New Orleans without Bourbon

The New Orleans so often nailed into a hole of spring breakers, Mardi Gras, and gluttonous eating isn’t the only one in existence. The one that treasures and goes to great extents, hardly existent in this world of turnovers, to preserve tradition, historical riches, and a sometimes tumultuous past proves to be the more authentic version for the modern traveler interested in discovering overbearingly greasy, and therefore delicious, po’boys at a hole-in-the-wall like Domilise’s, bartended by a man who has worked there for 35 years, or the poignant and also humorous works within The Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

And while well-known New Orleans tourist activities like cemetery tours, walking-thru’s of the Garden District, and shopping on Magazine Street may at first hold little interest for the traveler looking to hang with the locals, consider that they are recommended by every guidebook for very delightful reasons. But with the intent to be surrounded by Southern accents in mind, eschew Bourbon Street for the Frenchmen Street clubs on a weekday night, when New Orleanians dominate the scene; trade in the more touristy St. Charles Streetcar for the air-conditioned Canal Streetcar, brought back in April 2004 after a 40-year disappearance; and venture to the imaginative statues in the Sculpture Garden at the out-of-the-way New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans natives relaxing or drawing while stretched out across shaded benches included). For the truly daring ready to indulge in the stereotypical Southern diner, Betsy’s Pancake House, with bouffant-adorned women and enormously tacky flowers reminiscent of an ‘80s wedding bouquet, offers an authentic Southern breakfast, with toast (don’t even consider asking for whole wheat), eggs, pancakes, sausage, etc., to bring you closer to your 5-pounds-gained vacation goal.

Discovering authentic New Orleans doesn’t have to be all tours and no drink or food, though. Just consider the upscale Creole and Southern cuisine, like turtle soup and bread pudding, served in Commander’s Palace, the top floor of which, in its high-end decadence, is hard to imagine having once been a brothel. And although the Southern Comfort Cocktail Tour is technically a tour, and one that goes on Bourbon Street at that, when you can make your proper older tour guide repeat Super Cowboy Cocksucker, a drink, the tour morphs into a bar-hopping extravaganza of drinking factoids. It’s not quite the image of Bourbon during Mardi Gras, but isn’t it better that way?

Quick Tips:

Stepping out of the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, if coming in summer, you will feel your pores start to open in reaction to an air filled with water particles and a sun so intense that even squinting doesn’t guarantee freedom from the glare – perfection after an insanely long New York winter! But if the heat isn’t something you adore as much as a New Yorker finally shedding her winter coat, New Orleans is best visited during the spring or fall, when the dazzling garden area of Commander’s may even have it doors open.

Long used to hearing the rule that you never travel alone in New Orleans’ cemeteries for fear of a mugger jumping out behind one of the towering vaults, I was surprised to spot couples and even singles exploring the Lafayette Cemetery. What about those ghostly, not-so-dead shadows threatening to make away with your tote? Apparently this advice applies more in the later part of the day, when the sky begins to darken and workers intently restoring tombs no longer surround you, but still, I’d use a tour because I like to leave my risk-taking for more death-defying activities.

Best Way To Get Around:

Seeing how my teeth clanked together as we rode over bumpy, under-construction streets when driving through the burgeoning Warehouse Arts District and traditional Garden District, renting a car in New Orleans doesn’t seem like the most intelligent idea, especially since the streets don’t adhere to the common grid setup, opting instead for a crescent-shaped layout (can you guess why New Orleans is called The Crescent City?).

Streetcars, though a necessary tourist stop, didn’t seem so hot either as we waited at least a half-hour in the sweltering heat for one going to City Park (although three going to the cemeteries did pass by during this time). So, like in many other major cities, walking becomes the sanest option, especially if staying in the French Quarter or Central Business District right next door -- all the better for working off Betsy’s breakfast specials. But if the heat becomes too much, there are always the cabbies, who are the embodiment of New Orleans chattiness and Southern friendliness.

To complete my transformation from modern New York diva (well, sort of) to simple Southern belle (again, sort of) over the course of 3 days, the appropriate accommodation to put up my creaking 22-year-old bones after a 21-hour day was essential. And the Queen & Crescent, almost smack on a corner of New Orleans’ version of Wall Street and blocks away from the French Quarter, provided the much-needed Southern respite away from the often-homogenous crowds of Hiltons and Holiday Inns.

