A Last Meal in the Holy City

They have everything here. Plate lunches, fried chicken, po’boys. For some reason, they have salads. I assume it’s for the same reason that its bigger brother Jacques-Imo’s has an acorn squash stuffed with vegetables: not everyone who shows up here knows what they’re doing. But my merry band does. Everyone present today is here with purpose. We have come to the Holy City of New Orleans for a last hurrah. I’m leaving the country soon, and I don’t know when or if I’ll be back. We come to feast one last time. To make mockery of good sense and reasonable limitations as we have done so many times before. I haven’t even ordered my lunch yet, and I’m already drowning in the nostalgia of every calorie I’ve eaten in this city.

Everyone orders po’boys. Fried green tomato and shrimp rémoulade, slow roasted duck, fried catfish, and fried shrimp. All king sized. It’s like we’re queuing up the greatest hits on the jukebox. While we wait for them to come out of the kitchen, we discuss whether or not we should have gotten a french fry po’boy. We share stories of previous attempts to endeavor through one. Someone tells of blacking out half way through; no one makes a claim to having finished one. We decide against it. It’s going to be a long day, and no one wants to fall so early in the march.

Our po’boys land on the table like four paper-wrapped depth charges. A half second of regret: We should have just shared two sandwiches. But it’s too late now. We break the masking tape holding the sandwiches at bay. Each one rolls out an over-stuffed, glorious mess. The duck is so drenched in gravy that it has already passed the limit of its structural integrity. The shrimp po’boy is bloated. There has to be a full pound of fried shrimp in there, all stuffed into twelve inches of bread.

I ordered the catfish, and as I break the flakey flesh with my incisors, I wonder if there is a more perfect sandwich. I’ve travelled a lot in my life, and I’ve seen some beautiful things done with meat and bread, but nothing as primal as this. Rationally considered, the catfish is a disgusting animal. My dad would tell an old joke, asking, “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?” After a pause, he would dryly declare, “One’s a scum-sucking bottom feeder and the other one’s a fish.” But when you jacket that scum sucker’s fillets in well-seasoned cornmeal and drop them into hot oil, something magical happens. The flesh and flavor soften. The ugly, wide-mouthed lake monster is now delicate, tender. As at home in a pool of buerre noisette as it is on bed of French fries and hushpuppies. But today, it’s riding on a pillow of Leidenheimer French bread, where all great fried seafood dreams of being.

I want to take my time here. I know this is the last one for a long time. I do my best to eat slowly, to savor, to enjoy, but all too soon, it’s over. I pick up any bits that might have fallen out until the grease stains on the paper wrapping are all I have left. My comrades are all equally as dazed as I am. The friend eating the duck has had to get a fork to clean up what’s left of his. The sides we ordered—jambalaya, potato salad, gumbo—came out at some point, but we were too busy to notice. We’re stuffed. We can barely move. But before we leave, we’ll eat those too.

Back in the car now, and off to the next stop. There is a lot of heavy breathing coming from the back seat. We head towards Uptown to Hansen’s Sno-Bliz for snoballs. It’s not particularly hot outside today, but everyone says they need a little sugar to balance themselves out. No one thinks about the big cups of sweet tea we just drank with lunch.

Everyone but me strategizes their order before we even arrive. What size? What flavor? With condensed milk or without? I don’t have to think too much. I’m thoroughly old-fashioned and I only want one thing: cream of nectar with condensed milk. I couldn’t tell you what cream of nectar tastes like other than pink, fuzzy, and dirty jokes. But it’s only thing I ever get there.

The sign on the side of Hansen’s is repainted every year to say how long they’ve been open. Seventy-seven this year. Inside, there are no empty surfaces: Everywhere there could be a sign or photograph there is one, history piled on top of itself. Over and over again you see the phrase, “There are no shortcuts to quality.” The syrups are made from scratch, and the ice is shaved in a machine that Ernest Hansen built by hand. Accordingly, the line moves slowly; there are no shortcuts in it either.

