Friday, March 8, 2013.
Up And Down The River, Part 6. The Levee At Oak Alley. Homecoming Dinner At Cafe Giovanni.
The breakfasts on the Queen of the Mississippi have been as good as the lunches and dinners--which is to say very good. Maybe even a little too good. Instead of my typical breakfast of juice, a single piece of bread and café au lait, I have been down there every day eating omelettes, quiches, waffles, poached eggs with hollandaise, bacon, biscuits, and fruit. I am certain that the three-meals-a-day regimen on the ship has harmed my weight-control program. You get on a cruise as a passenger, but you get off as cargo.
To touch the brakes on that truck, I slept late (Mary Ann is no longer in the room to rouse me) and returned to my standard morning snack. The Sky Lounge--a comfortable, sunny space right next to my stateroom--has a micro-buffet with fresh, dark-roast coffee all the time. They even have espresso and cappuccino machines, but I never could figure them out. Good muffins, juices, and (this hasn't helped my figure) chocolates and cookies, too.
I spent the morning on the newsletter and on writing a new column for CityBusiness. Its editor said that the column I sent Wednesday was about a place I wrote up four months ago. I usually avoid that problem by checking the computer folder of past columns before I write. But my laptop was out of sync with my desk unit, and the old review didn't show up. Now I have two similar but different reviews of Giorlando's.
Lunch was to be my last meal on board the Queen of the Mississippi for this trip. Shrimp bisque to begin, a nice salad to finish. By that time the boat was moored behind the levee at Oak Alley Plantation. The grand avenue of live oaks only gets more impressive with time. It's so arresting a view that, until police were posted to slow cars down going into the curve, the road was covered with skid marks. Drivers not expecting to see the Alley would catch sight of it in the corners o their eyes, shout "Did you see that?!?" and hit the brakes.
I've been to Oak Alley many times, and didn't take the house tour. Instead, I made this stop a levee experience.
The levees that follow the Mississippi River across mid-America loom large in my personal history. I first discovered the levee when I was seven, after we moved from Treme to the old part of Kenner. Our houses there were both three blocks from the levee. We moved to what is now River Ridge (three addresses), then to Old Jefferson. In all those homes, the levee was a short walk away. In two of them, I could grab a shell from the unpaved street in front of our house and hum it onto the levee with a sidearm throw.
First with my father, later alone or with friends, I climbed the levee and basked in its unique presence. It's like a grassy hill on two sides, but the other two sides go on to infinity, for all practical purposes. On one side is the same suburban-rural scene found all over the country. On the other is a screen of trees beyond which flows the third-longest river in the world, in its mightiest, deepest stretch.
Walking or bicycling along the levee, decades before a bike trail built, was something I did so much that it became part of who I am. In my mid-teens, I took these jaunts to extremes, bicycling a dozen or so times all the way to the Spillway and back.
I left the levee without saying good-bye when I moved away from home at nineteen. I forgot about my grassy friend for eight years, until I made my first retreat at Manresa. There, in that ultimate place for self-reflection, a grand stretch of levee rolls through the sugar cane fields. The levee and I were reunited, probably till death do us part.
All that was on my mind as I walked about a mile downstream, two miles upstream, and back to the boat. The trail on top of the levee was the most overbuilt I've ever seen: smooth asphalt, striped into two lanes, yet!
The boat arrived in New Orleans at around six-thirty. Almost all the passengers would remain on the vessel until the next morning. Their final dinner was rather grand: steak and lobster, the most popular big-deal restaurant meal in America. I never had a taste for surf and turf, myself. And I had to get back to my real life.
Mary Ann met me to help load the luggage. I proposed that we have dinner at Café Giovanni, to convince us that we were off the river and back in the thick of things. Besides, I had to consult with Chef Duke about the Eat Club dinner we will have on March 19. Or was it March 21? (That's one of the reasons we had to talk.) And it's a Friday in Lent, and Mary Ann wanted to abstain.
We started with garlic cheese bread (purchased mainly because Mary Leigh said it was the world's best, and we would bring some home to her). Then bruschetta, which is almost the same thing. (I am eating too much bread!) Oysters Giovanni, which Mary Ann said she had never tried before. How is that possible? It may be the signature dish of the restaurant. I'd say it's Chef Duke's most original creation, that's for sure.
I asked for the crabmeat Siciliana salad, a magnificent piece of work. Duke rushed out to apologize for the fact that there was no fresh crabmeat to be had in New Orleans. That sounds strange, but since the problems the biggest crabmeat producer had last year, jumbo lump is very scarce. He told me it was pasteurized product from far away. But my palate was set, so we just went with it.
Mary Ann had pasta with four cheeses and rid sauce on the side. Neither the waiter nor I could get our heads around that, but she said it was good anyway.
The singers invited me to do a song with them, but I demurred. Mary Ann hates my singing in public. She said it was okay, but this was that paradox known to all married men, who sooner or later learn that this is one time you go against what one's wife says is what she wants.
What I do regret is that I forgot to tip the singers. I'll catch them at the Eat Club in two weeks.
Cafe Giovanni. French Quarter: 117 Decatur. 504-529-2154.
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