The ultra-polite receptionist, who would be seen as exuding an obvious fakeness in New York, appears genuine in the muggy New Orleans warmth as she strikes up a peppy conversation about the threatening rain outside after, of course, I had just dodge the first few droplets running inside. Such friendliness must be innate to every staff member at the hotel, though, as I was almost taken aback by the glee of a cleaning woman in the elevator who, upon seeing the Roman Candy I managed to snag from the constantly disappearing man in a horse-pulled cart, proceeded to explain that it had been a staple of her summers when she was a wee one and that they were just brimming with pure sugar, inspiring a bit of guilt in my gym-deprived limbs. Even the tired-eyed woman manning the breakfast buffet ($6 for continental) saw me as an understanding soul when she felt comfortable enough to confide into me about a difficult situation she had encountered earlier in the day.

This homey atmosphere continued to flow through the hallways filled with stylish paintings of bygone times and into my luxe queen room, which, with its dim lighting illuminating antique chairs and tables and a flower-print bedspread, made me want to twirl like a blonde Scarlet O’Hara, even if I wouldn’t be so successful in creating the same image in my staple jeans and T-shirt. But when the stark-white marble bathroom is inches away from being larger than my Brooklyn apartment, why would I ever rise out of the deep, encompassing tub, in which I can’t even stretch my 5-foot, 8-inch frame from top to bottom, to settle myself in the smooth wood desk or lie on the soft but sturdy bed? Well, when the stumbling pitch-black darkness of a lights-out room is deep enough to nestle your dragging body into an R.E.M. sleep within 1.248 seconds, sleep does sound pretty tempting, especially after pushing through the stormy heat of a city by the water.

Note to the Weary: Before conceding to the seductive eye-batting of the queen-size enormity, secure an uninterrupted sleep by ensuring the alarm button of the radio is securely in the off position. As I did not take such an intelligent foresight into account, the thump of hip-hop and pop beats and Beyonce’s grating voice (at least this early) was my destined greeting at 4am one fateful morning.

My first stop in New Orleans, after throwing my bags into the Queen & Crescent hotel room and taking a breather to gap at the monster of a bathroom, was Rio Mar. It was here that I was introduced to the interconnectedness of everyone in New Orleans, as Laura proceeded to be greeted by friends at two tables out of the maybe four occupied in the restaurant, and I’m sure, if we had dug deep enough, she could have found some obscure relation to at least one person at the others.

It was also here where I learned that, whereas you would be labeled a functioning alcoholic almost anywhere else in the U.S., it is practically expected you have at least one drink, usually wine, during a weekday lunch, if not two or even three. Although scared that, being up since 4am, my head would roll over into the empty mussel shells at the end, I succumbed, totally against my will, mind you, to having a glass of soft white Spanish wine, the perfect combo of dry and sweet flavors, in addition to my constantly refilled glass of cooling iced tea.

But, oh, the food… served in the form of tapas, dishes dominated by fish and alterations of classic New Orleans foods fitting with the Spanish ambience were what one would expect from an international restaurant in the foodie capital of the US. Hearing that their fish of the day with caper tomato relish was escolar, which, as we were informed, happens to be illegal in New York City, that, in my fit to suddenly feel like an outlaw Bonnie, was checked off the paper list of tapa plates in front of us. This perfectly seasoned slice of tender fish barely came in second as my favorite dish under the oysters Rio Mar, a pot-pie sort of concoction of oysters, spinach, and bread crumbs that was thick but not heavy.

Then came out a flurry of other small dishes within seconds of each other: their ceviche of the day, made with sumptuously plump pieces of shrimp and fish; mussels with thick pieces of spicy chorizo; peppers stuffed with fresh crawfish; marinated olives that tasted like they had been flown from Italy that morning; fried oysters al ajillo with a garlic-and-parsley sauce, the crunchy outside a seamless exterior to the soft, not chewy, oysters; and the hangar steak, a thick cut better than a filet mignon, with onions and yucca. But I’m not done. Still feeling a tad empty from the sole nourishment of a bag of chips on my 3-hour flight, even after Laura ordered this massive assortment of tapas for the two of us, all under $8 apiece, I go for the tres leches cake, their specialty, which was pretty much a moist pound cake soaked in three different flavorful milks.

