Wildcat.
In New Orleans, if you need to understand something, you will. If you don’t, you won’t. Do not bother trying to tie the title of today’s letter to what follows. If you don’t get it, it wasn’t meant for you. The person who needs to know, knows. That is all that matters.
Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!
Mrs. King and I visited the Colonnade District today. Our favorite Vietnamese restaurant is located there, next to the Cat Hospital, after Harkins the Florist.
Our favorite Vietnamese restaurant was closed today, on a Friday during lunch hour. The reason is unknown. Maybe there was a death in the family.
This how rumors get started.
I don’t know anything.
I do know the Colonnade District though. We used to live a few blocks away. I know the Colonnade District like Sophie Wright Place. That used to be my beat. I will tell you about the Colonnade District in a minute.
Instead of going to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, we tried this new ramen joint a couple of storefronts uptown on the same block, lakeside. It’s new. We go everywhere new. That is part of Mrs. King’s and my profession. We have eaten at over 700 of the 1300 restaurants in New Orleans.
It is as impossible to have a bad meal in New Orleans as it is to be bored.
If you are bored in New Orleans, you must have a hole in your head.
If you have a bad meal in New Orleans, you must have a hole in your tongue.
Let me get back to talking about the Colonnade District before I digress too much.
General readership comes for the general picture, geography. The people who pay to read more, they saddle up to get the more granular version of what happens during any given day over lunch.
What is behind that curtain?
The Colonnade District is just four, or so, blocks along Magazine Street between Felicity Street and, let’s say, Jackson Avenue. Close enough. It is very nice. You can spend a lot of time exploring those four, or so, blocks, either side. I know I have.
Aiden Gill is there. It is a super-upscale men’s barbershop and grooming supply boutique. I don’t visit there often, mainly because I am rarely in the neighborhood. I have suppliers closer to home base where I can purchase a haircut or some lilac vegetal aftershave.
There are bars, restaurants, boutique shops, a great antique mall, a guy who fires his own decorative tiles, a real New Orleans chop suey hot plate place in the back of a grocery store. There are all sorts of things to see and do and people to talk with.
The Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos Shrine is right around the corner, on Josephine Street, riverside. If you are Catholic, you should go. If you are not Catholic, you should go. It will do you good. There is a museum at the shrine about New Orleans and Bl. Father Seelos’ time here during a yellow fever epidemic. He was a very good priest.
If you do go to the Colonnade District, make sure you visit the Garden District Pub. I like the Garden District Pub. The Half Moon has its fans, and I know the Sunday bartender there, and The Saint has its fans. I have never cottoned to The Saint. My go-to place to whet my whistle (I know how I spelled it) is the Garden District Pub. The Garden District Pub is owned by two sisters.
What is behind that curtain? Thills! Chills! Spills!