Perpetual Mardi Gras:
From France to the french quarter
by Val stafford
just another day in the life
The flight touched down in Brussels. I really don't enjoy flying, but it is pretty much the only way you're going to get to France from central Illinois. Passing through the metal detectors, I set off the alarm. Maybe it was the jet lag but the shrieking alarms here in Belgium seemed much more, well, alarming. I think I jumped back a foot or two and put my hands up as if I were busted in the middle of some B-movie bank robbery scenario. Airport security started to eyeball me, muttering in hushed French tones. I took off my belt and kicked off my boots. Walked through again, set it off again. I retreated, pulling all of my pockets inside out, rolling up my pant legs, and holding my arms up. Walked through again. Set it off again. By now, a large angry crowd of security had surrounded me. I think they were trying to ask me if I had a gun or a crowbar or a machete or metal plates or pins in me, but they may as well have been asking if I liked taking long moonlit strolls along the beach with the sound of Kenny G in the distance. I had no idea what they were shouting at me. A very large line-backer-esque woman with a mustache had me by the elbow and dragged me, sequestered and then shirtless within twenty-two minutes of touchdown. A personal best. I recall feeling so proud at the accomplishment. “English?!!!!” she shouted at me. “American,” I cowered. “YOU. SPEAK. ENGLISH?!” “Yes, ma'am.” She ran a hand-held metal detector over me, with it occasionally, randomly beeping in protest. She couldn't figure out what or why I was setting it off. There was much heated discussion in the next room. But they finally released me with suspicious hesitation.
My cousin lived in France and had arranged for me to stage/volunteer/ apprentice at a three-star restaurant within a hotel, and to work in a bakery. I had always wanted to cook in France, and it seemed silly to pass up such an opportunity. Unfortunately, I absolutely despised the bakery. I had to report to work at two or three in the morning. The crew was straight out of a bad cartoon of French baker stereotypes. The skinny, angry little chain-smoking guy who drank so much espresso I thought he might take off into orbit. The zit-faced fourteen year old kid who couldn't manage to conceal his butt crack and probably spent all day picturing me naked. The hyper bitchy rail thin teenage counter girls and anal retentive pastry chef who sadistically enjoyed my absolute lack of mastery of the finer side of the sugar arts. I made tiny, imperfectly finished tarts and tuiles and meringues all day every day for ten hours at a time. The sugar was seeping into my pores and had become mildly hallucinogenic sometime in the early afternoon of day three. I remember counting egg yolks and wondering what the abundant red food coloring possibly tasted like. Cherries? Vanilla? Blood? The hotel gig was a little better. It was the Coupe Du Monde and things were hectic. There were riots. They were suspicious of me and my free labor and random dreadlocks. I knew enough French to know that they were talking about me, but not quite enough to know what they were saying. They at least let me play with expensive stuff like 150 pounds of grade A fois gras, white asparagus, truffles, and endless piles of chanterelles. I think most of the prep jobs they gave me were meant as punishment, but I enjoyed most of them, perhaps out of spite. Every afternoon around four we all sat in the garden and ate family meal. They weren't holding back, either. Pepper crusted steaks, butter poached fish, duck comfit, tons of stinky cheeses, salad, baguette, lemon roast chicken, chocolate croissants, escargots with garlic and tarragon. And wine. Always wine. I didn't learn much at this job, aside from knowing how to curse in French and put up one hell of a family meal.
On the weekends we would take trips to the South of France or Italy or Switzerland. I learned a very valuable life lesson during one such trip to the Provence. We were staying at a colleague's summer home, a big stone castle type structure that crumbled a bit into the pastures and overlooked a giant turquoise tile-lined pool. We sat around eating peanuts, house cured prosciutto, black truffle pasta, sweet pickles, baguette, raclette, and copious amounts of fiercely strong dijon mustard on everything, chased with pastis. And then it came. A passed plate of something I did not recognize. I could smell it from across the room, and my stomach instantly turned. In the interest of politeness, I took one piece. They urged me to take more, more. I did. It was dark brown. It was swirled like a coiled worm or snake or something similarly unappetizing. Everyone around me seemed to be enjoying it, with their hefty doses of homemade table wine. I looked around for a hungry dog, a fluffy rug, a napkin to hide the evidence. No such luck. I put a piece on some baguette. Just before it hit my tongue, the smell exploded in my nostrils. The smell was undeniable. It smelled just like...wait for it..shit. Pig shit. I was eating pig shit sausage. I choked a little and asked what we were eating. It was andouilliette. Sausage made from the lower, lower, lower pig intestine. I will never again put something in my mouth before first asking what it is. I don't care how rude that may be. The smell is still burned into my olfactory memory bank. It haunted me. For the next seventy-two hours, everywhere and everything was pig shit flavored.