Even knowing I had exceeded anyone’s calorie allotment for the day, I thought, if this is New Orleans food, bring it on.

When I hear "casino," I think Las Vegas; college students descending en masse upon Indian reservations; women contently clanging at the slot machines from 2pm to 2am; Paris Hilton; achingly bright, headache-inducing lights... in other words, a grim hell not even the Marquis de Sade could bear for eternity. The Besh Steakhouse, though, fit snugly into a rear corner of the sprawling and decidedly not tacky--with bright, swirling colors adorning the floor and walls--Harrah’s in New Orleans, which refuses, like New Orleans with its Bourbon Street reputation, to adhere to my bleak outlook of the casino genre.

Politely greeted at Besh after finding our way through the dizzying array of gambling tables, and, yes, slot machines, we enter the dimmed, classy interior displaying well-loved Blue Dog paintings by George Rodrigue. Then we, or at least I, am introduced to a subtle courtesy I would encounter again at Commander’s: the laying of the napkin on your lap by your waiter, ensuring you follow the most basic of the etiquette-school rules of dining (yea, yea, so that’s probably not the reason).

After being tended to by our courteous but not overbearing waiter, I start to sip on my deliciously dry Riesling before deciding on the escargot appetizer, which, unknown to me, would come out in true Southern style--fried. Aware that such an aberration would probably never dare be conceived at the snobbish French restaurants where I usually request escargot, I’m hesitant to believe the South could outdo or come close to the holiness that is the culinary art of the French. But, beginning the series of obliterations of my preconceived ideas of the South, the slightly crunchy exterior lets the commonly faint flavor of the escargot flow through, adding a smooth contrast to sometimes too-soft snail, and while not necessarily better than the traditional way of presenting it, it is just as satisfying.

Aware that there really is no point in going to a steakhouse if you turn down the red meat for your entrée, I shy away from the varied seafood portion of the menu and decide on the steak au poivre, going all-out French tonight.

I actually consider thanking them for having to cut off a substantial fatty part of it, because the enormous slab leads me to believe I have been mystically shipped to the Midwest and inadvertently entered in a how-much-can-you-eat contest against men whose veins are practically filled with cow’s blood. Now, ready to indulge in the mass of tender meat, I discover an intense sauce leaving a sharp pepper aftertaste I wish could come after every meal.

My dessert sampler, though, proves to even outdo its previous competition, the meal curving in an upward spiral of satisfaction. Faced with various concoctions of chocolate with fruit insides, it becomes an enormously weighted decision to choose which I could manage to polish off, the cherries soaked in a chocolate-kirsch sorbet being the deeply satisfying winner of them all and the night.

When perusing guidebooks on New Orleans, some expected words fill your eyes: Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street, po’boys, gumbo, cemetery tours, The National D-Day Museum... wait, The National what Museum? Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t a museum dedicated to the day that "will live in infamy" be in, say, Washington, D.C., or how about Normandy? While The National D-Day Museum and the militaristic building that contains it seems a little harsh for the laid-back attitude of a city that prides itself on its food, drink, and nightlife, the museum gracefully accomplishes its bold undertaking –- a sort of historical memorial for those who died that day and a place of reflection for those still alive who served beside them, all the while imbedding the events surrounding World War II and D-Day into the minds of those lucky enough to not have known it in the present tense.

Words, and even sometimes images, about a thing you did not see or event you did not participate in have a way of passing by a brain that blocks out all things of misery. But being that it was the 61st anniversary of the D-Day landing and the 5th anniversary of the museum’s opening, history suddenly made itself intense and piercing through the shuffling walks of aging veterans, accompanied by their, spouses, children, and grandchildren, who can still see themselves as the 22-year-old man landing on the solid beach as others collapsed around them.

