The Culinary Politics of New Orleans

Food court in a typical airport, most of these spaces have a couple of restaurants open until 11 pm in most airports


Early this month I traveled to New Orleans to present a paper on a culinary look at Zora Neal Hurston’s novel Their Eyes’ Were Watching God at The Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference. When I landed at the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans at 9:53 pm, all of the eateries in the airport were closed. A local working at the transportation desk told, me “after Katrina restaurants here in the airport starting closing at 7.00 pm.” I was both hungry and shocked. I got to my hotel on Charles Street about 11:30 pm hunting for a place to eat. Accustomed to restaurant scene in New York City, I was again surprised to find out there were not a lot of restaurant open on a Wednesday night. I couldn’t wrap NYC culinary mind around New Orleans’ culinary scene which I had heard so much about. Over the next couple of days I am going to post on what I learned during my four days in the Crescent city. I have lots of interesting stories and photos of just about everything I ate.