Lagniappe
A Vocabulary School Vacation Compendium of Food and Drink
Lagniappe: (noun) something given gratuitously or by way of good measure
Due to everything, I haven’t been reading much this month, so this is a special, lagniappe edition of Vocabulary School. Make sure you click through for the full post! We’ll be back to business next week but first I'd like to share my special week with you! *Uses my best Dracula voice* Welcome to Vocabulary School! *ahem* I have returned from my Taylor Swift vacation from last week. It was a sparkling, marvelous time of my life with my best friends filled with frozen Irish coffees, oysters, champagne, biscuits, signature cocktails and pizza. This is what me and my new Gold Reputation Bodysuit manicure and I ate while on vacation.
Wednesday October 23
Woke up early to finish packing my skincare and to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my coffee before leaving for the airport. The drive to the airport was designed by the devil himself and took over two hours so I had nervously burned through all of my calories that were supposed to get me to the first stop of my trip. Shout out to my parents who drove us to the airport and then experienced a catastrophic confluence of events that could only be blamed on Scorpio season or another celestial event. We arrived in Charlotte for a few hours to eat lunch at an airport Mexican restaurant that served a pretty ok carnitas burrito and very not ok vegetable tacos. The real star of lunch was being upsold a TWENTY FIVE DOLLAR margarita. As a former margarita scam artist, I should have seen it coming. It was a very good margarita even though no 1800 in any of its levels of aging is worth 25 dollars. When we arrived in New Orleans, we made a stop at Moisant Market that sells the famous Central Grocery muffalettas since Central Grocery has been closed since Hurricane Ida in 2021. We also picked up an Abita Strawberry Andygator, two bags of Zapps, and an apple Hubig’s pie—all of which was meant to keep us afloat until our late, late dinner reservation. We checked into the hotel and ate it on our parade route balcony. It was fun and silly even though I kept dropping olive salad on the ground.
After showers, we actually went out again (who are they???) to make our dinner reservation at Hungry Eyes, one of Bon Appetit’s 20 Best New Restaurants. It was positively gorgeous and the playlist was fun and dancey. Right away, the chairs were so comfortable so I could have been served cocktail napkins and would have been thrilled. However, we chose to order the tasting menu and the staff was able to accommodate our no red meat diet without so much as an eye roll. Our first course was a halibut crudo with pineapple and puffed quinoa, raw veggies and corn fritters with a green goddess panna cotta, and baked artichokes of the half shell. Our second course was fried chicken thighs with grilled eggplant and mint and a pork schnitzel with giant capers and a bok choy and rice salad, and the best dressed green salad I’ve ever had in my entire life. We boxed half of this course to enjoy the dessert course which was a chocolate basque cheesecake which tasted like tangy ganache topped with Luxardo cherries and those little crunchies that come on Dairy Queen ice cream cakes. Everything was elevated without being pretentious and special without feeling inaccessible. Our server was so wonderful—everyone who popped by our table was a dream come true. This was the perfect meal to kick off our Taylor Swift vacation and I am definitely adding this to our list of recommended spots for other New Orleans visitors.
Thursday October 24
We did a combination of high and low and had hotel room coffee with our leftovers from our Hungry Eyes dinner before we had to switch hotel rooms. It was actually very chic to eat cold fried chicken in my pajamas. Then after braving the Taylor Swift merch line with a bunch of friendly women, we got some million dollar bottles of water to make sure we made it to greet Caryn and Rebecca when they arrived. We were able to check in super early to our room so we were able to squeeze in the remaining quarters of yesterday’s muffaletta and a nap. After resting and reapplying sunscreen, we headed out for oysters at our favorite spot. Even our favorite oyster shucker from before was still there—I was so thrilled he made it out! We had beers and oyster shooters to start. I’m not a big drinker anymore, so I was sipping my shooter like a real lady. The bartender, who looked like a middle schooler, asked if I just turned 21 because I couldn’t throw back a shot. When you’re in your thirties, you realize you can drink as slow as you want because no one was giving out prizes when you were in your twenties. We both had a dozen oysters with extra spicy cocktail sauce and split an order of hush puppies and were on our merry way in under 30 minutes. We then went to Erin Rose’s which was recommended on Jon Gabrus’ podcast, High and Mighty to get frozen Irish coffees which definitely snuck up on us and we required another pre-dinner snoozelet.
After that, we were able to retrieve Caryn and Rebecca from their room downstairs to get a Lyft to Margot’s, a cool pizza place in South 7th Ward that doesn’t take reservations. We were told that there would be a wait but we ended up seated right away to order cocktails. I basically ordered everything I’d seen posted on their instagram and loved everything. The standout was the roasted butternut squash with whipped feta and hot honey. I can never resist a mushroom pizza, especially one with a silly name like Fungus Among Us. I had a bite of everyone else’s pizzas but I was ultimately pleased with my ordering.
After dinner we returned to the hotel to watch the baseball game in the bar that never closed because the bartender was too nice to turn anyone away. We ordered the Taylor Swift champagne and cassis cocktail the hotel created for the weekend that came in comically large to-go cups instead of the pictured champagne flutes. This was like, three drinks and it took several innings to finally finish.
