New Orleans Magazine August 2007

Restaurants

RESTAURANT INSIDER

• One of the more interesting things about Lüke, John Besh’s restaurant at 333 St. Charles Ave. in Hotel Monaco, is that it serves breakfast, lunch and dinner and doesn’t close between services. I’m lucky enough to have an office across the street and as a result I’ve had a few chances to experience their […]

History

STREETCAR: A WITNESS To HISTORY

Joe Sabatier, M.D., was a Tulane medical student, who in 1935 was assigned to work at Our Lady of the Lake hospital in Baton Rouge. “I’m not sure what my title was,” Sabatier recalls, “but I think I was really an assistant to an orderly.” The labor supply was inadequate so medical students were pressed […]

History

CHRONICLES: The LAB ON THE LAKEFRONT

Bandages made of cotton with built-in medication, non-allergic peanuts, rice flour French fries that absorb half the grease of the potato variety, a fungus that attacks Formosan termites – sound like science fiction dreams? Thanks to a 67-year-old federal laboratory on the Lakefront, those wishful dreams may be coming to reality. After all, these are […]

Personalities

MODINE’S: PUSHING THE WRONG BUTTON

I am trapped in my mother-in-law’s garage. It could happen to anybody. I knock at Ms. Larda’s front door and nobody answers. I see her garage door standing wide open so I go in that way, thinking maybe she’s in her kitchen, which is in the back, and can’t hear me. The door between the […]

Cocktails

LAST CALL

Having a Fling on TchoupitoulasWhen you walk into 45 Tchoup, it’s easy to feel as if you’ve entered a combination of Cheers – they truly know everyone’s name and drink preference – and an art house. This recently opened bar helmed by owners Debbie Shatz and Frank Mazzanti (you might remember them as your favorite […]

Lagniappe

One-day Getaways

The kids are back in school, your vacation days are spent and you’re already wondering about holiday gifts for the in-laws – but don’t let the back-to-school blues get you down. Who says summer fun stops in August? There are a host of one-day getaways right here in Louisiana that will give you the chance […]

Lagniappe

Open House for Area Schools – Special Advertising Section

One of the most critical decisions New Orleans parents must make is where to send their children to school. To make the search and decision process smoother and easier many area schools are set to welcome hundreds of families to a series of open houses throughout the educational community. Here is a schedule of upcoming […]

Art & Antiques – Special Advertising Section

Antiques & Wholesale FurnishingsAntique passed down from family to family is a heartfelt pursuit these days. Discover pieces that will enhance your distinctive collection with new shipments arriving monthly from all over the world. Acquire keepsake antiques at Antiques and Wholesale Furnishings 3511 River RoadJefferson504.837.8095 ANVIL IRON WORKSEmbellished iron detail incorporates character, design and function […]

Lagniappe

FALL TRAVEL – Special Advertising Section

Even if your summer vacation is behind you, the fall is an ideal time to travel through Louisiana and the Southeast U.S. Permanent attractions, special events and festivals abound throughout the area, from the white sandy beaches of Florida, to the small towns, to the historical wonder of old plantations, the Southeastern U.S. offers […]

Personalities

PEOPLE TO WATCH 2007

Sgt. Pepper was last seen taking a club of lonely-hearts for a ride on a yellow submarine. We have assembled our own band of characters known not as much for their musicianship but for satisfying our annual search for new notables. “People to Watch” we define as mostly new faces who are doing something interesting […]

Sports

Blood Despair Love & Football

In exile from Hurricane Katrina, the Tulane University football team landed in Ruston three months and one day before our punter, Chris Beckman, was shot in the gut with a gun suited for Cape buffalo in the Kalahari. Instead, a bullet from that .416 Rigby found its way into my friend’s liver on an otherwise […]

Home + Design

HOME: NEW TOWN

THE INSPIRATIONShelley and Anthony “Tony” Barreca’s copy of the book that features houses designed by legendary Louisiana architect A. Hays Town has dozens of yellow post-it notes marking the ideas they like. “We both love the look of old historic houses in new construction,” says Tony, the owner of Barreca Tile & Marble. “We spent […]

Food + Drink

FOOD: Schooltime Snacks

My mom told me that in the years following the Great Depression, her school served red beans and rice one day, white beans and rice the next and lima beans and rice the next. Then the same menu started over. She lived to be 84, apparently no worse for her early diet. Beans and rice […]

Wellness

HEALTHBEAT

• Ochsner Medical Center has been designated as one of only six training centers in the world for an innovative medical devise called the da Vinci Surgical System® by Intuitive Surgical, right. The new technology affords physicians the ability to perform operations with minimal incisions to improve recovery time and decrease pain and blood loss. […]

Wellness

HEALTH: BELL RINGING

Adults who played high school football remember all their broken bone injuries as badges of honor. Closed head injuries rate less respect, though mothers remember best. “My son Richard played football for Jesuit in the 1990s and as I remember had several concussions. Tell him his mother said it was okay to talk,” e-mailed Sally Edrington. […]

