Movies in New Orleans

I have been seeing quite a few movies recently, so I may as well blog about the viewing options down here. First, there are your regular multiplexes. AMC has big theaters in Harahan and on the West Bank, and those are worth the drive for big-screen IMAX-type stuff. That's generally where I see blockbusters (Iron Man 3, the new Star Trek, and the like). Then there's the Canal Place theaters. No kids allowed and there are (pricy) food and beverage options. It also gets a good mix of mainstream and artsy films. The servers darting in and out during the movie can occasionally be intrusive, but other than that I like it.
But not as much as I like The Prytania Theatre. This place is great: a single-screen hold-out with a lot of different programming. Mainstream releases, midnight cult movies, Sunday morning classics (I saw Casablanca for the first time there), the Film-O-Rama film festival, and a children's movie series (sweet, I just noticed they're playing Muppet Treasure Island in July). It's part of the fabric of the town (Ignatius J. Reilly yelled at movies at The Prytania in A Confederacy of Dunces), it's coming up on its hundred-year anniversary, and I hope it's here for a long time to come.
The Prytania also works with the New Orleans Film Society, of which I am a proud member, to put on the Film-O-Rama. The Society does some great work. They put on New Orleans Film Festival every hear with a consistently fascinating and eclectic selection, especially the curated shorts series (high point of last year: seven short films on the theme of "How to Dispose of a Body"). And the NOFS partners with other local theaters too; they put on three screenings of Upstream Color at the Chalmette movie theater a few weeks back. (Everybody should go see it, by the way, it is mind-bendingly good.)

Breakfast places I have tried.

Coulis: Could be my favorite breakfast place. Walking distance from home, incredibly nice people, fantastic pancakes, and a really good variation on eggs benedict.
Surrey's: Good juice.
Wakin' Bakin:
Cake Cafe: Pretty good, but the breakfast doesn't live up to the standard set by their goat cheese and apple king cake. Then again, what can?
Slim Goodies: I really like this place. It's inexpensive hearty food and there's a lot of variety on the menu.
Fat Hen: Good eggs benedict, with really excellent ham. I've only been once, but I look forward to trying it again.
Daisy Duke's: Huge portions, excellent biscuits.
Ruby Slipper: Underwhelming.
Atchafalaya: Really high-quality food, but I can't rate it as a go-to favorite because it's on the pricier side. But for special occasions, absolutely.

Four years back.

Four years ago today, I arrived back in New Orleans. I'm still glad to be home.

Recent shows (at One Eyed Jacks)

Deerhunter: Scrawny white men with a surplus of electric guitars, making noises. Did not like.
Father John Misty: Also scrawny, and although they claimed to be playing "bafflingly lethargic folk rock," it was actually pretty darn good. Very groovy stuff, and the frontman was very engaged and entertaining. Check 'em out.

I regret to report that....

The Greyhound Discovery Pass is no longer available. I understand why they did it (hop-on/hop-off is inconsistent with their transition to a reservation-based business model), and I probably wouldn't buy another one, but this saddens me. Even the name was great.

The Domenica Project: Part 1

I have probably eaten more sit-down dinners at Domenica than any other restaurant in town. Not only does it have amazing italian food, but it's got a kickass happy hour with half-price pizza and beer. I generally lump pizzas into two categories: fancy pizza and everyday pizza. Domenica makes amazing fancy pizzas: delicious thin crust, wood-fired baking, classy ingredients. It is so good, I want to try them all. Hence, The Domenica Project! I am going to eat every pizza on the menu and rank them in order of preference, and maybe provide some recommendations. I am ignoring all pizzas that I have tried before the start of this project, for scientific purposes or something like that. Anyway, since conceiving of this I have had three (and Domenica has actually added one to the menu, so maybe this project can go on forever!). In descending order of preference so far, with updates to come:

1) Duck pizza with porcini, mascarpone, sweet potato & scallions. Holy crap this is good.
2) White pizza with ricotta, mozzarella, oregano, garlic & basil. Very light, and just as good cold.
3) Bolzano pizza with roast pork shoulder, fennel, bacon & sweet onions. I was not a fan of this one; it didn't seem to cohere into a whole. Oddly enough, it tasted better cold the next day.

Things to deal with in New Orleans.

Sometimes we get severe weather, even outside of hurricane season. A doozy of a storm blew through on Wednesday while I was having lunch at Domilise's (fried oyster po-boy, dressed). My apartment occasionally has a little water intrusion in heavy rains; sometimes through the windows, sometimes underneath the back door if the wind is right. Normally it's just a matter of mopping it up, and when I got home on Wednesday night I made sure to check that the floor was dry. But come Thursday morning, something didn't smell quite right. I febrezed a basket of laundry that was waiting to be washed, took out the trash, and went to work. By the time I got home, the funk was much funkier. After closer inspection, I discovered that the quadrant of the rug in the living room closest to the back door was indeed damp and fragrant. Now there's a fan pointed at it and we'll see if that does the trick. Additional suggestions are welcome. Not the end of the world, and certainly not as bad as what's going on elsewhere, of course, so if that's the worst thing that happens this week I will be happy.

Meat pies!

I like meat pies. When I was living in New York, one of my sanity-preserving rituals was taking a stroll down to Red Hook and stopping for a bite at Down Under Brooklyn Pies (looks like they have since moved). I'd sometimes get a key lime pie down there too, although it looks like that place ain't dere no more after Hurricane Sandy. (Red Hook was the part of New York that most reminded me of New Orleans; there was one intersection with brick paving and overhead power lines and old buildings, and when the sun was setting you could almost imagine you weren't in New York anymore.)

Anyhow, the best meat pies I have ever tasted come from Natchitoches. I don't make it to North Louisiana very often so I wait for the meat pies to come to me via the New Orleans Road Food Festival. (That's what it was called when it started a few years back, and that's what I will continue to call it because the new name they went with this year is bland and unsearchable.) Every year so far, Lasyone's sends a delegation and I eat an embarrassing amount of meat pie and crawfish pie. Best hand-held food I know of, by far, and worth waiting for. And it's probably good that I only get to eat them once a year.


But I also keep my eyes open for other meat pie options. At the Freret Street Festival a few weeks back, I had two different meat pies. First, Cane River Meat Pies does a very respectable pie, although their crawfish pie is a little underwhelming. Second, I was pleasantly surprised by the lamb meat pies from Wayfare, a new place on Freret. I will be returning to try those again. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival starts on Friday and the website reports that there will be an alligator pie available, so that's next on the list.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Power went out at work, so I went to lunch at Commander's Palace with some friends in town for the French Quarter Festival. I had the creole nachos and the crawfish grilled cheese sandwich. Life is good, more updates to follow. Spoiler alert: meat pies and lots of 'em.