Monday, August 1, 2016.
All Day In The Big, Hot, Wet City.
Another month goes by with the same options: it's either blistering hot outside, or a thunderstorm is dumping torrents of rain and disturbing the dogs with its thunderclaps. I drive through a bit of the latter as I head over to the radio station very early. I still have no internet at home, and my subscribers are all over me with emails asking whether I am still alive. (I'm not kidding.)
Trying to build out a website on a computer different from the one I usually use has all kinds of problems. No matter how hard I try, I always forget to bring four or five critical files. That blows half the morning, but I do get an imperfect NOMenu Daily out by showtime.
I also have a little time for lunch, a meal I almost never eat on the South Shore. I check a few shops in the immediate vicinity of the station (which is across the street from Mother's), and wind up at Commerce, on the corner of Camp and Gravier. I have been eating poor boy sandwiches here almost as long as the place has been in business, since 1965. In the late 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, I worked in offices less than a block away, so I know where Commerce is coming from. My feeling about it is that it's a somewhat updated version of Mother's, and not nearly as busy. The clientele is about the same: people who work in the big buildings that haven't yet been turned into hotels. And, come to think of it, a few hotel guests, too.
The only major change is a new sign out front--very slick, compared with the old one which, if I remember right, touted Royal Crown Cola.
Otherwise, the tile-floored room is split between a bar and a cafeteria line, with tables filling the open space along the windows. The lady on the other side of the steam table is a classic New Orleans cook. "What you gonna have, Baby?" she says to me. "We got nice red beans, and gumbo. And roast beef and ham and salads."
She swishes her spoon across the pan of red beans. They look good. "You want smoke sausage or hot sausage, Baby?" Hot sausage, please. It looks like the kind of chaurice that Vaucresson makes. I get a lettuce and tomato salad, and a couple of pieces of buttered French bread.
[caption id="attachment_52331" align="alignleft" width="270"]
Red beans and chaurice at The Commerce, Camp and Gravier.[/caption]
The beans and the sausage are as good as they look. I surprise myself by eating all of both. A flavor in the sausage stays with me for days.
Seems like the place has a lot of regulars. Glad to see the old joint still keeping the faith.
I go back to to the station with time for a twenty-minute nap, right there on the floor of my private office. If anyone asks me why I'm in there with the lights off and the doors locked, I tell them it's my meditation routine before the show every day. Everyone accepts this.
Commerce Restaurant. CBD: 300 Camp. 504- 561-9239.
Red beans and chaurice at The Commerce, Camp and Gravier.[/caption]
The beans and the sausage are as good as they look. I surprise myself by eating all of both. A flavor in the sausage stays with me for days.
Seems like the place has a lot of regulars. Glad to see the old joint still keeping the faith.
I go back to to the station with time for a twenty-minute nap, right there on the floor of my private office. If anyone asks me why I'm in there with the lights off and the doors locked, I tell them it's my meditation routine before the show every day. Everyone accepts this.
