Gluten Free Breeze (formerly Brendygirl) Blog

Best Food: Hushpuppies! Good enuff to make me howl for more! Pralines- gluten-free!

Celiac.com Sponsor (A13):
Saddest: Couldn't try the famous beignets!

Worst Restaurants: HerbSaint--they didn't have the food listed on the online menu! ugh! And it was COLD in there.

Dick & Jenny's: expensive food and they use JIFFY mix for their cornbread. (not gluten-free)

I got by eating seafood salads sans croutons in restaurants for lunches and instant grits, candy, chips, and hot chocolate I brought for eating in my hotel room for breakfast or snacks.

In general, my friend, a native, agreed that the food is not up to it's normal status since there are all different staff working in the city-many permanently relocated after Katrina- and restaurants just trying to make do. Plus, as a frequent traveler, the food seemed more expensive than comparable fare at other destinations in the U.S.

(Billed as "touristy" by our native friends, we didn't get to try Emeril's restaurant.)

ELLEN DEGENERES was COOL! I wasn't particularly excited about seeing Ellen-a native N'orleansian- but she was COOLER and FUNNIER than I'd expected. We kept being forced to applaud Tide detergent- who sponsored the holiday lights she was there to fire up at Jackson Square- but there were hardly any lights and that part was quite disappointing. The JAZZ music was AWESOME, tho, and we were interviewed by the newspaper there, too.

I was impressed by my first trip to N.Orleans. I stayed in the French Quarter-which is on higher ground than other areas so wasn't destroyed by Katrina- but there were still lots of signs of the Storm...bent (very bent, like V shaped) street signs, closed restaurants and businesses, fewer people than normal (from what they tell me- this was a plus for me), and it's true--ALL TALK turns to Katrina at some point, and lots of reconstruction. My pal gave the example of a conversation: "I love your green shoes." "Thanks." "Yeah, I remember the green shoes I had. They got lost in Katrina."

I had my lovely pal show me the devastated parts and that was interesting. Lots of new construction going on everywhere. Lots of new roofs. Some trailers. I could see where part of a bridge had been blown off and rebuilt. I saw fancy suburban homes and a fancy gated community (Saints players lived there by a manmade lake) with the brick exteriors broken down and vacant, but many were already rebuilt and occupied. Most of the people whom we talked to didn't seem sad about it, they were kind of happy about using the insurance money to UPGRADE and Remodel their homes to make them better than before. My friend lives in Slidell and said her home is 85% new. My friend's old high school buddy who works at the casino works on his house every day before his shift. He is building a cement wall around his house now. His pool is unusable. He'd bought his home 3 mos. before Katrina. A friend's young daughter who works at the mall said lots of people call off work and don't work hard because FEMA is paying their rent or they're living in FEMA trailers, so they aren't motivated to work. Another friend's husband said many natives are sad and angry and are drinking away their pain from after the storm.

The market and cafes in the French Quarter reminded me of France itself. Saturday night was very BUSY on Bourbon Street... Great music and ROWDY crowd--just like on TV- "Cops: New Orleans". On weeknights there was an abundance of nightlife- we met with my pals' friends that she reunited with from back in the high school days take us to a variety of places from the Ritz hotel lounge to hole in the wall places. The weather was ok, blustery at night. We went to the infamous cemetery with the spooky and fancy and OLD mausoleums.

The Southern people are very nice, but they are SLOW. We had bad service in general and difficulty resolving issues like room service charges when we didn't order it and getting locked outside in the jacuzzi at the hotel. haha

The city looked JUST LIKE what I had seen a few days before in the movie, DEJA VU with Denzel Washington. Brad Pitt was rumored to be in town when I was there.