Po'boys and beignets, okra and file

Although I have eaten in New Orleans just once in my life, I have returned to its food – the variety, the intense and enticing flavors – a million times in my head.

Senior year in college, my roommate and I booked flights from Providence on a whim. She wanted to catch Mardi Gras. I was game for nearly anything. So we left New England on a Friday morning in February. Neglecting to double-check the calendar, however, we didn't realize that we would actually miss the party by a few days.

On the ground, we decided to plan our own festivities. They don't call it the Big Easy for nothing. Over the long weekend, we would eat and drink as best we could on our student budgets.

For lunch, we had muffulettas and oyster po'boys. They are casual, convenient sandwiches, proteins and carbs in the same package. The first is a meatfest topped with an olive spread, the second a showcase for deep-fried oysters.

For dinner, we had red beans and rice, and crawfish etouffee, with bold spices we seldom encountered in the dining halls. They were foods my roommate knew from her Southern childhood, foods with which I had only recently become familiar.

We sipped hurricanes in bars on Bourbon Street and treated ourselves to beignets and chicory-spiked café au lait at Café du Monde.

Piled high with powdered sugar, beignets need to be handled carefully. One shake sends a cloud of sweetness across the table. One laugh out loud and there was snow on our noses, our hair and our shirts. We went through several plates of these signature pastries, laughing into the early morning.

Chicory with coffee, I later learned, is an age-old Louisiana tradition. The French added roasted and ground chicory to coffee to help stretch supplies during Napoleonic blockades in the early 19^th century. When naval blockades cut off shipments to New Orleans during the Civil War, people in Louisiana started to add chicory to their coffee as well, and came to appreciate the nuttiness it lent to the beverage.

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New Orleans, it seems, has always been about good food. "We not only love to eat and to cook what we eat," Charmaine Neville says in the anthology "My New Orleans: Ballads to the Big Easy By Her Sons, Daughters and Lovers." "We love to talk about what we are going to cook and what we are going to eat. Before we finish what we're eating, we're already talking about the next meal we're going to have together."

"In spite of our differences," editor Rosemary James says in the introduction, "we have sought out each other's company over, always, the very best food, ingenious dishes created from a poor people's basics: beans, rice, okra, fish, crabs, oysters, shrimp, peppers, garlic, onions, file… And elegant desserts created from everyday things like bananas and sugar and rum. Ours is comfort food even for the aliens among us."

Traditional Louisiana cooking blends a number of cuisines and techniques. Creole dishes might have been based originally on French stews and soups, but they were influenced significantly as well by the Spanish affinity for onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and garlic, by the African use of okra, and the Native American introduction of file, finely ground sassafras leaves. Like Cajun foods, considered country cousins, they were spicy and robust.

By the 1980s and '90s, avuncular chefs such as Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse had mostly blurred the lines between Creole and Cajun cooking, popularizing both in person and in print. Lagasse, for example, incorporated them at Emeril's, his first solo restaurant venture, and in the best-selling book "Emeril's New New Orleans Cooking," developing additional recipes further influenced by his Portuguese roots.

In the months following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, eateries were among the first businesses in the city to re-open. Some places unfortunately did not survive. "Their owners were getting on in years," food writer and radio host Tom Fitzmorris says in "Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans," "or their buildings had been too badly damaged to rebuild, or they had intractable insurance problems."

But others including Galatoire's, Commander's Palace, Brennan's and K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen still thrive. Home-grown chefs such as Susan Spicer, Donald Link and John Besh also continue to play with seasonal ingredients and innovative approaches at places like Mondo, Herbsaint and Restaurant August, respectively.

Before Katrina hit, according to Fitzmorris, there were more than 800 restaurants in greater New Orleans. These days, there are more than 1,200 – big and small, casual and formal, Creole, Cajun, Caribbean, French, Italian. It is a testament to the hunger people in the city have for good-tasting food, and the lengths to which cooks will go to feed that hunger. It speaks to their commitment and hospitality.

