Travelogue – The Big Easy
July 10, 2014
By Temple Ligon
On Memorial Day in 2012, Monday, May 28 around noon, I boarded the Amtrak Sunset Limited in Houston for New Orleans. Ordinarily a six-hour drive, the train route was scheduled to get me in downtown New Orleans by dinner time. Houston I hated to leave because of all the positive recall of my eleven years living there, 1975 through 1986. I married at the Rice University chapel in December 1978, no guarantee of eternal bliss, and the next day we took the same train for Washington by way of New Orleans, Galatoire’s in particular.
For us cross-country travellers, Amtrak pulled the Sunset Limited into New Orleans across the street from the Times-Picayune newspaper building and parked our sleeper car until six or seven the next morning, leaving for Washington while we slept. With that kind of accommodation, bar hopping and late-night dining in the French Quarter worked well, seeing how no one but the cab driver drove.
A week earlier while I was still in Los Angeles, I lined up the last days and miles of my circumnavigation of the globe, including hotel reservations. At one time fairly recently, I remembered reading the best hotel in New Orleans was the Windsor Court, near the casino and Canal Street. I also remembered hearing about the Audubon Cottages in the Garden District, but the cottages were like suites, overdoing it a bit for just one person. And any friends I have made from New Orleans over the years all agree Felton’s Guest House carried the most in character and the least in amenities. My favorite two were the former Fairmont (aka Roosevelt, as in Teddy) on the edge of the Quarter and the Pontchartrain on St. Charles Avenue.
In the late 1960s, if I have that right, the hotel school at Cornell rated the top three hotels in the United States: Plaza in New York City, Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and Pontchartrain in New Orleans. The Plaza has been up and down since, to include a stint with Eastern Airlines and another with Donald Trump, who installed retail sales at every possible square foot on the floor of the lobby. The Mauna Kea was built in 1965 as a RockResort by Laurence Rockefeller. Pontchartrain gave way to Katrina’s wrath and turned into an assisted care compound.
The fun part of the Pontchartrain for us Houstonians on regular returns to New Orleans was the coffee shop. The expensive Caribbean Room restaurant in the back, one of the best in New Orleans, shared the same kitchen with the sensibly priced coffee shop in the front. The coffee shop was famous for its Mile High Pie, which really did hover over the heads of the neighborhood ladies who would come into the hotel in mid-afternoon and spend the rest of the day spooning down the Mile High Pie while forking up on town gossip. Gambling man Governor Edwin Edwards was thoroughly devoured along with the pie, for instance.
Next door to the Pontchartrain was a classical music store, and next door to that was a Mercedes dealership showroom – an aggregation of expensive real estate builds an affluent and sophisticated patronage.
In the early 1980s, lawyer Mrs. Ligon had to spend a week in the Garden District attending trial procedure courses at Loyola Law School. Her employer Superior Oil picked up the tab, all inclusive. Planning the trip, she asked me where she should stay since I suggested I could show up at week’s end for the closing social function. I didn’t hesitate in naming the Pontchartrain as her home for the week. Besides, I added, the St. Charles Avenue streetcar connected her hotel and her classroom. What could be more convenient?
On her first morning, the hotel bell captain asked her where she was going on the streetcar. She said Loyola, which would be true every morning that week. The bell captain said the hotel would be happy to run her down to her classes every morning. Fine, she said. And within one minute a hotel Rolls Royce pulled up. But it had no identifying sign or logo or labeling, as tasteful and as appropriate as one might expect from the Pontchartrain. So when the car dropped off Mrs. Ligon, the crowd in the law school entry courtyard assumed she came by limo simply because she had one. Apparently, they collectively decided, Mrs. Ligon was rich; and if you got it, flaunt it.
Friday night I showed up in my white linen suit, being a Southerner in New Orleans and all, and Mrs. Ligon was also sartorially suitable, just to feed the rumors as it were.
I figured it out while I waited in line at the bar: These people were sure we were flush, and their business development instincts kicked in. Mrs. Ligon and I were being hustled by the self-employed set and also by the big-firm marketing arms.