The neighbor, a handsome young doctor, was coming over for dinner. My cousin did most of the cooking, but I was given dessert duty. I never have been much of a baker but I was going to bake something I had made hundreds of times. A sugar-crusted, lemon zest–studded goat's cheese cheesecake. I didn't even need to measure. Could make it in my sleep. Unfortunately, I had not taken into account how much more potent the goat cheese is in France. We had a lovely meal of poached white fish quennelles floating in tomato butter sauce, the freshest shallot butter–glazed mussels with frites and aioli, pan-roasted pork tenderloin with sherry mushroom cream sauce, French muenster that smelled like socks, and the always present pine nut salad. And then came dessert. It was sliced, partnered with fresh berries and served. I sat with nervous anticipation of the accolades that would soon follow. They all took one bite, paused, and burst into laughter. Billy goat cake! They bleated, mocking me. Baaaaah, baaaaaaaaaah, baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! They cried, and laughed their French asses off at me, nearly falling out of their chairs. Mortified, I finally took a bite. The initial lemony, sugar crusted creamy essence was fleeting, rapidly followed by the smack of straight up nasty rotten barnyard funk. My fairy tale visions of moving to France for six months, finding a little flat in downtown Lyon, cooking at a bistro, and doing my shopping at the charcuterie, boulangerie, and poissonerie were slowly, sourly replaced by the reality that the French didn't much care for me and my American self. The feeling was mutual.
I made it back to the states without further international incidents or strip searches. I tried to settle back in, cooking at Sweet Betsy's. It was so nice working with Terry again, the smell of baking bread in the morning, his jovial greetings and one-liners awaiting me every day. He let me cook whatever I felt like. There was no stove so I made gumbo in the oven. Roasting the okra, sausages, chicken, and roux separately on full sheet pans, then weaving it all together with garlicky chicken stock and fire roasted tomatoes. I made broccoli, spinach and cheese calzones, white lasagne, bread pudding, whatever struck my fancy. But the wanderlust was taking hold. I couldn't stop thinking of what Chef Jean Pierre had said to me a few years back. Find a chef you admire. Go work for them. Don't pay for culinary school. I had my sights set on a job with Susan Spicer at Bayona in the French Quarter. My mind was made up. I was moving to New Orleans.
I gave notice at my job, broke up with the boyfriend, packed three suitcases, and got on the train headed South. No job, no apartment, no friends, no big deal. I spent the first night in a hotel, and the second in my new apartment, smack dab in the middle of Bourbon Street. I was a little too nervous to see Susan Spicer right away, and face rejection, considering I moved here with the sole purpose of working for her. I got a job at Patout's Cajun Cabin. A perpetually crowded, zydeco-spewing tourist trap of a shithole at 501 Bourbon Street. The kitchen crew didn't know what to think of me. I was the only girl, and about four shades whiter than saltines in comparison to everyone else. Most of them lived in the roughest projects in the city, sported tons of bling and mouths full of gold. Once they got used to the fact that I was here to work and I had not simply gotten lost on my way to the corner daiquiri shop, they embraced my presence. I was like their funny little yankee mascot. They sang and danced and laughed all service long. Even when we were getting absolutely buried. They would deep fry anything. Hot dogs, hamburgers, Twinkies, you name it. They had their grandmas' recipes for gumbo and etouffee and dirty rice and alligator. The place was just nuts. I can't even imagine the sales. People would have to push their way in and out. We had to have two or three doormen at a time. Triple that during mardi gras. The house band, with their daily loop of the same seventeen zydeco songs, sold cocaine on the side and the lead singer kept a loaded .45 in his locker. He told me the combination if I should ever need the gun. I hoped to god I wouldn't.
