A la Nouvelle Orléans on Route to Paris

Special note: The following is a kind of travelogue, a kind of adventure making the move to Paris from Maui via New Orleans with my daughter. So I apologize in advance for its length and breadth of detail and information, but with the hopes you’ll enjoy it as much as we did living it…

Last Thursday was my daughter, Erica’s, last day in her Maui home and possibly the last time I’ll get to Maui…at least for a very long time. We had a lot of good-bye get-togethers and she and her friends shed a lot of tears. This is what one can expect when moving such a far distance and so permanently. I do feel for all of our clients who go through the same thing.

For the move, she worked with our Moving Consultant, Mike Quinting, to ship her belongings to France, which were deposited in a storage unit until she’s ready to move them to her new apartment in Paris. Personal belongings she wouldn’t need until then (end of August) went via Send My Bag in big boxes—again to storage—and a second group of suitcases that will be deposited to her temporary rental apartment soon after our arrival on Wednesday. The rest, we took with us and just paid the airlines for the bags.

 

What she left behind was an entire household of goods. Her Maui house was a rental and she managed to manifest a friend to take over the lease and all of the furniture, so our final day before boarding our flight to New Orleans was more about doing laundry and getting it really ready for the new tenant than anything else. It was relatively painless, but I’m sure for her, with mixed emotions.

To make the most of first crossing the Pacific, then the entire U.S., then the Atlantic to Europe, we made a pit stop in La Nouvelle Orléans, where I grew up and where a lot of my family still live. With several birthdays to celebrate, and in particular my niece’s who turns 60 in June (where did the time go?), it was a perfect opportunity for a family reunion. Almost everyone came.

Two of my three sisters live in “The Big Easy,” so they were able to prepare for the onslaught of the clan, and made reservations at our favorite seafood dive for a Saturday night extravaganza dinner. The last time we had such an event was for my 70th birthday three-and-a-half years ago. They surprised me with a big party, trays of boiled crabs, crawfish, shrimp and oysters, bowls of gumbo and oyster po-boys. I literally dream about eating these things…what you can’t get anywhere else in the world, outside of the Louisiana coastal waters and bayous, the inland estuaries and wetlands south of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico where most of the seafood is caught.

Sorry, my mistake. “Gulf of America.” Officially, within the U.S. federal government, President Trump changed the name from the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” by executive order in January 2025. U.S. agencies now use “Gulf of America” in official federal documents and databases. However, internationally, it is still widely recognized as the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico and most other countries continue using “Gulf of Mexico,” many maps outside the U.S. still show the original name, or both names together and Google Maps and Apple Maps show different labels depending on the user’s location. For me, it will always be “Gulf of Mexico,” and hopefully when he is no longer in office, the new president will change it back!

We were laden with suitcases, a foldable stroller and too many carry-ons. For two women, one with an 18-month old and the other (me) with a bad back, it was a challenge. We managed to successfully fly first to Denver on a red-eye, then board a second and much shorter flight to New Orleans. Erica had purchased a gadget that created a kind of sling bed for Little Leeds using the tray table and the seat so he was able to get a little bit of sleep, as were we, but with a lot of difficulty. The United Airlines plane was a jumbo jet with incredibly uncomfortable seats. No matter how often one pressed the button to recline the seat, it would pop you back up on its own accord and there you were just as you started. It could not have been more frustrating.

The new New Orleans airport no longer has a short walk down a path to the rental car stations. One must now take a shuttle bus with a 15 to 20-minute ride to arrive just near the old airport. With four big and very heavy checked bags, two rolling carry-ons, a foldable stroller and other extraneous bags (food, toys, etc.), we realized this would be near to impossible. That’s when I made a call to one of my sisters, who thankfully doesn’t live terribly far from the airport, to rescue us with her good-sized car. This way we could put all the luggage in her trunk while we boarded the shuttle bus to the rental car agencies with as little as possible. She drove home and waited for us to meet her there.

