Check, Please.

Last week, I had the privilege of going to New Orleans for work.  I was headed to a food distributor show for one of my clients.  Two co-workers (Claire and Bryan) and I flew in on Tuesday evening for the Wednesday show.  So what is a girl to do in New Orleans with a free night?  Eat!!!  Of course.

So, Claire, Bryan and I made our way to the French Quarter for a little exploration on a beautiful Tuesday evening.  Our cabbie drops up off at Cafe du Monde.  There is seriously no better way to start a tour of the French Quarter.  We ordered beignets and cafe au lait for a quick snack.  Beignets are french-ish doughnuts, fried with powdered sugar on top.  The dough is much, much lighter than most fried bread delights.  It's full of holes and puffed up areas.  They were utterly delicious and light as a cloud.  So yummy.

In an effort to figure out where we were wandering to (and to be very touristy), we stopped and got a map.  The map lady gave us an amazing recommendation for dinner--Coop's Place.  Legend has it this is a hot spot for locals with the most authentic NOLA food available.  So after a few more blocks of meandering and a little antiquing, we make it to Coop's Place.  There was a line around the block.  So we wait and we drink... Hurricanes.  Don't judge me... what else are you supposed to do while waiting in line in NOLA?!

We make it in about half an hour later and immediately order a crawfish nugget appetizer and two Coop's Taste Plates to share--A cup of Seafood Gumbo, Shrimp Creole, Cajun Fried Chicken, Red Beans & Rice with Sausage, and Rabbit & Sausage Jambalaya.  It would take a hundred years to explain the details for all of these dishes, so I'll just send you to their menu for exploration.  I will say that the crawfish nuggets and gumbo needed salt some kind of bad, but after seasoning, it was all pretty tasty.  Now, the fried chicken, Red Beans & Rice and jambalaya were phenomenal.  I could have eaten that all night long.  As far as the Shrimp Creole, I have no idea what that was.  Ha!  I probably ate it and probably liked it, but there were so many things piled on that plate it was hard to keep them straight.

All in all, I ate a lot of unusual things that I don't normally eat and overall, it was wonderful.  (Especially since I went to a food show the next day and literally ate my weight in restaurant tastings.)  Next time you are in NOLA, go to Coop's and DEFINITELY go to Cafe du Monde.  It's a little touristy, but well worth it.