The momentum of Mardi Gras was starting to pick up. What was usually a seven-minute walk to work, seven blocks away would take forty-five minutes by the time Fat Tuesday drew near. We had tons of private parties on the second floor, in addition to the constant mayhem that ebbed and flowed from off of Bourbon. The boys usually made me run the banquets so they didn't have to deal with the idiots out front. And trust me, there were plenty of idiots. And nudity, drinking from boots, all sorts of drugs, bare-chested frat boy brawls, and all manner of debauchery. Howard Stern had an event for whatever syndicated bullshit he was hawking at the time. I think we deep-fried 45 turkeys for that one, shucking thousands of oysters with the ten-foot flame of table-side bananas foster constantly shimmering in the dining room. He was standing on the balcony, riling up the drunken melee. I don't think I've ever seen so many boobs in one place at one time. The police eventually had to shut down about four solid blocks of Bourbon Street and asked him to go back inside and get his big haired self off of the balcony.
The kitchen would stay open as long as there were still customers. Sometimes we would cook until three or four in the morning. It was Lundi Gras. The city swelled with tens of thousands clogging the streets, overwhelming the garbage men and the sewer system. It's bad enough that we were below sea level. But the influx of bodies and showers and sinks and one million toilet flushes had taken their toll. It was eight or nine at night when the sewer started backing up into the kitchen. By ten, we were standing in a few inches of water, surrounded by grills and fryers and drunken, hungry, bead wearing heathens. And then the air conditioning units started to struggle and fail. Condensation built up on the pipes and rained onto us as we waded in murky sewer water and had to keep feeding people. We ran out of the little crab shells that we used for stuffed crabs for the seafood platter. The dishwasher started collecting the old ones, scraped them out, ran them through the dish machine, and refilled them, regardless of how much crab stuffing, hepatitis, and dishwater remained inside. It was one of the grossest things I had ever seen. I said a little prayer, made the sign of the cross, and kept on making blackened chicken alfredo pasta, oyster po-boys and fried crawfish tails. We made it through, without electrocution, and having the kitchen clean by around six in the morning. Off to take a nap, and come back for more.
I don't know if it was just a bad coincidence, yearly tradition, or if they sent out a staff memo, but every single one of the servers showed up on some type of strung out on Mardi Gras day. Uppers, downers, mushrooms, four hits of acid, whatever, we had it all. Most of them had not even slept. “This isn't going to end well,” I thought to myself. Surprisingly, it didn't seem to make a bit of difference. They ran the food with their rubber arms, twitchy smiles, sniffly noses and dilated pupils. They didn't seem to mess up one single thing, or if they did, all of the customers were too blotto to notice. It was a maniacal whirlwind. The pace became more and more frenzied. The floor was soaked in beer and rum-filled fruit punch and beads and broken shot glasses. Customers were playing the accordion, line dancing, chicken fighting, limbo-ing, second-lining with tiny umbrellas and noise makers and megaphones. We were on the home stretch. The kitchen would close around eleven. Nearly everybody got thrown out the door with minimal amounts of politeness and courtesy. We were over this shit. Y’all all can get the hell out. At midnight sharp, only the VIP customers and the staff would remain. Everyone else would be shoved out the doors and forced to evade the midnight sweeping of Bourbon Street. We closed the shutters, triple locked the doors, and affixed the Armageddon/anti-zombie wooden braces against the doors and made our way to the balcony. At the stroke of midnight, five blocks up the river on Canal Street, the lights of the firetrucks and the squad cars, row after row, powered on in eerie unison. The sea of people began to part, with no small sense of urgency. The procession began. A row of cops on foot in full riot gear, shoulder to shoulder across Bourbon. A row of baton-wielding cops on horseback. Another row of cops on foot. They shouted and pleaded and threatened anyone who was stupid enough not to get off the street NOW. A row of police cars. Firetrucks. More horses. Street sweepers, one after the next flung a barrage of beads and trash into the business walls and any pedestrian stupid enough to be anywhere near all of this. Then more cops and horses and squad cars. We all stood above them on the balcony as they passed, cheering them, saluting them, and showering them with the last of our beads. I have never been so happy to see so many cops in my life.