Moving away from the bunches of camouflage and formal Army uniforms and the massive but simple Higgins Landing boat inside the entrance, Laura and I begin to move through the exhibits opening up on the second floor. As displays and placards pass by, the creativity with which each exhibit has been assembled and the care that has been taken to erase any striking similarities between exhibits, from the toy soldiers in front of the German, Japanese, and American flags showing how much the Americans were outnumbered to a replica of a large telescope-like viewer they used to spot ships at sea, is astounding. The small viewing centers displaying personal testimony of D-Day veterans scattered throughout the museum continue to emphasize the human element of D-Day when there is no veteran around recalling his memories for an 8-year-old grandchild, while little-known facts around the compelling displays solidify the tortuous nature of the war.

And then there are the starkest elements of the museum, even more poignant than the well-constructed exhibits –- the photos, most resized to overblown proportions. There is the soldier facedown in the sand, as if he had just toppled over; the killed machine gunner with a pool a blood spilling from his limp body as he lie crumpled; and the emaciated faces and bodies of those found dead in a concentration camp’s mass grave after the war’s end, while many other photographs have eyes staring intensely from inside that world, not letting you leave until you’ve seen all one can bear.

Raised in the sticky warmth of Miami, the below-90°F morning heat outside the Lafayette Cemetery rolls off my shoulders as easily as the insults of an impatient Brooklynite truck driver when in my newfound home of New York City. But baring the heat there proves simple after waiting only 2 minutes for the appearance of our Save Our Cemeteries tour guide Gayl, who will help, inside the serene cemetery surroundings, transport me to my high school days of Ann Rice devotion and Gothic industrial music enthusiasm.

Warning us to layer ourselves with sunscreen and ensuring we’d feel the icy touch of a frozen bottle of water if we dared feign even the least bit of heat wooziness, Gayl leads us beyond the entrance walls -- walls that you will later discover are actually one type of tomb from the array of ways New Orleanians have discovered to honor their dead. First, though, Gayl needs to explain her passion –- promoting awareness about the often-deteriorated states of many abandoned family tombs and the restoration needed to keep them from crumbling into pieces of stone. Only through understanding the delicacy of the tombs and the amount of passion put into them by those restoring their intricate artwork and carvings can you proceed in awe through the forgotten vaults and graves, those freshly dug (yes, that’s right, as in underground), and even ones adorned with flowers that change with the season.

Getting back to that concept of underground tombs in New Orleans, Lafayette does, contrary to a popularized myth that there are no underground graves in New Orleans, contain a scattering of such graves, although they are by far outnumbered by the daunting family vaults. As Sybil jokingly explains, "We can’t bury them in the ground –- they’ll miss the Mardi Gras parades!"

The most striking, and also the most depressing, of the vaults are those serving as a sort of mass grave, also called society tombs. They are vaults belonging to clubs, groups, and organizations such as the Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys, boys who were purposefully abandoned by their parents or unintentionally left behind due to the scourge of yellow fever. Whenever one belonging to such an organization died, they were put in these burial places with others who had previously belonged to their society, eerily (somewhat) resembling miniature forms of the mass concentration camp graves found in photos at The National D-Day Museum.

After listening to stories about family lineages that have ended in this cemetery and current ones about to record their history with newly built family vaults, I’m deemed "glistening," instead of using the uncouth word "sweating," by Gayl as we make our way back to the open gates. Glistening, after all, is evidence that you succeeded in making your way through hundreds of years of New Orleans history with only a few droplets of sweat, and maybe a sunburn or two, as scars.

I know of modern art (not a fan), Surrealism (ehh, it’s okay at times), and people like Monet, Picasso, and Van Gogh (all more than a bit strange, if extraordinarily talented), but Southern art? What was this, debutantes at their inaugural ball and close-ups of grits? Obviously my Yankee mind was too naive to decide what to make of such a category, but The Ogden succeeded in showing my know-it-all New Yorker eyes how much depth Southern art can contain and what emotion it can portray.

Knowing quite well my own naivete when it comes to art of any kind, much less the Southern variety, I try to nestle comfortably into a plastic chair within a small theater on the third floor, preparing to learn the reasons behind the creation of Southern art and what it depicts through a fairly short film, narrated by one Morgan Freeman. What I got from the, I’ll admit, only 10 minutes I sat through it was that Southern art is basically, overall, an expression of the connection between a person and a distinct lifestyle and the land they live it out on.

