters.)

Acme Oyster Bar itself is a bit of a tourist trap, as evidenced by the huge line of tourists at the front door waiting for seats starting at 5 pm. Go in the off-hours, sit at the bar, drink some Abita beer, and watch the oyster shuckers first-hand. If the oysters look muddy, get the crawfish po' boy instead.

Bayou Teche Biere

I found a great new beer on my vacation in New Orleans.

Bayou Teche LA 31 Grenade is a wheat beer made with passionfruit, brewed locally in Louisiana, and naturally is not a beer I'll be able to find back home in Massachusetts.

Never fear, I bought some to take home with me.

Passionfruit beer = win.

The Joint

I ate at a lot of restaurants in New Orleans. Fancy places, oyster bars, gastropubs, you name it. But one of our favorite meals was the most unlikely one, at a hole in the wall in a questionable neighborhood.

On our last night, we went to Vaughan's to see Kermit Ruffins play. We were there for the better part of two hours before we learned he wasn't actually playing that night. And Vaughan's isn't a bar you'd go to for any other reason. It was smoky, grimy, cash only, and the building looked like it would fall apart with a strong wind. You had to be buzzed in, for goodness' sake, you couldn't even just walk right in. Anyway, disappointed, I didn't want to have wasted the cab ride all the way out to the edge of the Ninth Ward (yes, that Ninth Ward), so we decided to walk two blocks down to The Joint for a second dinner.

My sister had recommended this place; otherwise it would never have occurred to me to go inside. This building was similarly ramshackle, with a bunch of mismatched chairs out front, with an open dumpster to the side, with empty 40s of malt liquor scattered around. Classy. But man, it smelled good. So we went inside to tackle the barbecue.

Best. Barbecue. Ever.

And I don't say that lightly, having lived (briefly) in Memphis. I had the ribs, my husband had the pulled pork, we both got Abita beers and ate until we were sweating barbecue sauce. Then I got a piece of homemade peanut butter pie to go (I had it for breakfast the next morning), only because I was too full to eat it there. The ribs were tender, juicy, and I had to debate for a couple of days whether I liked them better than the dry rub ribs at Rendezvous, but eventually these won. Cheaper, too.

So if you're going to New Orleans, go to The Joint. Eat the barbecue. Ignore the neighborhood. If you're there on a Thursday night, go to Vaughan's and see if Kermit Ruffins is playing. Otherwise, go to Bacchanal and see what they have going on. But go.

Cajun brown jasmine rice

Another Louisiana find: homegrown cajun brown jasmine rice (which is a combination of jasmine rice and native red rice). Here's a New York Times article about it.

After that article, my sister has been on the lookout for that rice at farmers' markets, and she finally found some for me. I had it for dinner last night. Nutty, flavorful, delish, I love it. Of course it can't be found anywhere outside Louisiana.

Speaking of Louisiana, I went to a bunch of amazing restaurants. Stay tuned for full details.

Wine from my collection: Anthill Farms Tina Marie Pinot Noir 2009

I found this bottle at W.I.N.O., otherwise known as Wine Institute New Orleans. Waaaaaay back when, I attended a pinot noir dinner at Cru, in which I had like 20 different kinds of pinot noir, and Anthill Farms was one of them. Naturally, most of the stuff I had and liked is hard to find. So when I saw this bottle, even though it was $65, I had to try it.

My memory did not disappoint. Unfortunately it will be a while before I can afford more $65 bottles, but it was a lovely vacation splurge.

Although to be entirely honest, I couldn't taste much difference between a good $30 pinot and this $65 pinot. Wherein does the $30 difference lie, I wonder?