I think I spent the next two days sleeping. And then I went in search of Susan Spicer. I showed up one afternoon with my resume, a twenty page portfolio of my menus (courtesy of Mr. Jon Stevens), a notebook, a few pens, and all of the courage and optimism I could muster. We spoke briefly on the courtyard. She said that she didn't really have any open positions at the moment, and asked for my notebook to jot down the names of a few of her colleagues that were looking for help. She got as far as Gautreaux's when I politely interrupted her. “Chef, I came here to work for you. Just let me know when something opens up.” We shook hands, and I went back to my reality—slinging overpriced fried pickles and watered down drinks at the Cajun Cabin. Just after Mardi Gras, and the seventeen-hour work days, and the influx of tourist germs, I got pneumonia. I stood in scalding hot showers twice a day just to breathe. It didn't help that my apartment had no heat and we had a bit of a cold spell and I was pretty sure that the place was haunted. I was sleeping on the floor by the oven. It didn't even have proper windows that shut. They were little louvered glass hurricane windows. If you wanted to break in to my place, all you had to do was pop out the glass panes, yoink yoink yoink, and climb in. I remember thinking my mom would freak out if she saw how I was living. But one day, in a fevered haze, I found a note that my neighbor (a friend of a friend from Champaign-Urbana, and the G.M. Of Bayona) left on my door.
Come to Bayona. Chef has something for you.
I was incredibly ill, but sucked it up and went in to see her. She had created a position for me. Start in dessert/pantry prep, train in pastry kitchen, take over for pastry chef while she is on vacation, move on to garde-manger. It was quite literally a dream come true. The beginning was as you would expect. I tried to shake off the intimidating aspect of it all. People were nice. But I felt so under-schooled and so obviously green. I worked in the dessert plating station for a few days, setting up garnishes for expo, doing random prep. Then I trained with the pastry chef for three weeks so I could cover for her while she was on her honeymoon. I didn't care for her much. But while she was gone, the servers said my desserts were twice as good as hers. Take that, stuck up Johnson and Wales jerkface. Jazz Fest time rolled around. I was working Garde-Manger. It was one of the most difficult stations in the kitchen. It was the litmus test. If you could survive this station, you could probably survive them all. There was no ticket machine in this station. All orders were verbalized to you across the noisy kitchen. You could take a few notes, but mostly you had to remember a string of orders in your head. It was a particularly rough night in pantry. I was new, but I knew it was a pantry heavy night and I took a beating. I lived in the weeds all night. As chef walked upstairs, she said to stop in the office on my way out. Great. I'm about to get fired. I close up my station and rinse the salty crust of sweat off my face. I knock on the office door, walk in in with my knives in hand and my street clothes on, and sit down. “Val, you're too hard on yourself. You're doing a great job, and I'm giving you a raise.” I think I almost passed out.
Jazz Fest was a great time to cook in the French Quarter. I saw Cassandra Wilson sitting in the patio as I slung fried oyster salads. Taj Majal walked right in the back door of the kitchen. I could have been mildly delirious with awe, but I shook his hand and he must have been about seven feet tall, mumbling something to me in jumbled Creole French as far as I could tell. Lenny Kravitz came hauling ass through the side door of the kitchen, made a lap around chef, and then proceeded behind the line, high five-ing and kissing people, proclaiming his love for his dinner.
When I ended up on the line, it was the first time in the eleven-year history of the restaurant that we operated with an all female line. They warned me of the heat. Typically in the 120-130 degree range in the summer. On their first night on the line, almost everyone puked, passed out, or went stark raving mad from having their brains scrambled. I made it through fairly unscathed, but with the nickname “Strawberry Shortcake” due to my hue. The restaurant was closed on Sundays. So, on Saturday nights we all sat around and told our battle stories, polishing off all of the open bottles of wine in the house. But it was Jazz Fest, so this was a bigger, badder night than usual. The front of the house manager kept sending me to the wine cellar to get more bottles after we polished off the open ones. I had very little wine knowledge, but went for the old ones, the dusty ones, the ones with ink marks or wax blots or ribbons or something expensive looking. He kept shaking his head with every choice I made but kept sending me back for more. We had to tone it down a little after that weekend. I had picked out bottles worth over a thousand dollars that night. Whoops. An honest mistake. Sunday mornings a bunch of us would head to New Orleans East or the West Bank for pho. We were fairly out of place in the predominantly Vietnamese neighborhoods. It was usually skinny chef Stephen, crooked uni-browed ubergreek Dimitri and I, and some favorite servers and fellow line monkeys. They liked us because we knew how to tip and we knew how to order in Vietnamese. Always choosing the breakfast trinity of beer in the budweiser variety, soda chanh (sparkling water over muddled limes and sugar) and cafe sua da (espresso steeped into a cup with sweetened condensed milk and served over ice). They eyed us, with barely negligible nods of approval as we saturated our noodles with swirls of hoisin, sprouts, basil, jalapenos, sriracha, and far too much fish sauce.