Far from my imagined Southern belle-and-fattening foods scenario, the third floor of The Ogden displays oil colors blended together to portray a mix of bright and subdued hues of the South, the harshness of poor Southern life during The Depression through black-and-white photos, and depictions of what the French Quarter used to be before boas and beads. Particularly striking is a photo obviously trying to catch and intensify every crease and line on a face older than it should be from a life of hard labor in the sun as the mouth sucks back on a cigarette, and just as stunning are photos depicting ‘80s nightlife in the form of dive bars created from shanties you couldn’t imagine to contain more than termites feeding off the dilapidated wood. Moving into the gallery of works by Will Henry Stevens, bursts of color contrast aggressively but beautifully with the black-and-whites.

The third and fourth floors of the museum contain more of what I usually consider first-grader art, otherwise known as modern art. But pieces such as "Drapework," a stunning piece of canvas adorned with bright and pastel colors, and the intricate oil-on-canvas works depicting marshes, lakes, and wildlife make a browse through these floors for a modern-art-hater like myself worth the time, especially with the laughs a painting with Jesus, Elvis, and Robert E. Lee with halos around their heads creates. Even the oversize rocking horse made of linked metal and covered with yarn, beads, strewn necklaces, and more makes me pause for more than a few minutes to try to figure out if the discombobulating streams of materials were placed with a purpose as I finish up, thankfully, without running into a painting entitled "A Man and his Pick-Up Truck."

When a tour guide in New Orleans passes out Mardi Gras beads, it’s a definite sign that unbearable cheesiness is ahead, except, that is, when your guide is Sandra on the Southern Comfort Cocktail Tour.

When Sandra began the tour by emphasizing that this was not a pub crawl, I thought she’d be whispering to the bartenders to water down our drinks with just a bit more ice. But Sandra, once she opened up to our whoppingly large group of three young women, proved to be the most informative, amusing, and friendly tour guide I’ve had in my travels to four continents, but just so you aren’t disappointed when you aren’t seeing two Bourbon Streets at the end of it all, this is definitely not a pub crawl.

Sandra, who, like the other tour guides, caters each tour to the ages and interests of the group, began by giving a bit of drinking history about intoxicated New Orleans, and, describing the drunken antics of past New Orleanians and such factoids as how the word cocktail originated (yep, right here in New Orleans), this wasn’t your high school American history class. But, more importantly, the first drink was offered in what seemed like mere minutes after leaving the Gray Line Tours tent.

With a proper British name, a Pimm’s Cup began our drinking streak through the French Quarter. Interestingly enough, we sampled it at the Napoleon, and the gin-based aperitif, lemon juice, and 7-Up with a slice of cucumber was successful in stopping the "glisten" (not sweat, mind you) that had been covering my skin since exiting my air-conditioned hotel room. But it was only a few minutes before being told to get our booties moving, taking our plastic cups onto the street.

A whirlwind of restaurants, bars, and drinks followed. Antoine’s, the second oldest restaurant in the U.S., has been entered on my Where To Go If I Won The Lottery checklist, their concept of a private waiter you can call on their cell and who can only inherit their jobs through a family member astounding even the most seasoned foodie. Next, a drink made with Southern Comfort, fruit juices, and – prepare yourself – a thin covering of red wine at The Court of Two Sisters somehow results in a fruity but not sickingly sweet taste. After further indulging in a Super Cowboy Cocksucker (Bailey’s, butterscotch, and Southern Comfort – see a pattern here?), which we make Sandra repeat just for the hell of it, in Café Lafitte, the oldest gay bar in the US, we slowly make our way from our only stop on Bourbon Street to Tujague’s, where Sandra buys the final drink made of grenadine, pineapple juice, Sprite, and Southern Comfort, a surprisingly tasty combination, and hands out some Southern Comfort goodie bags. You won’t be seeing double yet, but, somehow, the laid-back New Orleans attitude will feel as natural as a shot of Southern Comfort.