As I inch closer and closer to the counter, I realize that it isn’t a snoball shop I’m standing in but a living memory. I am one more person in a long line of people who have measured their childhood summers by this place. I imagine that my picture is on the wall somewhere. We’ve all been here. We’ve all sat outside and dripped syrup on our clothes. We’ve all waited with anticipation every year for them to change that number on the wall outside, and we have all been touched by sadness every time they close once the weather gets cold. The shop holds the memories of the family that owns it, but Hansen’s is everyone’s memory.

We roll the windows down as we cruise down Tchoupitoulas. We are headed out to New Orleans East, to the Vietnamese section of the city. By now, the first signs of fatigue are starting to show in my friends’ faces, but I don’t care. I want a banh mi and pandan cake. No one argues. They all know that my appetite is stronger than their will. The drive is a good thirty minutes, so two of them take the opportunity to try to sleep off what we’ve done so far. I’m undeterred. I’m trying to fill myself for the journey over the Pacific. I don’t have time to be full.

We pull off Chef Menteur Highway and into the parking lot of Dong Phuong Bakery. The smell of fresh bread envelopes the car. The tiny storefront is packed. All of Orleans Parish is in here buying hot bread and fresh pastries. We survey the menu board. Do we want meatballs or sausages? We definitely need liver pâté and cold cuts, but grilled pork is always good too. This is lunch number two, but there are still so many cravings. Complicating our decision is the fact that almost everything is $3.25. It would be wrong to not take advantage of such a deal. We get to the front of the line and order a sack of sandwiches. Plus the cake.

There are no tables at Dong Phuong, so we out in the car. Crumbs are going everywhere. I have aioli dripping down my chin and pig fat smeared across my lips. I feel pretty. We stop to snap pictures of our sandwich innards before trading. It’s hard to decide which one is the best or when is the right time to stop eating, but the pickles are too crispy and the peppers too spicy to stop. I power through mine and jump out of the car to knock the crumbs off. My friends are all sitting quietly inside. A couple sandwiches are only half eaten, but no one wants to give up. With one hand on the wheel and another on my cake, I maneuver back onto the highway. The road back to the city moves a little slower.

No one is saying much—they’re too busy digesting. I’m growing increasingly wistful. The reality of the situation is starting to settle over me. Up until recently, this is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be, but now I’m leaving. Each bite is just another goodbye. I’ve always told people that my long-term goal is to retire to New Orleans, get fat, and die. I’d say I wanted to be buried under one of those big houses on St. Charles, with full confidence that I would make an excellent ghost. I could easily envision burning up all eternity, shaking the rafters at night, and sitting on the porch drinking Sazeracs in the afternoon. It wouldn’t be very far from my corporeal way of life, and for a moment, I wonder if its worth giving that up. I have spent my entire life wondering if you can ever go home again, which is why I’m leaving these shores for a world nearer to where I was born. No one knows if the long arc of the story will call me back to Hellenic acid trip of a city.

We stop over in Gentilly. Looming in front of us are two giant signs side by side, one yellow, one green; and they both read, in bold letters, McKenzie’s Chicken In-A-Box. My heart stirs. This one is going to hurt. My love for fried chicken is intense and pure. Roasting and grilling are nice enough, but chicken does not reach its full gustatory potential until it has been baptized in a deep fryer. New Orleans is studded with chapels devoted to the golden bird, but McKenzie’s is a cathedral.

The first room of the restaurant is mostly empty, the shell of a legendary bakery of the same name that has long since passed into the realm of local mythology. The true Holy of Holies is in a hallway off to the side. This is where my friends and I stand slack jawed in adoration. It doesn’t matter how many times I have been here. I still feel moved at the beauty of the place. It is an exercise in a uniquely Southern asceticism. The walls are white. The floors are checkered tile. There are no tables or counters to eat at. Everything is to go. There are no soda fountains, but they do have a vending machine. It is just us, the women behind the counter, and the birds.

The days when the menu was just a bunch of copy paper posted on the wall are gone. I gaze up at a trinity of digital monitors, and I order two boxes of ten chicken pieces and an order of necks. My heart trembles with anticipation, and I ask the gods if I am worthy enough to be blessed just one more time. We set out to eat them on the trunk of the car; I sit the boxes down with the tenderness one reserves for a lover or a newborn.