CRIMEFIGHTING: THE LONG, HOT SUMMER

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, crime threatens to strangle New Orleans’ recovery — if politics doesn’t poison it first. Polls show crime is the most critical issue to local residents trying to decide whether to stay or leave post-Katrina. Yet the city’s nation-leading homicide rate persisted over the long, hot summer. Ground zero for the […]

Community

EDUCATION: The making of new teachers

Diane Caporino taught in Orleans Parish schools for 22 years before the state fired her along with 7,000 other school employees in 2005. With her Gentilly house ruined and her career shattered, she spent a year on unemployment while living in a FEMA trailer, worrying about her future. Today, she’s still in the trailer waiting […]

Community

BIZ: The kindness of strangers

Alarms sounded in local fundraising circles recently when a major local company raised the specter of a relocation to Houston. Tidewater Inc. has been a fixture in New Orleans since its founding in the 1950s by brothers Alden and John Laborde. During the subsequent decades, as it grew into the world’s largest provider of transportation […]

SPEAKING OUT:A STRONG “YES”

An endorsement for the downtown LSU/VA hospital plan New Orleans Magazine strongly endorses the proposal to build a combined Louisiana State University (LSU) and U.S. Veterans Medical Center facility in downtown New Orleans. We are somewhat amazed that there’s any question at all about a plan that could give the city a national-level training […]

NEWSBEAT: Award honors seasoned restaurant workers

There are restaurants in New Orleans where regulars might take up picket signs if any change as drastic as a different gumbo recipe were proposed. That sort of emotional attachment speaks to the vital role restaurants and the culinary traditions they represent play in the local cultural identity, and the Louisiana Restaurant Association (LRA) believes […]

Arts + Entertainment

READ & SPIN

CD’sIn the late 1990s, Craig Klein and Mark Mullins decided that if one trombone can make a New Orleans funk band hot, four could light a fire and take them off the charts. Adding Steve Suter and Rick Trolsen on trombone, Matt Perrine on sousaphone, Bert Cotton on guitar and Eric Bolivar on drums, Klein […]

Music + Festivals

MUSIC: Good RockIng Forever

On the errant afternoon when I can steal away to the Louisiana Music Factory, the workday stresses melt and I plant myself in the aisles, perusing CDs, scanning the liner notes, knowing there’s never enough money to leave with everything I want, yet feeling … happy. The ambience of a record emporium breathes history, echoing […]

NEWSBEAT: Banking on Rebuilding

A language barrier isn’t the only obstacle facing many of the thousands of Latino people who have arrived in the New Orleans area in the rebuilding boom since Hurricane Katrina. Advocates say they often have little or no access to mainstream financial services and can be victimized by criminals and consumer fraud as a result. […]

Restaurants

PEERLESS POOR BOYS

A person can hardly swing a loaf of Leidenheimer French bread without smacking a place that makes a pretty good poor boy in this city. Truly, we’re blessed with an abundance of neighborhood corner stores and seafood joints that turn out delicious, overstuffed sandwiches. But aside from such stalwarts as fried oyster and roast beef […]

NEWSBEAT: First you make a list

If there’s any conversation topic that trumps even food in New Orleans these days, it’s where to find reliable, qualified contractors to help rebuild property damaged by Hurricane Katrina and its flood. Two years after the disaster, many residents are still desperate to find good people to hire and everyone seems to have heard horror […]

Personalities

Rita Benson LeBlanc

Growing up, all of us have dreams – to become a doctor, a vet, a lawyer or whatnot. Somewhere out on a ranch in the Hill Country of Texas, one young girl didn’t dream of getting up at 4 a.m. to feed the cows, muck out stalls or become a 4-H phenom. Bookish, she dreamed […]

History

STREETCAR: THE FIG AND ME

On the morning of Fri., July 6, 2007, I spotted the bulb as though it was staring back at me from beneath a leaf. This was a moment that had been a long time coming but would not have come at all were it not for the wacky way our world has been scrambled since […]

History

CHRONICLES: Margaret Williams

She was very tall and slender, beautifully dressed. I remember she would sit at her dressing table and put her hair in an elaborate bun,” Phoebe Ferguson recalled when reminiscing about her late maternal grandmother, Margaret Williams (née Hooker).In the decades before her death in 1974, Margaret Williams was a key figure in introducing New […]

BEAUTY AND THE BIN

My mother-in-law Ms. Larda is usually so busy minding other people’s business she don’t think about herself. But now she got a problem. She decides to ask for advice from her daughter Gloriosa, because this problem involves money and Gloriosa is the only one in the family who never hits her up for any – […]

Cocktails

LAST CALL

Back on trackWhile those of us who live along the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line eagerly await its return, in the meantime we can find solace in another streetcar of a more seductive sort. Called the “Street Car,” this alluring cocktail is concocted by Brandon Brown, expert mixologist at La Phare, a new lounge located […]