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Since college, I have tasted different foods and visited a number of other cities. I have bitten into fresh scones, for example, topped with strawberry jam and lovely clotted cream in London. I have had cheese-smothered deep-dish pizzas in Chicago. I have feasted on Korean favorites like bulgogi and bibimbap in Los Angeles.

Why then, I wonder, do I return often in my head, and in my kitchen, to iconic New Orleans foods?

When catfish fillets are on special at the market, I grill them Louisiana-style, seasoned with paprika, black pepper, white pepper and cayenne pepper. I like the heat. When Christmas comes, I make a festive jambalaya. It seems the right project for a celebration. And when rain threatens to dampen my spirits, I gather ingredients for chicken and sausage gumbo. I have nearly perfected my roux.

Some foods, I suppose, are a part of who I am, who we are. They are the dishes we grow up eating, whether poached whole chicken or macaroni and cheese, barbecued pork buns or fresh baked apple pie. They are the flavors we know well, offered to us by our parents or grandparents.

Other foods, however, are a part of who I become, who we become, the people we essentially grow into. They are the dishes we discover on our own when we choose to travel and broaden our palates. They are the flavors we try to re-create when we can, combinations that started for me with a weekend trip to the South long ago.

Po'boys and beignets, okra and file. They are items my parents and grandparents never ate. After immigrating to the U.S. in the 1960s, my mother spent her time and effort at the stove fine-tuning Chinese dishes that reminded her of home. She knew of nothing else and wanted nothing more at her table in California. I would inevitably learn more and need more.

Maybe that's what New Orleans means to me. It is a terrific city with an extraordinary history. But it is also among the first places I found myself, when I began to look, when I hoped to forge an identity outside of family. There is that thrill. Maybe that's the connection. And the food? Well, maybe the food is just a splendid bonus.

(A version of this essay appeared originally on www.culinate.com.)

Food fantasy

"I have a food fantasy.

"When Iris is six, I'm going to take her to Tokyo. Just the two of us, dad and daughter, in the big city, kickin' it Japanese-style.

"Laurie will stay home, because - this is her only fault - she doesn't like Japanese food. Sometimes she comes along for sushi, but she says it makes her feel like a philistine, because she only eats the easy bits, like tempura.

"So, while Laurie eats whatever it is she eats when we're not around, Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is mackerel, so we'll also eat plenty of salt-broiled mackerel, saba shioyaki, tearing off fatty bits with our chopsticks. We will eat our weight in rice..."

Matthew Amster-Burton in "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater"

Throwing fish

Anyone who has been to Seattle's bustling Pike Place Market has probably seen the Fish Guys, boisterous men who "throw (and catch!) a lot of salmon," and who "give a lot of hugs (and) mug for a lot of snapshots..."

Tourist attractions to be sure, these fan favorites describe the work fishmongers like them do regularly in their book "In the Kitchen with the Pike Place Fish Guys: 100 Recipes and Tips from the World-Famous Crew of Pike Place Fish." 

They discuss their livelihoods and provide handfuls of go-to recipes as well as "tips and tricks and shortcuts for busy folks." 

At the shop, the crew promotes sustainable seafood, eschewing farm-raised salmon, for instance, because it is such a "resource-intensive food to produce," taking three pounds of feed to create every one pound of fish. 

They don't belabor their food politics, however, and keep the overall discussion light, including recipes for festive gatherings like crab quesadillas, crab cake BLTs, gumbo and paella. 

Early risers are offered breakfast recipes for a Dungeness crab and bacon quiche, and something they call Grits and Grunts. And fancier items such as Salmon Rillettes on Croustade and Calamari Persillade come courtesy of market neighbor Café Campagne, making this fun volume all the more appealing. 

(A version of this review appeared originally at Publishers Weekly.)

Restaurant art

Food court fare

The dining options at Westfield Century City take food court fare to a whole other tastier level. There is sushi and ramen, Italian and Chinese, cupcake and yogurt. I could get used to this quite easily.