I open the boxes like I’m unsealing the Ark of the Covenant. The heat against my hands. The steam rushing up. The bright Southern sun pours into my treasure chest. Angels sing. I jump in before anyone else. I grab my favorite pieces. One breast, one leg. The crust crackling like a snare drum. These chickens have been seasoned and fried in exactly the right way. Not too much crust and not too little. They are peppery. A ruddy, golden brown, still shimmering with hot grease.

I grow wild eyed as I plunge my teeth into the tender meat. My entire nervous system is shot through with hot juices. I cuss loudly. I start dancing in the parking lot. My friends are already laughing, because they feel it too. This is a good life. We are here in this moment, sitting on the back of the car with fried birds in our mouths. We are happy and we are free. The road is forking. We will never be here again.

We cross the city for what has to be the eighth time of the day. There are no straight roads in my memory, and there aren’t many in New Orleans. The Bywater lies not too far from Gentilly, but no one rushes to their doom or to their farewells. We’re headed to Elizabeth’s, because this is the last supper I have here. I want everyone too full to be emotional when I kiss them goodbye tonight.

It’s dark inside the restaurant. All you get are candles and the company of your friends. We start perusing the menu. My friends are lost in all the choice, but I am in my natural habitat: I’m about to ask the kitchen to bring out everything. I look at my friends gathered around the table with love and tenderness and tell them, “Tonight, I am going to kill you.”

I almost sing my order, “To start, I want the chicken livers with pepper jelly, two orders of praline bacon, and oysters as many ways as you’ve got them. For the mains, I need the whole fried snapper and the blackened drum. The calf’s liver in gravy would be beautiful, and once, I had a pork osso bucco the size of a cantaloupe and I would like to have again. And the sides! Bring out the bacon-braised cabbage, the collard greens, the beets, the okra, the green beans, the potato salad, and the sweet potato casserole. We’re going to need some extra cornbread too. And don’t worry. We’ll still have room for the Ooey Gooey Cake at the end. We’re professionals.”

In the middle of the meal, I wonder if there is anyone else on this earth that is eating as well as we are. Maybe somewhere else in New Orleans, but certainly not anywhere else. There are at least six different animals laid out on the table, and a week’s worth of groceries attending them. That is just the way things are down here. Gluttony is not a warning sign so much as it is a way of life. You aren’t full until the only place left to put it is your pocket.

This is what I think as we stumble outside some two hours later, drunk on food as much as we are on wine. How can I make this feeling last a little longer? I want more food, more drink, more time. I want to feel like this forever. I dart up the levee and start looking for a way to jump the wall. I end up slumped down against the base singing “Evangeline.” As the song winds down, I know that I, too, am being pulled away.

We are at the point where we couldn’t possibly eat anything else. I know that this bacchanal is almost at an end, but I have to do one more thing. Angelo Brocato's Ice Cream is the love of my life, and tonight, it’s the last of my many goodbyes.

I lost my mind the first night I came here. After getting buzzed on what remains the best blood orange ice in the world, I got in line again and ordered a box of two dozen cannoli. I ate them on the drive home that night; I ate them in bed before I slept; and I finished them off when I woke up the next morning. I had so much sugar in my system that I saw the planets and stars lose their place in the sky. Time itself wheeled away. I was mad with joy. I was back at Brocato's that afternoon.

So this is why we are here. In the twenty-odd years I lived in America, there was never a place more important to me. Living a couple hours outside the city, I couldn’t go to New Orleans without at least one stop for cannoli or gelato. If Angelo Brocato were a religion, I would convert. It is for me, and probably not a few others, the spiritual locus of their relationship to the city. I have tried every flavor of gelato in the case, and I have eaten almost every kind of pastry they sell. It is a full, complete, and unconditional love. It is why standing in this line tonight, I feel no sadness. There is no sense of loss or grief. I am here in celebration of what has been a life well lived and of even better meals. And as I sit here now, with my gelato and my cannoli and my cheesecake, I know I can go away and this will all still be here. I know one day I’ll eat like this again.

I walk with my friends out onto Carrollton Avenue. Our bodies and stomachs are exhausted. None of us will think of eating for a week. Though for a moment, I think that coffee and beignets will keep me awake for the drive ahead. We light fires for home, but it’ll be a long time before I get there.