I offered a correction just as soon as I was sure of the mistaken identity. At the time I ran little Ligon & Co., famous for garage apartments, but somehow this crowd made me out to be Big Tex or some such grand gesture.
Anyway, with memories like that, it’s hard to accept any changes at the Pontchartrain. It’s where Tennessee Williams polished Streetcar Named Desire. My dog’s name is Stella, after all.
Still, the Windsor Court is one heluva property. On the day following my arrival, I had lunch reservations downstairs at the hotel restaurant, an English food affair, which in New Orleans offered a break from the ubiquitous Cajun fare. But my lunch appointment could not be held. Ashton Phelps, publisher at the Times-Picayune couldn’t make it – too much going on at the office, or so it sounded. Actually, the office was in turmoil. Ashton had a horrible week laid out. He was supposed to fire something like 200 people and reduce the daily from seven down to three days a week – that would be Wednesday, Friday andSunday.
I met Ashton on New Year’s Eve following Katrina. We were attending a wedding reception at the Capital City Club, and I overheard a newspaper conversation. I joined in. At the time I was covering City Hall for the Columbia Star and its 30,000 readers, and Ashton was publisher of the Times-Picayune with $90 million in revenue and $8 million in profit. How did that conversation work? Very well, as it turned out. Newspapers are newspapers. It’s just a matter of money and scale of operation. And overlapping the agreeable exchange on journalism, Ashton identified his cousins who went to Woodberry Forest. The bar was overrun with Columbia alumni.
The Times-Picayune was bought from Ashton’s family in 1962 by New Yorker and Jasper Johns collector S. I. Newhouse and his Advance Publications. The paper’s Sunday circulation had dropped from 285,000 in 2005 down to 155,000 when the decision was made to cut the four days. Once down to three days, the paper had reduced its production costs by 60%. The population of New Orleans, by the way, had fallen about 30% due to Katrina.
I stayed to have lunch at the Windsor Court by myself while I planned my visit to Galatoire’s, probably New Orleans’s most storied restaurant. There’s a 4th generation family member still on the job, but Galatoire’s sold, and in 1999 the place started taking reservations. The time to go, though, is after two in the afternoon and well before five. That way, you have the place mostly to yourself and a few hardcore locals having a liquid lunch. For the money, Galatoire’s can possibly be the best restaurant in the country. James Beard Foundation said as much in 2004.
The other foodie destination I always hit is the Camellia Grill at the end of St. Charles Avenue, near Tulane. Like Galatoire’s, the Camellia Grill is always crowded, but it is a grill, like a diner, and reservations are not taken. Long lines form. It’s not just the food, although their omelets are the world’s greasiest – folded over on the grill like a newspaper – and thereby the most delicious.
The most removed from the ordinary when it comes to food is Takee Outee, where my former sister-in-law kept the books while she finished her MBA at Tulane. The business card and the company logo had an Oriental guy running with a tray of food and smiling the toothiest grin you ever saw. Frank, the owner and an Oriental himself, hired only people from the Far East, regardless of language skills. Kind of like the implications from television character Foreign Man. We presume authenticity somewhere in the egg rolls if the server looks Oriental.
My sister-in-law would come into the headquarters office early in the morning, and every now and then she had to handle a crisis before the management team came to work.
One early morning, she answered the telephone – this was the late 1970s – to hear a confused declaration that sounded like “egg roll cold, egg roll cold, egg roll cold.”
The immigrant couldn’t handle the language, he just knew he was supposed to come in early and fire up the deep fat fryer. And this morning the deep fat fryer would not light up, so the only way he knew to report the problem was to utter egg roll cold. Fortunately for the immigrant and for Frank, my sister-in-law figured it out and called the deep fat fryer repairman, and within the hour the new guy handling the egg rolls was back in business.
Frank had maybe six or so branches in New Orleans, many in the Garden District for the student trade. And now I see where there are Takee Outees all over Florida and Michigan, – probably other states, too – so Frank got his day in the sunshine, as it appears on a quick search.
