Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Restaurants a key to New Orleans' recovery

By Lee Hancock
The Dallas Morning News
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

NEW ORLEANS -- Well-turned women in eye-popping hats and natty lawyers, doctors and businessmen lined a slate sidewalk on Bourbon Street, eager to renew the Friday ritual known as the church of the four-hour lunch.

A few miles away, food writers and academics, a restoration expert from Rhode Island and one of Mississippi's best-known chefs gathered on a potholed corner of St. Anne and Tonti streets, wearing construction clothes and lugging hammers and crowbars.

What drew both groups -- the venerable Creole-French showplace Galatoire's and a tiny, back-of-town eatery known as Willie Mae's Scotch House -- seem worlds apart.

But New Orleans is a city where eating well approaches religious obligation, a communal obsession bridging class and racial divides. Five months after Hurricane Katrina, civic leaders and foodies alike say restoring the city's rich mix of culinary treasures and traditions and having restaurants like Galatoire's and Willie Mae's back in business is vital to New Orleans' recovery.

"It's not about the money. Yeah, we need the money to survive. But this is about bringing life back. The customers coming in, that's like a shot in the arm. Brings us back alive," said John Fontenot, a waiter at Galatoire's for 35 years.

"When Galatoire's closed up, you might as well close up New Orleans." Fontenot, 59, was among several waiters who lost homes. He said he is hoping to get a FEMA trailer installed so he can stop making a 2-hour daily commute from temporary quarters in Hammond, La.

His struggle is only one small part of what it will take to bring back New Orleans' once-vibrant restaurant scene.

City officials say a third of the food establishments in New Orleans before the Aug. 29 storm have reopened.

The still-shuttered eateries include some legends: Commander's Palace, Mandina's, Sid-mar's, Pascal Manale's and the original Acme Oyster Bar.

But displaced residents who've found their way home laud the return of restaurants as varied as Brightsen's and the Upperline, Mother's and Central Grocery.

And few hours spent with regulars still celebrating the recent reopening of Galatoire's and the volunteer foodie army helping to clean out 89-year-old Willie Mae Seaton's eponymous restaurant suggest what is at stake in reopening more restaurants.

It's also easy to see how, in New Orleans, both the city's exalted and modest culinary institutions are intertwined.

The James Beard Foundation honored both Galatoire's and Willie Mae's last year as national culinary treasures in its annual awards ceremony, the culinary equivalent of the Oscars.

Galatoire's general manager Melvin Rodrigue has been a frequent diner at Seaton's for years, and Seaton's great-grandson has worked off and on since high school as a bus boy at the Bourbon Street restaurant. She also has eaten three times at the Bourbon street restaurant, favoring its quieter upstairs dining room.

Locals and out-of-town aficionados alike say the two restaurants provide sustenance to the city's soul.

"Each in their own way is a temple," John T. Edge said. A noted food writer, he directs the Southern Foodways Alliance, headquartered at the University of Mississippi's Center for Southern Studies. In the months since Katrina, he has helped organize a volunteer effort to rebuild Willie Mae's.

"The ritual of the table doesn't really know economic bounds," Edge said. "For those people who were well-insured and well-situated before the storm, they need that table at Galatoire's. They need that long and boozy lunch just as the blue-collar guy has a need for his 45-minute lunch at Willie Mae's."

Galatoire's is still owned by relatives of the French immigrant who founded it 100 years ago. Several of his fourth-generation descendants still work daily in the restaurant, and one, David Gooch, took refuge in the restaurant for three days with his dog, cat and wife when Katrina hit.

The restaurant and most of the surrounding French Quarter survived the storm relatively unscathed. Like other culinary palaces in the tourist district, the kitchen was damaged when the city lost power and refrigerated stores of food rotted and leaked. But the restaurant was well-insured and paid longtime staffers while it underwent repairs.

It prompted some grumbling among regulars by opening a satellite restaurant in Baton Rouge in November.

But the original Galatoire's reopened on New Year's Day with about 75 percent of its 100 staffers back.

Waiters and family members alike said lunch on the first Friday after reopening was manic. Many locals have come regularly for years to enjoy raucous Friday lunches packing the restaurant for hours at a time for what feels like a marathon cocktail party.