Kabuki before Carmageddon

On a Thursday in Southern California, we navigate the 405 one last time before Carmageddon strikes over the weekend.

The sushi at Kabuki in the Howard Hughes Center is worth the drive. We enjoy the food and the company.

Comfort cooking

In the months before my grandmother's death, my mother cooked.

She bought pork and lamb at the store, glad to take advantage of grocery specials. She marinated beef to roast in a hot oven. She trimmed Chinese greens. She chopped and braised, steamed and stir-fried. She spent time in her kitchen with the television on but often ignored.

My mother cooked not for my grandmother, who by then hardly ate, cancer stealing the best of her appetite. She cooked not for my father. He would be fine with simple soups and porridges. She cooked not for my sisters, brothers or me. Though we dropped by on weekends, we could only eat so much. Imagine the leftovers. She cooked, I believe, for herself.

At the counter or the sink, my mother stayed busy. She prepped chicken perhaps or removed scales from a fish. She gave herself these things to do. Meanwhile, her mind wandered.

She thought about the food she did not have growing up in China and the access she enjoyed when she arrived in California. She recalled years of scrimping to send money back to family across the Pacific and the relief she finally felt when her mother arrived in the United States as well. She cooked and cried.


We talk of comfort food: a scoop of ice cream, for example, or a slice of cake, a barbecued pork bun or an egg custard tart.

Jonathan Reynolds wonders whether the term is redundant. "All food is comforting," he says in the memoir "Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, With Food," "or we'd be eating nothing but hot dogs at Shea and warm tar (indistinguishable in a Times blind-testing), with possibly a few vitamins thrown in.

"Unless you're... undergoing a fraternity initiation or briefly lapse into Joan Crawford territory with one of your sons, there is no such thing as 'punitive food'."

I suspect there is the idea of comfort cooking as well, the notion that kitchen work can help to reassure us, that time in front of a stove can keep us centered. My mother cooked, it seems, for the same reason others might ride a bike or read a book. She needed the diversion.


The moment my mother spied my grandmother in hospice care, the day after my uncle had admitted the woman, she ran to hold her. It was something I had seldom seen my mother do: openly embrace anybody. It felt like a clip from a Chinese-language soap opera.

Outward displays of affection had been rare in our house. Hugs and kisses were things other people traded. My mother demonstrated her love through food instead.

She treated scrapes my siblings and I got playing in the back yard with a little Bactine and a lot of candy. She marked our achievements with dumplings and broth. She greeted our returns from college with dishes we favored: braised eggplant, tofu and beef, vermicelli with egg and barbecued pork. She wasn't about big gestures but small everyday concerns. I realize this now.

"When am I going to get better?" my grandmother asked, her voice a soft but steady whisper. "I don't know when I am going to get better. Maybe this time I won't."

A friend told me once her heart grew three sizes the day her daughter was born; my heart broke into a hundred pieces that afternoon at the foot of my grandmother's bed.

My mother insisted that if my grandmother simply ate more, her health could improve. "If you don't have the nutrients," she reasoned, "how would you ever get well?"

I knew enough Cantonese to understand this exchange. From talks earlier with doctors and relatives, I also knew the truth: That no matter what or how much my grandmother did or did not eat, she wouldn't get better. The disease had taken a toll, wreaking havoc on her pancreas, stripping her body of the energy it required.

My mother punctuated her visits to the hospice with trips to Safeway or Trader Joe's nearby or to Chinatown, recognizing the severity of the situation, I'm sure, but needing still to collect ingredients for her own meals. In this way, she continued to live as my grandmother was about to die.

After all, my mother needed to pay attention to herself, too, did she not? She needed to look to the future and occasions she would inevitably get to spend with the rest of her family. Food - thinking about it, shopping for it, preparing it - provided a way for her to exert control over something when so much around her had been beyond her control. It was the happiness she allowed herself. In this backyard scrape, it was her candy.