I think I spent the next two days sleeping. And then I went in search of Susan Spicer. I showed up one afternoon with my resume, a twenty page portfolio of my menus (courtesy of Mr. Jon Stevens), a notebook, a few pens, and all of the courage and optimism I could muster. We spoke briefly on the courtyard. She said that she didn't really have any open positions at the moment, and asked for my notebook to jot down the names of a few of her colleagues that were looking for help. She got as far as Gautreaux's when I politely interrupted her. “Chef, I came here to work for you. Just let me know when something opens up.” We shook hands, and I went back to my reality—slinging overpriced fried pickles and watered down drinks at the Cajun Cabin. Just after Mardi Gras, and the seventeen-hour work days, and the influx of tourist germs, I got pneumonia. I stood in scalding hot showers twice a day just to breathe. It didn't help that my apartment had no heat and we had a bit of a cold spell and I was pretty sure that the place was haunted. I was sleeping on the floor by the oven. It didn't even have proper windows that shut. They were little louvered glass hurricane windows. If you wanted to break in to my place, all you had to do was pop out the glass panes, yoink yoink yoink, and climb in. I remember thinking my mom would freak out if she saw how I was living. But one day, in a fevered haze, I found a note that my neighbor (a friend of a friend from Champaign-Urbana, and the G.M. Of Bayona) left on my door.
Come to Bayona. Chef has something for you.
I was incredibly ill, but sucked it up and went in to see her. She had created a position for me. Start in dessert/pantry prep, train in pastry kitchen, take over for pastry chef while she is on vacation, move on to garde-manger. It was quite literally a dream come true. The beginning was as you would expect. I tried to shake off the intimidating aspect of it all. People were nice. But I felt so under-schooled and so obviously green. I worked in the dessert plating station for a few days, setting up garnishes for expo, doing random prep. Then I trained with the pastry chef for three weeks so I could cover for her while she was on her honeymoon. I didn't care for her much. But while she was gone, the servers said my desserts were twice as good as hers. Take that, stuck up Johnson and Wales jerkface. Jazz Fest time rolled around. I was working Garde-Manger. It was one of the most difficult stations in the kitchen. It was the litmus test. If you could survive this station, you could probably survive them all. There was no ticket machine in this station. All orders were verbalized to you across the noisy kitchen. You could take a few notes, but mostly you had to remember a string of orders in your head. It was a particularly rough night in pantry. I was new, but I knew it was a pantry heavy night and I took a beating. I lived in the weeds all night. As chef walked upstairs, she said to stop in the office on my way out. Great. I'm about to get fired. I close up my station and rinse the salty crust of sweat off my face. I knock on the office door, walk in in with my knives in hand and my street clothes on, and sit down. “Val, you're too hard on yourself. You're doing a great job, and I'm giving you a raise.” I think I almost passed out.
Jazz Fest was a great time to cook in the French Quarter. I saw Cassandra Wilson sitting in the patio as I slung fried oyster salads. Taj Majal walked right in the back door of the kitchen. I could have been mildly delirious with awe, but I shook his hand and he must have been about seven feet tall, mumbling something to me in jumbled Creole French as far as I could tell. Lenny Kravitz came hauling ass through the side door of the kitchen, made a lap around chef, and then proceeded behind the line, high five-ing and kissing people, proclaiming his love for his dinner.