That first afternoon, the wait for tables was longer than anyone remembered in decades _ rivaling even Mardi Gras and Christmas. Since then, several said, they've had some customers return repeatedly _ include one couple who dined at Friday lunches and every other night the restaurant was open for several weeks straight.

"It was depressing for us to be closed," said Gooch. "People are just so happy to have us back."

The lunch ritual began, as usual, with a line forming for downstairs tables three hours before the 11 a.m. opening. The first people there were a handful of paid placeholders, sent by regulars because the restaurant has traditionally refused to take reservations for the main dining room.

About a half-hour before the doors opened, maitre d' Arnold Chabaud Jr. began asking folks how large a table they would need and whether they'd require a particular waiter. Many of the Friday customers have used the same waiter who tended to their parents. Some regulars never open a menu or have to ask for a favorite drink.

"I know their momma and daddy. I know their kids, their grandkid. We know what they like to eat. We know their habits," said Fontenot, the 35-year veteran and one of the most popular waiters.

Among his customers that Friday were eight socialites who lugged in decorations and gifts for their annual birthday observance; as at many tables, several of the celebrants said they'd lost houses and businesses to the post-hurricane floods.

"It's the one day that you allow yourself to forget," said Gail Cavett, whose home and catering business in Lakeview were ruined. "I couldn't wait to get back here."

By the time the crowd at Galatoire's finished appetizers, the work crew assembled from at least five states to help restore Willie Mae Seaton's flood-damaged restaurant was pausing for lunch brought in by another prominent local chef and restaurateur.

Like surrounding Treme, the country's oldest black neighborhood, Seaton's was inundated for weeks with waist-high water after Katrina.

Seaton sat on the sidewalk that afternoon and much of the next day as the crew worked, telling stories, thanking her helpers, and waving and blowing kisses to neighbors who called out: "Hey, Mamma!"

Several well-wishers who heard about the cleanup on the local news stopped by to hand her work crew checks _ one for $500 _ and explained they wanted to help do what they could to return her to the building that has been her home since 1957.

She has been serving her legendary fried chicken there for decades, always made for each order from scratch with a secret "wet-batter" recipe. But word of her cooking spread only in the past few years _ in part because she actively tried to discourage publicity.

She said she can't explain her popularity with people from so far away. But she is proud of what she does and certain that no one fries chicken better.

"They asked me what about me that the people love so much. I say I don't know. I try to be nice to people, try to make 'em comfortable," she said. "I have a kind word for everybody."

Edge, who organized the volunteer effort to reopen Seaton's place, said the group eventually hopes to move on to other neighborhood eateries, places one sociologist has called "third places in America.

"Not work, not home, but a third place. ... More than bricks and mortar," Edge said. "New Orleans is a city chock full of third places. It's one of the few cities that truly appreciate their role in civic life."

And when the crew took a break at Willie Mae's, they dug into a Mardi Gras king cake. Seaton got the piece with the lucky baby charm inside.

Said one volunteer: "It's a message from God."

A TASTE OF TRADITION

GALATOIRE'S

Founded: 1905, by French immigrant Jean Galatoire

Operated by: The fourth generation of Mr. Galatoire's descendants at the same address, 208 Bourbon St.

Signature dish: There are several, but one is the crab meat-topped pompano, $29.50.

Big business: On a typical Friday, the eatery serves more than 300 people in the original downstairs dining room alone.

Clientele: Family members say about 70 percent of customers are "locals," those who live in South Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama; about 30 percent are tourists or nonlocals. Of locals, about half have "house accounts," meaning they can sign tabs.

Awards: Received the Outstanding Restaurant award from the James Beard Foundation

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WILLIE MAE'S SCOTCH HOUSE

Operated by: Willie Mae Seaton, 89, since the mid-1970s. She has owned the building since 1957. Before she sold food there, the building was a beauty shop.

Signature dish: Fried chicken, about $6

Signature drink: Scotch and milk

Tables: Seven

Awards: One of four restaurants declared "American Classics" in May by the James Beard Foundation. In the restaurant business, it's the equivalent of winning an Oscar.

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How to help: The nonprofit Southern Foodways Alliance, based at the University of Mississippi, is selling pickles online to raise money for the restoration of Willie Mae's and other eateries. Go to: www.southernfoodways.com.

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