The Food of New Orleans

I failed at being vegan in New Orleans. I stayed vegetarian, but there were many places where vegan would have been plain lettuce, and that's no fun. So I did my best. We ate some really, really good food!

This was the first meal after we arrived, and it did happen to be vegan - a veggie pita sandwich that turned out, for some reason, to be TWO sandwiches. Which I ate most of anyway.

Thursday night my sister and I went to the Palace Cafe, because it was close to our hotel and got positive reviews in our guidebooks. There was nothing vegetarian on the menu, but they brought me a pasta primavera that was very good. We also got some great desserts at the Palace Cafe which, sadly, we failed to take pictures of.

We had to get beignets at Cafe du Monde! Hillary and I went on Thursday and waited about 15 minutes, but when we went back with Mom the line was huge and it took a good 45 minutes of standing in the heat. But we were rewarded with deliciousness!

Another thing the internet said we had to do was get hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's. They were tasty! Unfortunately we went on a cemetery tour immediately following, and standing around in the heat drinking a cocktail gave me the worst headache of my life.

Pre-headache:

Our big splurgey meal was at Bayona, where I'd heard they did a good job of catering to vegans. Here's what we ate:

Mom started with cream of cauliflower soup.

Hillary and I got the goat cheese toast appetizer, which was topped with sauteed mushrooms.

Mom's entree, a roasted pork chop with brussels sprouts, turnips, and apples:

My - vegan! - french lentils and mashed potatoes with a mustard sauce, roasted brussels sprouts, turnips, and apples.

Hillary's salmon with gewurtztraminer sauce, butternut squash puree, roasted potatoes, and green beans.

The desserts were insane, too.

Mocha banana torte:

Lemon semifreddo with blackberry sauce:

Mango cheesecake flan with blackberries:

Ooof.

Our next big meal was the Sunday jazz brunch at the Commander's Palace. You get three courses - appetizer, entree, and dessert - whether you want them or not. Because everyone needs dessert at brunch.

Here is our first course - I had a caesar-type salad, Hillary had a mixed greens salad with strawberries and apples, and Mom had this crazy fruit salad thing.

And then the entrees.

Hillary's crab and eggs:
Mom's cajun crusted fish:

And my bananas foster pancakes. This is the major downside of being vegetarian at a nice brunch restaurant, because every other entree had meat in it. So I had to order these pancakes - which were obviously delicious - but then I ALSO had to order dessert. Utterly ridiculous.

Here's the dessert, which did end up being small so that was good. Chocolate cookie dough bread pudding.

Mom's strawberry shortcake:

And Hillary's bread pudding souffle with whiskey cream sauce.

For our last meal in town, we went to the Gumbo Shop for cheap, traditional New Orleans food. It turned out to be a really cute place and our waitress was FANTASTIC - super weird and cute and funny. We love Bridget at the Gumbo Shop!

Mom got red beans and rice.

And I got the Vegetarian Entree of the Day, which turned out to be black beans and rice.

Hillary got the Cajun Sampler, but I'm not sure what the samples were of. Red beans and rice and jambalaya, maybe?

We all really liked our meals there and I would definitely recommend it. I'd recommend everywhere we went in New Orleans, actually. It's just a really, really great food city. I don't know how many more days I could have handled, though! Without gaining a million pounds, that is.

Look what I found at the Atlanta airport on the way home! Let the detox begin.