the last day and a half

Sunday morning I woke up early and took a walk through the French Quarter while the streets were still quiet. It was interesting to see so few people around and watch workers clean up the neighborhood by hosing everything down.

Unfortunately brunch that morning was a little disappointing - my fault for not properly planning - but the place did have Abita Strawberry Lager, which doesn't sound great, but was pretty nice for brunch. After brunch Zuzenak, who is quite the art collector, gave us a tour of some of the art galleries and we had to say goodbye to Iman, sporting his baby blue Royals jersey (first place!) when he headed off to the airport. Unfortunately I did not have an opportunity to take advantage of a gift he had brought me. For several years I have been talking about buying some jean shorts, but Lelaine won't let me wear them. Enter Iman, who bought a piar of acid washed jeans in my size along with a pair of scissors. The plan had been to cut them (he wanted them short enough so that the pockets hung down below the cut of the shorts) and wear to Jazz Fest, but the birthday girl put her foot down. I guess the cut off jorts will have to wait until a future mancation.

The group then took a streetcar up St. Charles St. and saw all the nice houses, the garden district, and some other stuff. It was nice to have a few minutes to sit and rest. Then several others - Brian, Allen, Heather, and Matt - had to leave. In order to get his fix, Doug took Jenn, Don, Lelaine, and I too a little dump of any oyster bar right across from Acme in the Quarter.

That night we had big plans: dinner at Commander's Palace. We dressed up and cabbed to the Garden District. As expected, it was pretty fancy. My favorite part was the chandeliers. They had what appeared to be wood frames with real candles, but upon further review they were electric and built so that the "flame" flickered to make it look real.

I started off with a sazerac. Not my favorite whiskey drink, but pretty good. For an appetizer, we all either had their famous turtle soup or their flight of three soups that included turtle, chicken and andouille gumbo, and crawfish bisque. I wasn't in love with the crawfish bisque, but the others were outstanding. The three gumbos I had in two days were probably the three best that I have ever had. And the turtle soup was outstanding.

Everyone's entrees were nice, but the highlight was definitely dessert. Four of us ordered the bread pudding souffle, and luckily for me Lelaine was too full to finish hers, so I stepped up to the plate. I had had bread pudding for dinner the night before, and it was definitely good. Zuzenak said it was his favorite, although I think that had more to do with it having chocolate chips instead of raisins. The consistency of the souffle at CP was certainly different, but it was amazing. Not as custardy as most, but very light and airy (it was after all, a souffle). I think it may be my favorite dessert ever.

Since we were dressed up we had planned on finding a club and listening to some music, but we were tired so we headed to Loa, a bar at the International House Hotel a couple blocks from our hotel. Lelaine had read about the lounge in a magazine and it was a nice laid-back place to spend our last night. After a couple of beers and a conversation about my lack of knowledge of facebook, we called it a night.

Monday morning we woke up, cleaned up, packed, and searched for food. Lelaine couldn't decide if she wanted breakfast or lunch as her last meal in NOLA, so we tried to do both: a beignet at Cafe du Monde and a po-boy at Johnny's, which is Zuzenak's go-to sandwich stop. No reason to compromise by only have one. Unfortunately, Cafe du Monde was relatively busy for late Monday morning, so we had to skip it and only ate a sandwich. Don and I went with Johnny's special - roast beef and ham with cheese?, Doug had a muffaletta (he erroneously claimed that I told him we were going to Central Grocery), and Lelaine closed it out with a chicken fried steak po-boy and red beans and rice. Everyone enjoyed.

With heavy hearts we then had to depart. Hopefully it won't be for long and we will be able to make Jazz Fest an annual tradition.