Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table [Hardcover]

Sara Roahen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 2008

Celebrating New Orleans’ food culture, one specialty at a time.

A cocktail is more than a segue to dinner when it’s a Sazerac, an anise-laced drink of rye whiskey and bitters indigenous to New Orleans. For Wisconsin native Sara Roahen, a Sazerac is also a fine accompaniment to raw oysters, a looking glass into the cocktail culture of her own family—and one more way to gain a foothold in her beloved adopted city. Roahen’s stories of personal discovery introduce readers to New Orleans’ well-known signatures—gumbo, po-boys, red beans and rice—and its lesser-known gems: the pho of its Vietnamese immigrants, the braciolone of its Sicilians, and the ya-ka-mein of its street culture. By eating and cooking her way through a place as unique and unexpected as its infamous turducken, Roahen finds a home. And then Katrina. With humor, poignancy, and hope, she conjures up a city that reveled in its food traditions before the storm—and in many ways has been saved by them since.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this gratifying love letter to her adopted home, food writer Roahen takes the French idea of terroir-the effect of a region's climate and geography on its wine grapes-as a jumping-off point, locating New Orlean's "emotional terroir" in its food. Though it's a nebulous concept, this culinary tour succeeds repeatedly in defining the indefinable with grace, wit and passion-especially in regards to the city's alluring, complex flavors and aromas. Beginning with gumbo, Roahen examines the Crescent City's signature dishes, offering a history of the cuisine, the people who shaped it and those who keep it alive. Readers will meet Ernest and Mary Hansen, crafters of "artisan" shaved-ice sno-balls; take a seat at Luizza's by the Track for transcendental BBQ shrimp po-boys; sample Miss Lovie's phenomenal Big Mama's Seafood Gumbo; and marvel at the ravenous characters populating Hawk's crawfish boil. An accomplished cook herself, Roahan periodically ushers readers into her kitchen for experiments like the daunting, superindulgent Turducken: a chicken stuffed inside a duck that is then stuffed inside a turkey. Hurricane Katrina is treated as a kind of recurring character, dogging the city and its inhabitants, and Roahen honors their struggle and loss. Those familiar with the city will smile and nod along; readers who've never had the pleasure may find themselves making travel arrangements long before the last page.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Readers who've never had the pleasure of visiting [New Orleans] may find themselves making travel plans before the last page. -- Publishers Weekly

Roahen poignantly addresses the unwelcome diner at the table but finds the soul of the city in its many cooks. -- Booklist, Elliot Mandel

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1St Edition edition (February 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393061671
• ISBN-13: 978-0393061673
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #632,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes nobody captures the essence of a place like an outsider, February 25, 2008

By 

S. Lewis - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table (Hardcover)

As a long-since transplanted--and not particularly "foodie"--native New Orleanian, "Gumbo Tales" reads like vivid, technicolor personal history to me: snowballs, Stage Planks, mirliton dressing, crawfish boil escapees... and how they all tie together a very specific, food-centered community. Since the hurricane, I've felt wierdly like part of my past was obliterated. (Yes, that's maudlin and self-indulgent considering what happened to those who lived in and around the city at the time of the storm, but there it is). This book can't bring back that missing part, but it certainly reminds me, all the more sharply, of what we've all lost.

A note about a previous reviewer's complaint of poor copy-editing: I can get pretty outraged about others' crimes against the language (while forgiving myself similar sins, of course). I spotted a few misdemeanors--and maybe a felony or two--in this book, as in a lot of published material. They didn't overwhelm my ability to enjoy it. You can best judge whether they'll overwhelm yours.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pass the Tabasco!, March 27, 2008

By 

i4abuy (Accomac, Va.) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table (Hardcover)

I learned of this book from Jonathan Yardley's review in the Washington Post. We were out of ideas for our son's Spring Break and we hit on New Orleans: an eating vacation with Sara Roahen as our guide. I studied the book on a stationery bicycle as I tried to lose 15 pounds to get into shape for six great meals at Commander's Palace, Herbsaint, Bayona, Palace Cafe, Antoine's, and Galatoire's (listed in order, from greatest to merely great). Plus a few po' boys, lesser meals, and snacks, constrained only by our appetites.

This is a delightful and worthy book. It is organized around New Orleans' principal food groups with chapters on gumbo, red beans and rice, po' boys, etc. For each Roahen researched vintage cookbooks to trace origins, variations, and controversies. She uses this framework to interweave stories of her life in New Orleans and her experiences with the food and the people who make it, eat it, and live by it. She is a good writer, and her book served my purpose well. Every meal tasted better because of the context she provided.

That said her "menu-item framework" is awkward for the story she is telling. The book needs introductory chapters to describe New Orleans cuisine today, its evolution, and why it is unique (and superior!)

The introduction should follow easily from her careful research, but she doesn't even take up the fundamental distinction between Cajun and Creole until a chapter about poisson meuniere amandine, 159 pages into the book. The introduction should lay out the basic taxonomy of New Orleans food purveyors from the traditional five star restaurants, through contemporary innovators, to cafes and po' boy shops and street vendors. It would be a logical place for some of the personal vignettes of people who influenced her life in New Orleans which are awkwardly shoe-horned into chapters about food (e.g., the restaurant critic, Tom Fitzmorris in le boeuf gras) with which they have only a passing association.

Finally, I question her choice of menu items. There is a boring chapter on Vietnamese cuisine and another on a Mardi Gras coconut-trinket that I would gladly have traded for some missing chapters on traditional New Orleans cuisine: jambalaya, bread pudding, hot sauce. What is New Orleans without Tabasco?

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gumbo Tales, February 18, 2008

By 

James D. Miller "waiter, Fountain Restaurant" (Philadelphia, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table (Hardcover)

Sara Roahen has written a kind, sweet, humble, and humorous book on New Orleans food culture. Its full of wonderfully human stories about food passion and connection, the region and its people. One dreams of getting down there, and I could taste the food. Its a scrumptious book, and a great read. Each chapter is beautifully finished with the lines of its last sentence. Pass the red beans and rice, please.