Best Breakfast Ever!

Ruby Slipper Café
139 South Cortez Street
   (one block off Canal Street, in Mid-City)

OMG! This place was fantastic!

A really good breakfast place is one that you can enjoy and relax in with friends; a great place is one you can enjoy and relax in alone. Being on my own in New Orleans, I really lucked out coming here. 

I picked it because of its Mid-City location, since I planned to spend the morning at the Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park. Cortez Street is almost on the way there. It's an old neighbourhood, even by local standards, just off Esplanade Ridge, and despite ongoing gentrification it still exudes that dignified yet slightly degenerate charm that infuses all of this city.

Step into the Ruby Slipper and you feel immediately part of the neighbourhood. On your left is a small bar, lining the first small dining room. I got no further, having the good fortune to get a table with a view of both the street and the kitchen. The other people around me were clearly locals, if not neighbourhood residents: their accents would have told me that, had their mannerisms not done. 

Community garden

I started off with coffee. Locally roasted, the menu told me, as if I would care; like coffee beans lose significant attributes when they travel. Distance doesn't matter; time barely matters. Roasting technique matters, and having it done "in town" as opposed to elsewhere is irrelevant, just a passing fad in this Starbucks-laced society. (Of more interest to me was the fact that the Ruby Slippers coffee grounds go into the community garden on the corner opposite.) If any flavour remains in those grounds, then surely the veggies produced there are some of the best available, because the coffee I had was probably the best I've had in donkey's years. Seriously, it was. And they're not stingy with it either, although the $2 price tag might have more to do with that.

I was torn. On the blackboard was the day's special, peanut-butter-chocolate pancakes. Pancakes are a little-heralded specialty in New Orleans. The city is famous for its po-boys and seafood and creole food and all kinds of other things to tempt the palate, but it lives on pancakes. Big, fluffy pancakes. To combine that tradition with two great tastes that taste great together makes for an almost irresistable combination. But then, the menu lists other house specialties that are similarly drool-inducing. Having narrowed down that list to Bananas Foster Pain Perdu and Eggs Blackstone, I eliminated the pain perdu on the basis of having had Bananas Foster Ice Cream Cake last night. As good a rationale as any, at that point. And when I mentioned my dilemma to the cheerful, attentive waitress, Lindsay, she immediately assured me I could get the Eggs Blackstone with one peanut-butter-chocolate pancake. Which I did.

(Thanks, Irving.)

The pancake was the size of the dinner plate on which it was served. It was overcooked ever so slightly, a pardonable sin, given the perfection that awaited me in everything else. The peanut butter flavour was subtle, and it's my own fault for ruining it half-way through, when I had the wild notion that maple syrup might somehow add something to this culinary treasure. Still, the chocolate flavour was in no way impeded by my rashness, and it carried me through to the pancake's proud end.

Not to be outdone, the Eggs Blackstone were a marvel. Poached eggs on a small (poached-egg size, coincidentally) English muffin, with a slice of tomato and some Applewood-smoked bacon, and just enough of the house's delicious sauce Hollandaise to satisfy the gourmand in me. The presentation was enhanced by a delectable mix of ripe, fresh fruit in bite-sized pieces, providing an outstanding sweet complement to the luxuriant Hollandaise. 

What's that mean?

I had bought a local newspaper from the box outside the restaurant just to have an excuse to linger over my meal, and I almost followed up the meal with a mimosa (which the house tarts up with a splash of pomegranate juice). I could have done without the paper. Just sitting in that small room, contemplating the marvels on my table and listening to the howzyamomminem din around me would have been enough. 

Fine Diner. Giggle.

City Diner
3116 I-10 Service Road East
Old Metairie

Before starting for New Orleans this week, I spent some time poring over the list of the top restaurants in the city, hoping to pick maybe half a dozen places to try. I ended up with 19 on my list, including this place, which I found nestled into the parking lot of my hotel.

