New Orleans: A Magnificent Mishmash
By John DeMers
Surely by this point, someone has told you how New Orleans put
together its cuisine from the contributions of French and Spanish who
came here as colonists and Africans who came here as slaves. But if
you're as smart as we think you are, you've probably also figured out that virtually
none of New Orleans' best food turns up at all in France, Spain or Africa. This seems a dilemma -- until you realize to what degree this city is not only a cooking pot but a melting pot. Read more in this article from New Orleans Gourmet!
Some things never change
Even the larger diverse culture of America looks as homogenized as milk compared to the
magnificent mishmash that is New Orleans. I often say each incoming ethnic group
hated and was hated by all the others -- until they cursed, competed,
brawled in the muddy streets, went for a drink and married each other's
sisters. Food, alcohol and sex -- some things about New Orleans never
change.
Each group came here for its own reasons. Or turning that around,
since New Orleans was always a busy port, we took anybody no matter
what their reason. Sometimes we took them for their paycheck. Maybe we took
them for a ride. Yet through the 19th into the 20th centuries, those
near-mythical French, Spanish and Africans intermingled with Irish and
German, Greek and Croatian, Sicilian and Haitian, and much later
Vietnamese. The resulting populace is truly "Creole," reminding us that
from its origins as Spanish "criollo," the word meant a strange magic
that took place in a distant and dangerous New World.
Even the larger diverse culture of America looks as homogenized as milk compared to the magnificent mishmash that is New Orleans. I often say each incoming ethnic group hated and was hated by all the others -- until they cursed, competed, brawled in the muddy streets, went for a drink and married each other's sisters. Food, alcohol and sex -- some things about New Orleans never change.
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Germans were actually some of the earliest who made a difference in New Orleans, fleeing the Napoleonic War and later a famine in the Rhine Valley. Striking deals with Dutch shippers since they couldn't afford such desperate passage, many traded eight years of indentured servitude for the trip to New Orleans.
As of 1910, Germans made up the largest foreign-born culture in the city, growing produce beyond the fringes and hawking their wares around town from carts. Within a generation, Germans were opening some of the city's first restaurants, groceries and, of course breweries.
Sicilian influence
Sicilians endured a similar saga, also in huge numbers. Their island
off the tip of Italy had been persecuted by virtually everybody
virtually forever, and it didn't fare well as part of the loosely united
Italy either. Poverty was almost universal under a system nearly feudal
centuries after the rest of Europe had moved on. Once settled here,
Sicilians made contributions in many fields -- and served as under-credited
consultants to Creole cooking. The peppery red sauce used on so
many dishes is clearly borrowed from Sicilians, as is our tendency to cook
eggplant so many wonderful ways.
The oldest Greek population
New Orleans claims to have the oldest (though hardly the largest)
Greek community in North or South America, the heritage of Greek sailors
who either decided to settle here or got too drunk to find their ships.
As a consolation, they married local girls, sold candy outside theaters
and eventually made fortunes in several fields as bizarre as painting
the Mississippi River bridges. Greeks bolstered the cultural influence
of Sicilians, who has always been more Greek than Italian anyway.
Croatians
How about those Croatians? We used to call them Yugoslavs, though
many here knew enough about the Balkan ethnic tangle to be uncomfortable
with the politics. Croatians in south Louisiana call to mind one thing
above all -- oysters. They came to harvest oysters as they had for
generations along the Dalmatian Coast near Dubrovnik, and they
prospered.
To this day, some of New Orleans' finest oyster dishes are Croatian in origin. And most oysters you can get here make it in from leased oyster beds courtesy of someone whose surname ends in "ich."
The irony of the Irish
And then, finally, there was the irony of the Irish. Ireland was
never hailed as a culinary capital (it was famine, after all, that drove
most Irish to America), yet the many Irish who settled in New Orleans
have made more than their share of culinary contributions.
Not just corned beef and cabbage on St. Paddy's Day, mind you. And not just the wedding day our own Anne O'Brien became Anne Rice and started cooking up vampire stew. No, we mean the Brennan family. Owen Brennan gave the world Breakfast at Brennan's -- and before his premature death, he gave us a huge, sprawling, occasionally brawling boatload of relatives who today operate most of the best-operated restaurants in town.
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About this article: This article originally appeared in New Orleans Gourmet Magazine.
