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Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 14: Don't Bring a Scale to New Orleans

Posted by Ed Levine, April 17, 2008 at 1:15 PM

I think you can see where this diet post is heading.

All you serious eaters were right. I should have never brought my scale on the road. Stepping on it Dallas was painful. But weighing myself in New Orleans, where I am now, was an exercise in self-flagellation. Plus, it put a real crimp in my normal New Orleans eating style, which is to map out each bite in the course of the day, six meals in all, eaten at three-hour intervals. So I limited myself to three meals a day in a city which truly offers a fantastic array of delicious things. As it turns out, you can still pack in plenty of good eating in three meals a day here.

My first meal in New Orleans was dinner on Tuesday night at Lüke, chef John Besh's ode to the old German-American community in this city. I don't know how German a salad of Allen Benton's bacon, fried oysters, and avocado is, but I can tell you it was a mighty delicious plate of food. The choucroute was tasty if unspectacular, and the not-very-German bread pudding with cream cheese ice cream was damn fine.

Breakfast at Mother's was a biscuit with blackened ham ends and debris, an artery-clogging combination of pan drippings and the shards of meat that fall off the roast beef. I'm afraid Mother's is running on fumes these days.

Rich with Po'Boys

Lunch, however, was a great triumph. My friend Brett Anderson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune drove me to the Parkway Bakery for what can only be called a po'boy orgy. Actually we only had three, but take a look at these beauties:

A roast beef po'boy like no other, with a savory, beefy gravy.

A large half shrimp, half oyster po'boy. The seafood was fresh and perfectly fried, and it only needed a shake of salt to elevate it to po'boy hall of fame status.

A hot beef sausage patty po'boy. New to me, but plenty good.

Dinner at Mila

Dinner was at Allison Vines-Rushing and Slade Rushing's new restaurant, Mila. The meal was good enough to merit a separate post, but suffice it to say that lacquered duck, deconstructed oysters Rockefeller, and butter-poached lobster don't really qualify as dietetic.

The Moment You've Been Waiting For and I've Been Dreading

So why delay the inevitable? It's time to get on the scale. I've gained two pounds. Not quite as bad as I thought. I must confess that I did get on the treadmill for an hour before I wrote this post and weighed myself. But the weigh-in I just did was after my shower. So I think it's legit. I have learned my lesson. I will never bring a scale to New Orleans again, and I will listen to the Greek chorus of serious eaters who really do know what's going on.

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Tags: Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Lüke, Louisiana, Mila, New Orleans, Parkway Bakery