Happy Carnival!
We have a ways to go until Fat Tuesday this year, and I guess we’re all hoping we turn a viral corner in time to enjoy the season in public and with our friends and neighbors. Carnival really does…
Author: Robert Peyton
Burrito, Chicken Nuggets
I cook a lot, and I take it seriously. I give Alice Waters a lot of grief because she insists on eating only the freshest, seasonal ingredients, but she’s not wrong, and it’s how I try to cook. I…
A Website of Interest
Like most of you, I performed an internet search for “Cambodian bean thread noodle salad” recently. Thus, you may already be familiar with the 7th result on the first page: Cambodian Recipes. It is not a high-end production. There…
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
Just the other week I was starting to feel good about how this whole pandemic thing was going. Then it’s a freaking donnybrook with this omicron variant. My family drove to Mandeville today to get tested so we can…
Some Restaurants Open for the Holidays
With the holiday season upon us, and while some restaurants close for Christmas Eve and Day, a lot of are hoping we’ll celebrate with them. This Friday, Dec. 17, Brennan’s will have a “Naughty or Nice” happy hour from…
Hogs for the Cause and King Cakes
Keith Spera has written an article that announces that Hogs for the Cause will take place April 1-2, 2022 at the UNO Fairgrounds. I am a broken record about the event, I know, but it’s a great time for…
Omiwho?
I was just about ready to take my mask off at the grocery. By that I mean I did take my mask off for a while, but then there are a lot of people still wearing their masks and…
Best of Dining
New Orleans is a food town. We love to incorporate food and cooking into almost all of our celebrations, get-togethers, family reunions, festivals and so much more. This year, the city and our beloved dining institutions, neighborhood bars and gathering…
Good Signs and Bad
Last Friday I had lunch plans with my father. We’d talked about it a week before, and I’d settled on Bayona because it’s been a while since we’d been there and he could walk there from his office downtown.…
A Video and Two Closings
My wife, whom I love with all of my tiny shriveled heart, cajoled me into watching a video the other day. I will link you to the video, but I will warn you that it may make you angry…
Dining Outside
Winter is, for most of the rest of the country, the time when you bunker down and start eating hearty soups. Here, however, we have cool temperatures and we can enjoy the outdoors for a while. It’s the time…
A Book and Events Happening Shortly
My friend Sue Strachan has a book out. It’s called the "Café Brulot," and it’s about what it says on the tin, but in much more detail and more entertainingly than the topic would suggest. Sue is a great…
A New Sushi Restaurant
Where it comes to sushi, generally speaking, I am a one-shop man. My shop is Kanno, where Hide Suzuki has made me some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. But I also like to try new places and,…
Revisiting Herbsaint
Today, I am having lunch with my father at Herbsaint. It’s one of my favorite restaurants and one I haven’t visited often since I stopped working downtown. This is not going to be a review of that meal, because I…
Food Costs and Dining
Food prices have been rising for quite some time, and it does not yet appear there is an end in sight. The consumer price index has food costs up by around 3.5% over the last year. That’s nothing compared…
Birthday Dinners and Mosca’s
My wife had a birthday recently. We had a low-key celebration that night at Bayou Wine Garden, and I will therefore testify to the excellent cheese and charcuterie board we had with a carafe of wine. Two cured meats,…
Here We Are Again
Well, that was something. Almost 16 years to the day I evacuated for Katrina, I was back in Columbia, Tennessee taking advantage of the incredible generosity of friends who offered to put us up for a few days. I…
Nolavore Debuts a la Carte Market Series
Nolavore is a catering company and commissary kitchen located in a former service station at the corner of Baronne Street and Jackson Avenue. Owner Anne Lloyd is a friend and talented, imaginative chef who has worked in the industry…
On Criticism, Adventurous Palates, Live Oak and Restaurants I Want to Try
Recently, I read an online review of a fairly new spot on Oak Street written by a long-time resident of the New Orleans area. It was a critical review – not in the sense that the author didn’t like…
Words to the Wise
I have never been a canny investor. I have never actually been an investor at all, mainly because I know I’m not a canny investor. But once in a while an opportunity comes around and you feel you have…
Episode 2354, In Which We Learn About Things
We here at Haute Plates Small Machinery and Upscale Landscaping are looking forward to so many things. We are looking forward to eating a meal out and more particularly eating out in places with other people. To that extent…
A Conversation Prompted Questions About Authenticity and Tradition
I had an interesting conversation the other night with a chef, Tom, who lives outside of Louisiana. He’s a really sharp guy who is cooking food inspired in large part by his experience living and cooking professionally in New…
Things I Have Learned Lately
As many of you know, I was one of the lucky humans to visit outer space recently. No, it was not with Branson or Bezos; I was on the rocket built by Joe Lotrglio. I am told that we…
Another Column About the Restaurant Industry
I attended a happy hour event hosted by one of my favorite restaurants, Boucherie. It was a “thank you” for Chef’s Brigade and it was awful nice. I got to talk to a number of restaurateurs who participated in…
England vs. Italy
I am not one of those people who thinks that English food is awful. Because it’s not. Done right, an English breakfast is among the best in the world. They know a thing or two about sausages and their…
COOLinary New Orleans
I’m not a huge fan of the capitalization where “COOLinary New Orleans” is concerned, but I’m a fan of the endeavor. It’s a chance for people, mostly locals, to check out some restaurants that maybe they’d been meaning to…
Cooking with Kids
Two of my offspring have decided they are interested in cooking. I am happy about this because I also love to cook but I am also concerned that I will not be able to convey my knowledge about cooking…
The Doldrums
This is the time of year in which restaurants are typically slow. It is hot and it is humid and we don’t have the tourists we normally do during the year. That’s in a good year, but this year?…
The Garden in Bloom
I thought I would write something about my garden this time around because my mother-in-law, Pamela, was a gardener and I have tried to emulate her green thumb. Some years I have things that succeed, and some years I…
Hogs for the Cause
I have not been dining out very much these last months. I have not been out at all for that matter and yet my garden is a mess. My strawberries are consumed by snails. My peas are suffering from…
Haute Plates
A weekly blog on the New Orleans fine dining scene
about
Robert D. Peyton was born at Ochsner Hospital and, apart from four years in Tennessee for college and three years in Baton Rouge for law school, has lived in New Orleans his entire life. He is a strong believer in the importance of food to our local culture and in the importance of our local food culture, generally. He has practiced law since 1994, and began writing about food on his website, www.appetites.us, in 1999. He mainly wrote about partying that year, obviously.
In 2006, New Orleans Magazine named Appetites the best food blog in New Orleans. The choice was made relatively easy due to the fact that Appetites was, at the time, the only food blog in New Orleans.
He began writing the Restaurant Insider column for New Orleans Magazine in 2007 and has been published in St. Charles Avenue, Louisiana Life and New Orleans Homes and Lifestyles magazines. He is the only person he knows personally who has been interviewed in GQ magazine, albeit for calling Alan Richman a nasty name. He is not proud of that, incidentally. (Yes, he is.)
Robert’s maternal grandmother is responsible for his love of good food, and he has never since had fried chicken or homemade biscuits as good as hers. He developed his curiosity about restaurant cooking in part from the venerable PBS cooking show "Great Chefs" and has an extensive collection of cookbooks, many of which do not require coloring, and some of which have not been defaced.
Robert lives in Mid-City with his wife Eve and their three children, and is fond of receiving comments and emails. Please humor him.
