I spent a few days of spring break 2008 in New Orleans on assignment with a dozen students from Professor George Frantz’s City and Regional Planning class, “Imagining a Sustainable Ninth Ward.” While many of their fellow undergrads were on a beach somewhere, these dedicated, highly motivated kids devoted their vacation to helping the city’s most impoverished neighborhood continue its recovery from the massive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. They attended meetings with community activists and residents, spent hours driving around the Lower Ninth Ward to chronicle the state of its houses, and volunteered to help clear the site of a community garden in a Vietnamese neighborhood. They drove to Biloxi, Mississippi, where they dined with a gutsy young woman—a single mother and former cop—who gave them an unvarnished view of life on the Gulf Coast.
But it wasn’t all work, either for the students or for me. If you go to New Orleans and don’t eat well, you only have yourself to blame. I had café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde in the French Quarter, and they were as delicious as I remembered them from my last trip to the city 13 years ago. The café may be touristy, but the coffee and French-style donuts are fantastic, served piping hot on an inch-high bed of powdered sugar for dipping. I had a traditional Sazerac cocktail at a hotel in the Quarter, whose rotating bar is a converted merry-go-round. (“No, I’m not that tipsy; the bar really is spinning…”) At a Cajun restaurant outside Biloxi, not a vegetarian’s paradise, I had jalapeño hush puppies dipped in molten cheese sauce and deep-fried pickles served with ranch dressing. Those southerners sure know how to deep-fry; the crinkle-cut pickles were crispy and salty and not a bit greasy. I came back with pralines for the CAM staff, purchased at Professor Frantz’s recommendation from Loretta’s on North Rampart Street, known to the locals as the best in town.
My feature story on Cornell’s work in the Ninth Ward will appear in CAM’s May/June issue.
– Beth Saulnier