The customer comments that got this place onto my list mentioned things like crawfish and andouille sausage, blackened chicken sandwich, duck and sausage gumbo ... things you'd find in a diner only in South Louisiana. Having now been here, my first take on the place isn't particularly favourable. 

I went around 8pm; the place was all but empty when I arrived at this converted Denny's. (I assume it was a Denny's, because it's in a La Quinta parking lot; and everybody knows "La Quinta" is Spanish for "Next to Denny's.") The place is clean, and simply decorated. The seats are in good repair, always a concern at places like this, where maintenance tends to get put off when money gets short, and the walls have a few good, nicely framed photos of typically Orleanian subjects, to make City Diner feel a little more like New Orleans and less like ... well, Denny's. (There's also an LED sign at the far end of the dining room, advertising specials and features, and occasionally flashing blindingly and disturbingly bright.)

There were two people in the kitchen and two on the floor when I arrived. Since I was the only person there you'd think I could have gotten quick, attentive service. I did, until another guy walked in and ordered toast and milk to go. I kid you not. This episode absorbed all the attention of the wait staff. Fortunately, the interchange with this new customer was sufficiently entertaining to keep me amused, and only then did the waitress bring my drink.  ("Do you have sweet rolls? How about muffins? No, not English muffins. Cake? No, not ice-cream cake." I finally called out to the waitress that she should sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on buttered toast for the guy. He settled for plain buttered wheat toast.) And a couple of other groups came in later, to keep me company.

I went for the evening's special: red beans and rice with sausage. It was exactly the same order I'd had back home, at the Big Easy Café, three days ago, so I thought it'd be an excellent opportunity to compare New Orleans' signature dish in Old Metairie with what I'd gotten from a family of Katrina refugees. The dish at the City Diner comes with sausage or pork chop. When I asked the waitress (who is from New Jersey and has only been here two months) if it was andouille sausage, she didn't know. It was smoked sausage, or I could have spicy sausage patties, or the grilled pork chop. I took my chances with the smoked sausage, and yes, it was andouille, and moderately good andouille at that. (She also didn't know what swamp water was, but mixed up a pretty good one when I told her how.)

Louisiana restaurant inspections have been
removed from the State's web site
for "technical reasons."

While I was waiting for my order, I had the chance to listen to the repartee going on between the employees. Without going into detail, I will say that it reminded me of why I moved away from New Orleans after only a few months, last time I came to live here.

You know how everybody thinks New Yorkers are rude? They're actually not, they're regular people, but their ways grate on my Southern sensibilities, and after a little while I grow uncomfortable in their continued company. This little group of Orleanians impressed me the same way. From their reactions, I could tell that they were all perfectly at ease with each other; but the words that come to my mind to describe their way of dealing are "attitude" and "lip." It was exactly that way when I lived here, as an adult, back in the mid-80s, and I thank God I had the good fortune to move away as a child, in time to learn a less sarcastic and caustic way of dealing, even if I don't always use it. These restaurant employees were all perfectly polite in dealing with me and the other customers, but if I'd've worked there I'd've popped somebody in the mouth before too long. Probably that smart-ass blond guy in the kitchen.

Once I was finished with the red beans and rice (which, by the way, was better than at The Big Easy Cafe -- much more like what I remember from my youth, with a creamy thick sauce), I decided to try the bananas Foster ice cream cake that had been offered to the guy with the toast. A sign on the diner's door advertises Blue Bell Ice Cream, so I expected it to be pretty good. There was banana ice cream and pecan chunks topped with whipped cream and served over a sliver of generic cake and what appeared to be pie crust. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as it looked, nor was it as good as I'd hoped.

To be entirely fair, the City Diner seems to have built its reputation as a top restaurant largely on the strength of its breakfast fare. So maybe I'll come back one morning before I leave, and check that out.

Accustomed as I am to prices back home, I expect that the prices at City Diner are considered low by the locals. They're not bad. Maybe they're good enough to get excited about, if you live in a place like Metairie.