(Originally posted November, 2010)

Dalai Dan and I escaped the bondage of parenthood this weekend. Almost. I still got one “obnoxious child” call from the sitter and we unexpectantly visited New Orleans during Voodoo Fest.

We didn’t know New Orleans on Halloween weekend meant Voodoo fest and thousands of college students.  Some of which had excellent taste in hotels and picked the Ritz.  Right next to our room.  Playing loud music.  We actually ended up switching rooms at 11:00 at night in our pajamas because the Dalai was damn sure going to get her beauty sleep.

The trip was with our old college friends.  We all went to Vanderbilt in the 90s, were in each other’s weddings, and now used these occasional get-aways to hammer out the dowry and nuptial details of our children’s arranged marriages.  We keep upping the dowry amount but the Searls still have not agreed to take Dalai Daniel as a son-in-law.

Our entire two-day trip was scheduled around food. Our fist meal was at Herbsaint, where I got an incredible beet salad, followed by chocolate pudding cake and cafe au lait ice cream. That was the lightest meal of the weekend.

After shopping up and down Magazine Street, we worked up and appetite for award-winning chef, John Besh’s restaurant, August. It is considered one of America’s top restaurants and I truly had one of the best trout dishes of my life.  And then there was that chocolate napoleon with sea salt toffee ice cream…

We kicked off the next morning with some beignets, croissants and coffee at Cafe Beignet.

No beets here.

Would you like some butter with that croissant?

Now that we were properly fueled for another day of shopping, we headed to the French Quarter.

And saw some interesting things along the way.

Like this disturbing yet unique take on the “street statue.”





My favorite antique shop of the trip was Antiques de Provence. I want these 19th century french chairs.





All that walking got us hungry. Time to eat barbeque shrimp at Mr. B’s Bistro. One serving of 5 shrimp has an entire stick of butter. What do you think of that, Green Smoothie Girl?

Only 5 hours later and we were off for another meal,  this time at the famous Galatoires.  We bumped into some of our old Ritz neighbors along the way. Here is “Conjugal Visit.”

This poor guy is “f**king freezing.”

And “d*ck nose” here had a hard time drinking his beer.

We finally busted through the crowd and made it to Galatoires, only to learn Dalai Dan needed a coat.  Although there were many to choose from, he did not meet the New Orleans obesity requirement and felt a little silly in his big jacket.

Jacket aside, we still had an amazing dinner of fried oysters, crab-stuffed artichokes with hollandaise sauce, and turtle soup with my good buddy, Newt.

Mr. Gingrich had to leave early, but we were equally entertained by these restaurant patrons.

Sunday came in a flash and the trip was almost over. We had just enough time to compare beignets at Cafe de Monde. The vote: Cafe Beignet 4 to 0.

As the fruits of our culinary labor kept growing, two days of hard work had finally paid off.  We all could go home with a little something to show for it…