Day 4 in NOLA

(Are these titles getting stale?)

Did I have breakfast on Day 4? Did I have lunch? I seem to have had two dinners. My schedule was thrown way off.

Why?

'Cause I got me a bike.


Getting a bike meant that I tooled around all day, falling in love and falling in hate with it (it's a very poor fit, you back pedal to break, and it squeaks - that said, it's a bike). It also meant that I found myself starving at four o'clock and realized that I hadn't eaten anything since my morning citrusfest. To remedy that, I looked around and saw that I was right around the corner from Cochon (remember Cochon?). Being right around the corner from Cochon means that I was directly in front of Cochon Butcher. It was a toss up between Cochon Butcher and NOLA Grocery, but I really had to pee. So it was another porcine meal for me (and how bad is that, really?).

Wow. I should probably preface this by saying that regular readers (read: my family and friends) know that I'm more about substance than style. I also prefer more casual dining to more formal fare. Not that Cochon is ultra formal, but the Butcher is the kind of place where the cook recognizes the face you're making as a swooning over truffle and foie gras butter and then proceeds to pull out her favourite (labelless) hot sauce for you because "it's my favourite and everything needs hot sauce."

The draw (other than a possible ladies' room) was lardo crostini. They were divine. With or without hot sauce (and her hot sauce was the best I've had to date). Spicy, salty, porky... it was my introduction to lardo but I'll quickly get to know it better. I swooned again. The texture is like chewy butter... I know that sounds gross, but it was delicious. I was going to call it bacon fat but in a good way (mmm bacon fat), but it's actually cured pork fat back. Close enough. And it was amazing. So good, in fact, that it whet my appetite for a little something else.

That something else was the black-eyed pea and collards soup. After confirming that it did in fact contain pork products (bacon, though I suspect also a pork hock or something), I ordered it up, they served it up and I swooned for a third time. Each bite (slurp, spoonful, what have you) was better than the last. Some slurps were of soup alone. Some were soup with the special hot sauce. Some contained sliced scallions. They were all amazing. Spicy, bacony, beany, collardy. Words actually fail me.

For dinner I went to Luke. It smelled fabulous and looked nice. Things started poorly with a long delay by my waitress who appeared to prefer not to wait on solo diners. That said, my crawfish bisque was a really nice start, but everything else was kind of off. Maybe it was a mistake to get the daily special? It was a whole roast cochon de lait, which appeared to be mushed together pork with an overly crispy skin, with cherry mustard (not quite sure what that was - it seemed sort of like greasy grits - maybe it was?) and stewed greens. I didn't much care for the bread pudding; it was dense and bitter. The vanilla ice cream and butter pecan sauce, however, were nice (and all I really needed).