Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table
by Sara RoahenW.W. Norton & Co., 293 pp., $24.95Several years ago, when I heard that both the daily paper and the alternative newsweekly in the city of New Orleans had hired transplanted Midwesterners to write about restaurants there, I’ll have to admit they struck me as odd choices for the job. But when I received this delightful volume by former Gambit Weekly restaurant reviewer/food writer Sara Roahen last fall, the genius of her hiring became apparent. As an outsider and a former vegetarian who garnered her professional cooking experience in the San Francisco Bay Area, Roahen brought a healthy dose of skepticism about New Orleans cuisine to the job. She didn’t even move to the Crescent City in search of food – it was just a necessary stop along the way in her husband’s medical career. Roahen went about her new job as a serious and thorough reporter, however, and the historically rich and seductive food culture of the old port city worked its magic, eventually rendering her a passionate partisan of her adopted home.
Gumbo Tales honestly recounts Roahen’s discovery of and immersion in everything from gumbo and Sazeracs to po’boys and Sno Balls and from Mardi Gras parades to Tom Fitzmorris’ food radio show. Each chapter chronicles different culinary and cultural revelations. She revels in the red gravy that’s emblematic of the Italian culinary influence in New Orleans and helps construct St. Joseph’s Day altars with an Italian-American family. She pursues the genesis of the turducken from chef Paul Prudhomme to a man named Sammy Hebert, all the while sharing a hilarious account of producing the labor-intensive three-poultry dish herself. The author learns to love stewed and stuffed vegetables, drinking brown cocktails, and peeling boiled crawfish – making the reader’s mouth water in the process.
Like any writer who turned in New Orleans-related articles or books by August 2005, Roahen found it necessary to rewrite parts of her work to account for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. She found some of her favorite haunts struggling to get back on their feet, while others were simply washed away, not unlike her husband’s hospital job. Her pain and sense of loss at having to leave New Orleans are palpable. Her last trip “making groceries” for the road broke my heart. Sara Roahen wasn’t born to love New Orleans, but she ultimately earned the right to call it home, embracing the city as only a convert can. This book is likely to make you love it, too.
Author Sara Roahen is teaching a sold-out class at the Central Market Cooking School, 6:30-9pm, Friday, March 7.
This article appears in March 7 • 2008.