The short market trips were also a way, I suppose, for her to fool death personally, to not let it follow her straight home from the hospice. She wanted to open and close car doors, enter and exit other buildings, walk up and down wide aisles, to ditch death randomly. She was superstitious like that.


In the months since my grandmother's death, my mother continues to cook. She shops for exceptional deals and brainstorms menu ideas. Her tears, however, no longer flavor the food.

She tells me about a visit with a friend to their neighborhood Lucky for 99-cent eggs. She wanted to limit herself to a couple of cartons. Her friend, however, dismissed the restraint.

"The people in the store know us," the woman said in Cantonese. "They see us all the time anyway. They know we're greedy. It doesn't matter how much we buy or don't buy." They shrugged, gathered four or five cartons each and headed to the register.

With joy I have not seen in a while, my mother tells me of the day she spent with a nephew from New Jersey. During a last-minute business trip to California, he made it a point to invite her out to eat.

In San Francisco, they came across a Chinese buffet. Though inexpensive, the food they spotted on people's plates seemed unappealing.

He placed his hand on my mother's back and guided her away from the entrance of the restaurant. "The two of us," her nephew said, gently and genuinely, "let's go eat something better. You and I, we deserve something better." She agreed.

My mother tells me these stories, peppered with humor, irony and insight, one night over dinner. I listen and laugh.

(A version of this essay appears on the website for The Atlantic.)

Food for my father

When we were growing up, my mother spent afternoons in the kitchen making traditional Chinese dumplings and pastries. Determined not to let us forget who we were, she poached chicken and steamed fish. She simmered pots of soup. She stuck with the familiar.

But my father liked to experiment. Having been in California long enough to taste other foods, he wanted to introduce us to all sorts of things. He asked my mother to serve asparagus the way many Americans did - with hollandaise sauce. He showed her how to bake russet potatoes in the oven. He fed us sour cream.

He allowed my sibling and me departures from Chinese food, rescuing us from what would become our mother's predictability. He injected new flavors into our weekly menus, bringing home burgers from a restaurant near his store in San Francisco, patties so thick they dripped with each bite, and deep-dish pizzas. He had these with glasses of beer, a practice I have long since adopted.

He took us to the grocery store. My mother shopped mostly in Chinatown. But my father preferred the American supermarkets. We went with him on Saturdays for staples such as milk and bread.

My sisters, brothers and I wandered the aisles and filled the cart with cookies while our father stayed in the meat department comparing packages of beef. We never asked permission for the items we chose. He never denied us the foods we liked.

So it is disheartening to learn now that my father, as he gets older, sometimes fails to eat, that he sleeps late and skips meals, that he's uninterested in the things my mother cooks. That his weight has begun to fall.


Nutritionists and psychologists talk often about the connections between age and health, mood and appetite. In articles and on Web sites, they write about the benefits of a balanced diet, offering suggestions for seniors to stay well.

Eat more whole grains, they say. Eat more fruits and vegetables, beans and nuts. Eat less fat, cholesterol and sodium. They tell me nothing new.

They look at the possible effects of treatment and medication on appetite. One influences the other, they say. But my father isn't on treatment. He isn't on heavy medication. He takes a pill a day and a couple of calcium supplements.

They look also at environment. Seniors who live alone sometimes find it discouraging to eat alone. They don't like to sit by themselves. But my father does not live alone. My mother is next to him, cooking morning, noon and night. How could he not be hungry?


Watching my father in the kitchen, I recall a time years ago when he ate heartily, when sumptuous Saturday evening meals, for example, were rewards for weeks of hard work, when holidays, both Chinese and American, were occasions for serious family feasts.

My mother would fill the table with my father's favorites: cellophane noodles, shrimp and vegetable stir-fry, sweet and sour pork, as well as crab or lobster when they were available. She'd top the menu with refreshing slices of oranges or sweet, ripened mangoes.

Eager to watch television, my siblings and I tried to tear through the food. But our father disapproved. Slow down, he'd say. Enjoy your meal.