I always book rental cars from Sixt. No agency does a better job for the price. Thanks to their brilliant customer service systems, I had a text message that allowed us to check in online, add Erica as a driver, order up an infant’s seat and send us straight to picking up the key, bypassing the counter! While everyone else was waiting in line, we went straight to the lot, jumped in the car and headed to my sister’s house. Sixt is all over Europe, so next time you travel and need a rental car, don’t bother checking the prices of everyone else. Sixt will be pennies different (more or less) and be well worth it!

My other sister met us there with a big bag of freshly made artichokes stuffed with parmesan cheese and garlic. We pulled off the leaves and licked our fingers with gusto. It was our first introduction to La Cuisine de la Nouvelle Orléans!

Then, with both cars filled with our belongings, we headed over to the house we had rented not too far away, using Airbnb. There are very few to come by in New Orleans because of the strict rental laws, especially in a suburb like Metairie where my family lives, but we got lucky. A three-bedroom home with two baths and laundry facilities for four nights was about $1,100. A hotel nearby would have cost quite a lot more and not been anywhere near as comfortable.

With very little sleep under our belts, we cleaned up, organized, took naps and headed back to my sister’s for a pot-luck dinner, but not before picking up something to contribute. I had boiled shrimp on my brain, but time was running out to find them before the vendors closed their doors. Dennis’ Seafood was a 10-minute drive. We had only 20 minutes to hop in the car and get there in time. I phoned ahead.

“Hi. This is Adrian Leeds. (They don’t have a clue who I am, but I find it always helps to introduce yourself.) I know you’re closing soon. We’re on our way. What have you got left? I’m hoping for boiled shrimp.”

“Okay, hold on. Let me go look,” she said.

She had 9.5 pounds left. “I’ll take them all,” I said.

We arrived with one minute to spare. The big bag was waiting for us on the counter. I paid the bill, grabbed the big bag and headed back to my sister’s. The boiled shrimp filled a huge bowl set on the buffet table. My niece had brought a big pot of gumbo—known to be just as good as my mother’s, since she uses my mother’s recipe—and makes it even better thanks to her own years of experience as a New Orleans chef.

The family arrived little by little. We were missing only a couple of my nieces and nephews. This was the first time they were all meeting Little Leeds, who cared nothing for all of the cute toys they bestowed on him as he ran from garbage bin to garbage bin in delight. He really is obsessed and gets so excited every time he spots one, whether it be on the street, in the airport, in a house or wherever, and he recognizes a trash receptacle regardless of its shape and size. He carries them when he can, takes trash out and puts it back in. It never stops to bewilder us all this fascination with things that hold trash! (And we are constantly chasing after him to control his habit!)

Saturday morning my first-cousin hosted a family brunch at his new home in Old Metairie. The many-meter-high ceilings make an already large American home seem twice as big and grand—reminiscent of Paris’ hôtels particuliers— townhouses the aristocrats once owned and lived in when visiting the city from their countryside châteaux. Every inch was beautifully designed and tastefully decorated—American-style living at its finest.

These are the cousins from my father’s side of the family. He had seven siblings, six of whom married and had children, as did he of course, so there are A LOT of cousins. A Seattle-based cousin surprised us all by being there. She was on a tour with a friend and stayed an extra day in New Orleans to attend the brunch. I had to do a double take when I saw her!

She had just been on a quest in Waco, Texas, to find our grandparents’ graves…and she did. I had no idea they actually existed at all, but she visited two different cemeteries and came up with their resting places.

(One of these days I’ll write up the story about my grandfather, a Russian immigrant, and how he managed to have two different families, on two sides of the country (not at the same time), have two first-born sons named David and then abandon them all by placing them in a Jewish orphanage in New Orleans—hence the New Orleans connection. That orphanage later became the Jewish Community Center on Saint Charles Avenue. And that’s another story entirely.)