In order to gain membership to the Dive Bars of America Club, there are certain requirements that cannot be compromised: cheap drinks, bathrooms you crinkle you nose at, if not fully gag at, when you enter; and a crowd of everyone-knows-your-name regulars, including, but not limited to, at least one sneering tattooed chick. R Bar, what seems to be the rock’n’roll bastard child of the Frenchmen Street clubs, meets such stringent requirements with flair with their $4 to $6 glasses of wine and $3.50 draft pints, slightly scarred lady’s room, and slouching, lounging locals scattered on bar stools and circling a lone pool table, going above and beyond the call of duty with an offer most dives could only wish to be so creative to imagine – a shot and a haircut every Monday for $10. This particular Monday, hair-cutting was courtesy of a comb-wielding (apparently they usually trade in such unnecessary tools for merely scissors and a supreme confidence in their abilities), bleach-haired, and, yes, sneering, native.

Somewhat sober females don’t usually go for the shot-and-haircut combo, leaving this bold undertaking to the stumbling college boy who dares, with an alcohol-clouded judgment, go against the better senses of fellow frat brothers. This night, though, a quiet, and somewhat shy for confident New Orleanians, blond-haired boy decides for something like a Mohawk but not quite as rage-inducing in a parent’s eyes.

Adding to the classic and rampant New Orleans life-loving, party-happy atmosphere is a naughty-looking skeleton atop his motorcycle, a bathroom door depiction of a well-endowed woman rising out of a cocktail glass, and a clear refrigerator door covered in tiny water droplets showcasing the various ways to make your liver cry out in wails, from Murphy’s to Labatt Blue.

But before the "hairdresser" of the day can partake in another dive-bar pastime, slapping silly the enthralled tourist with a constantly clicking flash camera, I head to the only-in-New Orleans plastic cup dispenser to empty my mug of beer and exit the sweet-smelling staleness of a New Orleans dive, silently thanking it for still existing among the tourist traps aplenty among one more well-known New Orleans street.

The bright Southern sun beaming down full force as we wait (and wait... and wait... this was low-season, after all) for a Canal Streetcar displaying "City Park" in its front window, not "Cemeteries," my enthusiasm for spending at least a half-hour in the brewing heat, wandering the Sculpture Garden of the New Orleans Museum of Art, was waning – quickly. Yet after the oh-so-wonderful air-conditioning within the Canal Streetcar gave me a brief respite from the cloudless skies and I discovered the garden almost totally ensconced by patches of shade, my confidence that it would be the highlight of my activities over the past 3 days was renewed.

Quite understandably, the garden was practically empty, save for a loitering young couple, a concentrating artist, and an older man relaxing on one of the welcoming benches scattered haphazardly around the surprisingly large expanse of statues, sculptures, and squirrels. Thinking the calm of the South was finally sinking into my tense New York bones, my ears almost becoming used to the tweeting of the exotic creatures called birds, I practically jump across the still pond in front of me upon hearing the whistle of a train. Turning back towards the entrance, I spot the source of the noise, the most darling thing I’ve ever seen: an extended miniature train carrying only one, maybe two families around City Park, the perfect breeze-inducing break for the parents of an energized 4-year-old or train aficionado.

"Arachnophobia" being my favorite movie as a scary-movie-loving child, I’m instantly drawn to the massive sculpture titled "Spider" by Louise Bourgeois, after my attention has been drawn back into the garden. This bronze sculpture of a winding, knotted body and outstretched, knobby legs is the most, for lack of a better word, awesome sculpture I have ever seen (sorry, "David"), and I spend 5 minutes walking around the mass and even, feeling a little childish, through its legs, stopping myself short of acting out a scene from the aforementioned film.

The man resting on the bench now giving me quizzical glances, I giddily move away from the spider and neighboring "Tree of Necklaces," an ode to Mardi Gras with overly large beads hanging from an actual tree, to explore the other mostly bronze pieces by artists from the world over, including Israel, France, and Columbia. Walking past "Tortoise," which might as well be the live animal crawling out from his plant surroundings, I feel a pang of guilt about that turtle soup at Commander’s before smiling at the lucky photo op in front of me – the artist reveling in a smoke while accompanying the realistic "Three Figures and Four Benches." Only briefly disturbing him, I start back through the shushed garden smelling almost of fragrant herbs and encounter "Monkeys," the second most awesome sculpture I have ever seen, one of human arms growing from a group of monkeys atop a granite surface. Hey, "David," maybe you’ll consider trading in the Galleria dell'Academia for some Southern hospitality?

