New Orleans: An Important Food City

We are on our way to New Orleans this week to explore one of the top food cities in the world. It has a cuisine that is distinct and unique and very regional with influences from around the world such as Africa, Caribbean, France, and Italy. I get a chance to travel to New Orleans every other year or so and the trip always revolves around food (and music and photography). The city is home to Creole and Cajun cuisine and that style of cooking goes back at least a century and a half. The food is mostly classical French with locally grown ingredients thrown in which makes for very interesting flavor combinations. There are a lot of bold flavors that combine roux with pungent spices and locally grown hot peppers to create flavorful classical dishes.

The food here is continuously evolving thanks to the many great chefs. The modern food revolution started around 40 years ago with the Commander’s Palace Restaurant and the famous chefs that have rotated through there like Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse. Prudhomme became famous and well known for his specialty of blackened redfish. Lagasse became popular as a celebrity chef and his personality was a perfect fit for TV and many great chefs have spawned off from these two chefs. In the latest era, chefs continue to modernize the classic dishes and make them fresh and new with chefs continuing to push the envelope even further by using obscure ingredients combined with traditional ingredients and modern technics.

We chose this week to visit New Orleans because of the Creole Tomato Festival going on June 13th and 14th, so stay tuned for more information on that. In the next few days we will be writing about the important contributions that New Orleans has given to the food world.  Here is the line-up:

• New Orleans: The Restaurants
• New Orleans: The Classic Dishes
• New Orleans: The Classic Ingredients
• New Orleans: The Cocktails & Food Events