The genetics of the family are tough to deny—we all look so much alike. As we have aged, we look more and more like our parents. My first cousin’s daughter and my daughter resemble one-another amazingly. One has darker hair than the other, but the similarities are clearly there. Genetics is a fascinating thing.

The rains came down heavy all day Saturday, so for fun we took a tour of the city by car. I could carve out a route for you, but in essence, we circled the oldest parts of the city, wove in-and-out of the streets of the French Quarter, past two different major parks and ogled the architecture. We passed dozens of above-ground cemeteries, for which the city is famous. The rains made the leaves on the trees heavy, so the grand oak trees with their fronds of Spanish moss glistened…they were beautiful sights to see.

The boulevards and avenues of New Orleans, and in particular, Saint Charles Avenue, with its dark oaks, olive-green street cars and large elegant mansions, some of the most beautiful in the world, is lined in antebellum homes fit for royalty.

It makes me proud of the city where I grew up. There are times I think about moving back, then realize that it’s really impossible for me to go back to living an American lifestyle, in a bubble called “the car” and where only that which is profitable exists. As much as I love my family, it’s just no longer possible for me to give up what I treasure in France.

Saturday night was the big event. We had taken over the covered patio-type room at our favorite seafood dive. It’s not on anyone’s tourists’ New Orleans restaurant list…but is at the top of ours. You have to be local to know it, or even understand it! Kenner Seafood is in Kenner (duh), near the airport. It’s one of those classic old-school Louisiana seafood institutions that is part seafood market, part casual restaurant, part catering operation—very unpretentious, very New Orleans. They’re especially known for
everything I just described. When you walk in, you go past the bins of fresh-boiled seafood to huge tables, huge platters of seafood.

Crawfish is in season. The little lobster-type creatures are boiled in a spicy mix and served hot. Out came a steaming boat of 30 pounds of crawfish—the one thing in the world I love more than anything else. The table then got laden with a buffet of gumbo, spicy sausage, shrimp, corn on the cob and boiled potatoes. And before it was all over, we ordered and oyster po-boy, a full loaf of bread long, to share among those of us wanting to taste it all (namely my daughter and I).

Everything was so spicy that at first our lips were on fire, then it settled in and we just wanted more and more. The table got piled with used paper towels and the shell baskets got full. But, there’s no way we could devour 30 pounds of crawfish. We could barely make a dent in the boat. Meanwhile, my niece, the chef, had made real flower-laden birthday cakes that were the most beautiful cakes I’ve ever seen…not to mention delicious.

After the happy birthday song and a lot of schmoozing, we packed up a huge box of leftover crawfish (about 12 of the 30 pounds), deposited them at my sister’s home, then got back in the car to have New Orleans coffee and chicory at the city’s best coffee shop, Morning Call.

Morning Call Coffee Stand is one of New Orleans’ great culinary institutions and one of the city’s oldest, dating back to 1870. It became the longtime rival to Café du Monde, with locals fiercely divided over which served the better café au lait and beignets (donuts). I won’t dwell on the history of the cafe, but our family was always partial to Morning Call (although I still like the beignets at Cafe du Monde better).

I was literally weaned on coffee and chicory. My mother would give me a café au lait and piece of buttered toast for breakfast before sending me off to kindergarten (I swear, this is true). It’s no wonder I prefer coffee to any other drink and can drink it all day long, happily.

The coffee at Morning Call is so black, so dense and so flavorful, that it’s tough to beat. Even Italian coffee can’t rival it, but the taste is quite different. Traditional New Orleans–style coffee, like that served at Morning Call or Café du Monde, mixes roasted coffee with roasted chicory root. Since part of the blend is chicory instead of coffee beans, the total caffeine content is reduced. Thank goodness.

I’ll end this travelogue with a good cup of New Orleans coffee, leaving the tales of Mother’s Day in The Big Easy for another time. The next time you hear from me, we’ll be back in Paris drinking espresso made with a French dark roast.

A la prochaine…