New York, Miami, Berlin, Darjeeling, Sydney, Kathmandu, Florence, and Vienna are just a smattering of cities where I’ve torn through appetizers, entrées, desserts, and cheese plates, but no meal has been so delicately prepared as to end my search for foodie perfection – until Commander’s Palace. From the warm Southern greeting of the valet boys and maitre’d to our attentive but discreet waiter Scott to the refined, complex flavors of the actual food, Commander’s, as it is known by locals, shows how fully satisfying and worth the price tag a high-end meal can be.

Scott, who I’m fully confident could explain the preparation method of every option on the menu and choose the perfect wine pairing for each, invited us to sit at a garden-view table in the, not surprisingly, Garden Room by pulling out our chairs and draping napkins over our laps with the ease of a seasoned waiter. Out came a plate of garlic bread drizzled with rich butter, and maybe a dab of cheese, shortly after, the perfect opportunity to make my first fine-dining faux-paux by grasping onto the plate to place it down, only to be received by puzzled eyes and an explanation to take one before he placed it on the table. Silly me to think I would have to do anything remotely seen as effort at a place like Commander’s.

Then came our $35 plate of caviar, the least expensive of the three presented on the menu, along with Scott and Tim, the maitre’d, to explain the several options for topping the caviar, including chopped onions and egg whites, the two that best complemented and contrasted the strong salty flavor of the dark fish eggs. To fill my stomach further before my entrée was a perfectly sized portion of turtle soup au sherry, which, after forcing out the images of my pet turtles from sophomore year in college, I found to have soft pieces of turtle meat strewn throughout what seemed to be a tomato-based broth with various hints of spices I won’t even pretend to know the names of.

Sticking to New Orleans tradition, French bread was laid out on the table as an accompaniment to our main meal, which equated to a pecan-crusted gulf fish for me. Now, I’ve had pecan-crusted fish plenty of times over, but in this entrée, the pecan crust was so smooth and broken down into the tiniest bits that it tasted like the fish had been born with a skin of pecans. The creamy sauce enveloping it enhanced the fresh-from-the-water flavor, while the whole pecans dropped here and there gave a subtle crunch to every other bite, all accompanied by a Grüner Veltliner smooth enough to avoid competing with the food for attention.

Naturally, what comes next would be dessert. But for this dessert, a bread pudding, and two others on the menu, you can’t wait to see if you have a miniscule amount of empty space in your protruding stomach for one last thing: you must order it with the rest of your meal – it takes that much effort to prepare. If you think bread pudding is bread pudding anywhere, you have to do away with such craziness at Commander’s, where the pudding, the richest, most succulent smooth sweetness I’ve tasted, is topped by a crisp meringue cover that Scott poked open to drizzle in a smooth whiskey cream.

And since a restaurant deemed worthy enough to receive the Lifetime Outstanding Restaurant Award by the James Beard Foundation needs a little extra pizzazz besides attentive service and food serving so much more a purpose than to nourish the body, every room in this authentic-looking Southern estate has a different personality. Besides the Garden Room, the top floor has a room painted in a deep orange of elegant old money, one where an artist painted intricate designs onto the wall, and a last that seats only 13, the crème de crème for a college graduation or 50th-birthday celebration. All the while, the top floor smirks with the devious history of once having been the walls to a brothel.

But let’s not forget the downstairs jumble of tables and its celebratory air, where you also find hidden secrets, each painting on this floor containing an upside-down heart in memorial to the artist’s mother. So no matter where you are seated to partake in something so much more than food, you will step into the muggy but breezy night air knowing that if in this moment you were destined to be hit by the suddenly barreling horse cart of the Roman Candy Man, no matter how unlikely at 10pm, your last meal had not only been the best in the U.S., but the world.