Happy New Year…All Ya’ll!    We are thinking this may just be the best season to enjoy the Big Easy.

Do you love fabulous, layered sauces, and turtle soup enriched with long simmered meaty broth? Light as air biscuits served with duck confit? Grilled shrimp and homemade Boudin and Andouille Sausage? Crispy on the outside, sweet and luscious fried tomatoes? Cheese infused grits, Bourbon infused bread pudding with a meringue bonnet? Signature cocktails, and of course perfect service? The food scene here is the heart of this city. No where has the most great eats per capita. Training ground for Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme, their restaurants (NOLA and K-Paul) did not disappoint and lived up to their reputations.

No more expensive, nor hard to reserve than at our finest San Francisco restaurants, we have picked one killer restaurant a day while we are here. I only wish my mom, a wonderful chef, were here to share this with us. I call her daily just to list exactly what we ate and any food history we have gleaned, as she swoons at the descriptions, and says, “We have to learn how to make that!” Photos just don’t do it justice, as you have never seen anything look more like canned dog food than delicious seafood gumbo!  Gumbo derived its name from Africans who arrived in Mississippi, knowing okra as “gombo”, its Bantu name.

We have heard some fine musicians on the street, especially a fine singer/clarinetist named Darlene. We had to make sure we had fistfuls of dollar bills in hand to support the hardworking street musicians.

Also the wonderful singer/coronet player, Chuck Brackman, who gave us goosebumps at Commander’s Palace when he responded to my request for his trio’s rendition of Sugar Blues. Yep, really….chills and thrills.

Bourbon Street is an inebriated tourist area, with lots of performers, whether they intend to be seen as such or not.

 We are given a taste of Mardi Gras…not so different from Castro Street, San Francisco at Halloween.

Lety felt compelled to bling up and pretend it was Fat Tuesday albeit, a bit early…

The Crescent City is so named because it was built on a big bend in the river. Free ferries cross the river to Algiers, allowing a different perspective of the City. Working waterfronts, with tugboats moving barges up and down river, mix with tourist paddle-wheel ships.

So much style here! Two tango events we attended required us to get farpitzed more than in any other locales where we’ve visited the Tango community. Lety got groomed while we had a Tango lesson across the street. Groomers with topiary!

With Sugar Bowl two days away, the city is filling up fast. If anything it only makes for more music as 14 high school marching bands from all over the nation have gathered to perform together. The street performers are geared up for the start of high season and there is free entertainment everywhere we walk….and we do have to walk A LOT to digest before the next sumptuous repast!