Friday October 25
Started the day with the hotel coffee and the Firecracker Liquid IV before heading up to Treme/Lafitte for breakfast at Flour Moon Bagels. For the weekend they were running a sandwich special called the Hangry Taylor which was a bagel with caramelized onions, American cheese, Taylor Ham (pork roll), and yellow mustard—it ruled so hard. I had never considered a bagel sandwich with the interior guts on the outside but it does fry up nicely. First of all, I cannot say Taylor Ham because I am from the Delaware Valley and I have pork roll opinions coded into my DNA. I’d never had a slice of pork roll that thick and I was like, “Is this allowed?” It was and it was delicious. I will be campaigning for my bagel place to start making a pumpernickel everything bagel so I can recreate this at home.
After breakfast, we got into another Lyft to make an early reservation we’d made to learn how to saber champagne bottles at the historic Brennan’s. One of the managers dropped pastries at our table to apologize for some confusion that resulted in us sharing a table with a sweet aunt/niece pair from Houston. Michelle and Rebecca sabered like they had been doing it all their lives and I sincerely hope they saber at book club in a few weeks. After the swords were put away, I drank champagne in a way untried before or since. A very “a fourth drink in my hand” situation that could only be remedied by an afternoon nap. I woke up in time to put the transit app on my phone to get the streetcar to Cafe du Monde to do Cafe du Monde things with beignets and coffee. We then went to stand in a long line for Pimm’s Cup at Napoleon House for what felt like 15 minutes. I love Pimm’s but this one didn’t have enough snack fruit!
Due to all of the sparking Swifites that were more or less walking in the middle of the street everywhere, we were late for our dinner reservation. I was excited to eat at this restaurant and was pleased to be eating at this restaurant once I was eating. However, I wasn’t thrilled with how Michelle was spoken to on the phone when the restaurant decided the plan they themselves created didn’t work for them anymore. As someone who used to run the front of house at a busy restaurant, there was literally no reason for any of it to happen and the restaurant that had otherwise great food and great service took an unforced L from me. So, no review! I didn’t starve and happily left to never darken their door again. As I was still recovering from my pre-noon rager for one, I didn’t drink anything other than Liquid IV or seltzer after our walk to the scary skeleton house decked out for the Eras Tour. Honestly, it was too scary and I’m not afraid to admit it. Scary Halloween is not for me™. We returned to the hotel and watched most of the baseball game as long as my consciousness allowed.
Saturday October 26
Pulled pork over a biscuit with eggs for my first meal of the day? Please and thank you. Not a great service experience but we had to eat on a regular-ish schedule for the concert. The iced coffee was good and they were playing a full Taylor playlist, so it was all fine. The wildest thing happened when we got to Erin Rose’s for another round of frozen Irish coffees, we got carded! Bless you to the man at the door who thought we could be underage sneaking into a bar to have one drink at 11 in the morning. After that, we tried our hand at getting a seat at the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone. I was ready to give up right away and my impatience was rewarded with two seats on the gently rotating bar next to a very friendly man and his heart stoppingly hungover wife. He gave us grapes from their charcuterie plate while we ordered Taylor Swift cocktails and a Bloody Mary with pickled green beans. At some point in our two revolutions, the man next to us fed me a cracker with a piece of salami on it which sounds like a euphemism or a come on but it was really neither.
I insisted again on a nap and then I had the bright idea to order pizza delivery from Pizza Delicious after googling “best pizza delivery new orleans.” I cleared it with the team while we got fluffed and folded to go see Taylor. I ordered the stuffed artichoke pizza with garlic knots and I was rewarded for not thinking about it too hard. There were conservatively 57 garlic knots in our order which was unexpected but ultimately medically necessary. We ate one slice before the concert and one slice after the concert. Making an after concert pizza plan is always the move. Of course, the reason for the season was incredible. We went to New Orleans Night 2 which is when Taylor brought Sabrina Carpenter on stage to do a mashup of “Espresso” and “Is It Over Now?” and “Please, Please, Please”— Taylor fed and we all ate well on Saturday. A slice of pizza eaten on the floor of my hotel room never tasted so good.
Sunday October 27
We got a travel advisory to arrive an extra hour early to the airport because of the concerts which ended up being a total lie and we were all up too early without coffee and breakfast following the fastest trip to the airport ever recorded by a motor vehicle. Once we settled our fast car poisoned bodies, we opted for the Emeril spot for breakfast which went as well as ordering from a QR code from the world’s most harried airport waitress. I had biscuits and gravy which was different from my PA Dutch expectations. As I was expecting a long day in the airport, I just ate it and said a prayer that I didn’t make a grave error.
The layover that the devil devised for us brought us to Miami for the space of an entire football game. The terminal we waited in had very few options but we sourced perfectly ok pizza that held us until snacktime on the plane. The biscoff cookies on the plane were truly lifesaving because after we split apart into two sister groups, Michelle and I waited for almost 2 hours to get the carry-ons we gate checked. When the cookies wore off, we ate Philly airport vending machine robbery of Doritos for THREE AMERICAN DOLLARS. The chemicals did quiet my brain and ferried me, finally, home where a slice of cream cheese banana bread awaited me.
Can’t wait to wash down 5 days of vacation with all of the leftover Halloween candy from my non-existent trick or treaters.
Love, Andrea
Thanks for stopping by Vocabulary School!
Michelle’s face after success sabering is SO good and so is your concert dress! Love, love, love! Glad you four had the best time 🫶🏻🩷