He'd pick up a mouthful of noodles with his chopsticks, touch it to his lips and taste. The seasonings were perfect. He'd lick the sauce off a piece of pork or wok-fried crab, savoring its juices.

Half an hour later, my father would wipe his lips, push his chair from the edge of the table and gently pat his stomach. Good, he'd say, smiling discreetly. I'm full.

I wonder if that might happen again, if my father would find such peace and satisfaction in the things he ate.


One afternoon, aiming to give him a respite from Chinese food, the way he had done for my sisters, brothers and me when we were children, I set out to make a pot of chili for my father.

I select a recipe from my eclectic collection and cook ground turkey instead of ground beef. I want the dish to be heart healthy. I include tons of vegetables: diced bell peppers, portobello mushrooms, corn, zucchini and tomatoes. I want it to be nutritious. I throw in chili powder and red pepper flakes. I want it to have a significant kick.

At my parents' house that night, I serve the chili with steamed white rice, something my mother cannot refuse. I note the ingredients and encourage them to help themselves.

My mother thanks me for cooking, saving her time and energy. It is not a big deal, I reply, before turning to my father, who scoops a small portion.

I want him to like the food. I want him to have seconds. Thirds even. I do. He doesn't. In the end, I impress only myself.


Perhaps the nutritionists and psychologists were right. Maybe my father - like others his age - isn't thinking much about eating. At 80, he has different concerns. But does his decreasing appetite for food in particular mirror a decreasing appetite for life in general?

Does he believe, 15 years into retirement, that he has tasted all there is? It would be a shame. I want to convince my father there are tons of foods he has not tried.

So I will continue to encourage my father to eat today and tomorrow. He is the one who introduced us years ago to American favorites, who did not deny us the snacks we craved, who pushed his chair from the edge of the table after an especially satisfying meal.

I will help my mother keep their kitchen stocked with all sorts of good food - the chicken and fresh fish she likes, the cereals and bananas he likes - and provide them occasional departures from the usual.

And on mornings when my mother visits friends in the neighborhood, I will stop by the house to spend time with my father.

I will boil eggs for his breakfast. Twelve minutes, no more, no less, the way I learned to in college. They will come out perfect. He can have them with a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee.

It might not be the biggest or most extravagant meal in the world. It might not be fancy or expensive. But it will be a decent start.


(A version of this essay appeared originally in The Oakland Tribune.)

What Ohno eats

To prepare for the Winter Games, according to Sports Illustrated, speedskater Apolo Anton Ohno "has been on the same fit-for-a-parrot diet for 15 weeks; a meal rotation every three hours that includes oatmeal, salmon, brown rice, salad, fruit, seaweed, blue-green algae and, occasionally, pasta."

Is it any wonder he has but 2 percent body fat?

Though I could eat nearly everything on Ohno's list - what exactly is blue-green algae? - nowhere in that description do I see cake or ice cream or bagels and cream cheese or hamburger and french fries... Or anything else that might easily brighten a day. Imagine the discipline.

Oh well, so much for my Olympics speedskating dreams.

Upstairs we eat

Downstairs in The Horniman at Hays, a stone's throw from the HMS Belfast and London Bridge, people laugh and drink after work and into the evening.

Upstairs, away from the bustle, we eat. We have pie and mash and veggies. We have fish and chips and mushy peas. Others come for the beer. We, apparently, come for the food.

Leave the rice, keep the soy

The store-bought sushi is convenient but mediocre. The rice is cold and hard, the fish nearly nonexistent. The soy sauce, however, is packaged in such a unique way we can not resist a photo.

In the air

I have not flown British Airways in a long time but am definitely liking the experience.

Dinner begins with ginger-flavored poached salmon and edamame salad with a creamy sweet chili dressing. The entree: pan-seared cod with tomato basil olive oil, lemon pepper risotto and broccolini, served with a fresh seasonal salad. And for dessert, there is wildflower honey cheesecake.

I am over the moon.