When I ended up on the line, it was the first time in the eleven-year history of the restaurant that we operated with an all female line. They warned me of the heat. Typically in the 120-130 degree range in the summer. On their first night on the line, almost everyone puked, passed out, or went stark raving mad from having their brains scrambled. I made it through fairly unscathed, but with the nickname “Strawberry Shortcake” due to my hue. The restaurant was closed on Sundays. So, on Saturday nights we all sat around and told our battle stories, polishing off all of the open bottles of wine in the house. But it was Jazz Fest, so this was a bigger, badder night than usual. The front of the house manager kept sending me to the wine cellar to get more bottles after we polished off the open ones. I had very little wine knowledge, but went for the old ones, the dusty ones, the ones with ink marks or wax blots or ribbons or something expensive looking. He kept shaking his head with every choice I made but kept sending me back for more. We had to tone it down a little after that weekend. I had picked out bottles worth over a thousand dollars that night. Whoops. An honest mistake. Sunday mornings a bunch of us would head to New Orleans East or the West Bank for pho. We were fairly out of place in the predominantly Vietnamese neighborhoods. It was usually skinny chef Stephen, crooked uni-browed ubergreek Dimitri and I, and some favorite servers and fellow line monkeys. They liked us because we knew how to tip and we knew how to order in Vietnamese. Always choosing the breakfast trinity of beer in the budweiser variety, soda chanh (sparkling water over muddled limes and sugar) and cafe sua da (espresso steeped into a cup with sweetened condensed milk and served over ice). They eyed us, with barely negligible nods of approval as we saturated our noodles with swirls of hoisin, sprouts, basil, jalapenos, sriracha, and far too much fish sauce.
I cut back my hours a little at the place on Bourbon and spent my time working and running amok with the Bayona crew. We worked really hard putting out beautiful food. I loved showing up in the morning to the smell of veal stock and the duck in the smoker for the cashew butter and smoked duck sandwich with pepper jelly. There were crispy sweetbreads, beets, and potatoes blanketed in lemony beurre blanc. Roasted chicken with thyme honey, the best potato gratin I have ever had—complete with demi glace and loads of herbs. Eggplant caviar and amberjack and mustard cream braised rabbit. It was the best smelling, best looking kitchen in the world as far as I was concerned. And out on the town, we were rock stars. Culinary royalty. Not me, exactly, as I was just tagging along, the new girl. But bartenders cleared bar stools for us. The owner of Jacques-Imo's fed us six courses of smoked salmon cheesecake, fried oysters in garlic oil, crawfish pie, stuffed puppy drum, crab bisque, shrimp remoulade, chocolate bread pudding, and six rounds of whiskey on the house. It was a magical time. We loved the Saturn Bar, with the twisted piles and layers of vintage loveliness. We sat cross legged on pillows at the Dragon's Den with spring rolls and late night mai tais. There were burgers and stuffed baked potatoes at the Port of Call, incomplete without at least two monsoons. Rum, fruit punch, rum, and then some more rum. We hit up the Clover Grill at all hours, with their fluffy waffles, hub cap hamburgers, and sobering brightness. At Koop's we feasted on lamb ribs, crawfish beignets, and rabbit jambalaya as the sun came up on Decatur Street. We hung out at strip clubs, drank filthy martinis at Snug Harbor, and did late night laundry at Checkpoint Charlie's.
The three of us, Stephen, Dimitri and I once rolled in to Ernest K. Doe's bar in the treme. The Mother In Law Lounge. It was around four in the morning. There was no reason for us to knock on his door at this hour. But hell, why not. He and his wife lived there, the living room around the bar. We saw the faint glow of their late night television show. We knocked a time or two. Then we saw movement. Here he came, in a bathrobe with about seventeen gold rings on his fingers and his hair a little crooked. But he let our sorry asses in. We sat in the living room on his couch for a bit, his wife in her bathrobe as well, seemingly undisturbed by our arrival. He smoked cigarettes while he poured our cocktails and told us stories. Clicking his nails on the bar and stirring his gin and tonic, with the amount of southern hospitality that one would expect at this time of the morning, after all. This is N'awlins. It was just another day in the life. Perpetual Mardi Gras. At least that's what they say. In this city, Mardi Gras lasts as long as you want it to.