Taste Far, Taste Wide

I remember the late 70s as something precious, a time of party lines, latchkey kids, barefoot summers, and unlocked bikes never stolen—the culinary heyday of quiche, fondue, and salmon molds, in addition to bologna sandwiches, Vienna sausages, and TV dinners. It was also a time when you could send your eight-year-old kid to the local grocery to buy milk, bread ... and cigarettes.

In the Historic Garden District of Alexandria (Alex for short, pronounced Ellik), from our apartment, either on Polk or White Street, you could usually find me outside with the neighborhood kids pitching a ball, doing cartwheels, or slapping hands to “Miss Mary Mack”. From there, it was an easy two-block walk or bike ride to Owl Fine Foods, the small grocery store beloved for its community feel, credit lines, and global selection, unusual to small-city Louisiana. When Mom and I were together, we’d scan the shelves, aisle-by-aisle, while she vividly explained those items I needed to know best—caviar, escargot, artichoke hearts, gefilte fish, and Sarsons malt vinegar, for example.

Food was essential in our lives. Discovering it. Making it. Eating it. That’s life in the South. During breakfast, you talk about what you’re going to have for lunch. I cherish my grandmother for her grounding Louisiana wisdom on smothered foods, catfish, and cornbread with milk. Around 2001, Mom wrote to me about her earliest color-coded food memories with her mother and grandparents, my grandmother and great-grandparents.

"I learned to make iced tea and cook rice by age seven. My mother also made luscious cherry pies with latticework tops. I remember smelling the frying oysters in her deep fat fryer and being at my maternal grandparents’ houses and smelling the fried chicken, steak and gravy, cakes, biscuits, and cornbread and Grandpa’s barbecue slow-cooking outside. In Lockport [Louisiana], we always had lots of fresh seafood, from Bayou Lafourche and the Gulf of Mexico, such as oysters, shrimp, catfish, crabs, and lots more."

Food was essential in our lives. Discovering it. Making it. Eating it. That’s life in the South. During breakfast, you talk about what you’re going to have for lunch.

"One thing we often had in the winter was gumbo, with potato salad nestled on the side. We ate this with saltine crackers, homemade bread-and-butter pickles, and iced tea. My grandparents used to have ‘boucheries’ too, and although the butchering was gory, the boudin and the rest of meat were great. Cooks have always tried to outdo one another with their recipes in the South. It’s a matter of honor to have your dish emptied and people brag on your cooking."

Like Mom, I’m a Southern girl at heart. I love my biscuits and gravy, catfish, gumbo (with potato salad), and boudin. But Mom made sure I was well-traveled, especially when it came to food. We relocated fairly often, whether for better job opportunities, an escape, dreams of a more interesting life, or just because. In her writing, Mom also recalled one of the first times her Southern palate was challenged by a new environment, evoking memories from a short move to Rochester around 1974.

"Moving to New York state introduced me to lots of food [I’d] never eaten before, such as clam chowder, Reuben sandwiches, cheesesteak sandwiches with deliciously thin-sliced steak, blue cheese, and sautéed mushrooms, as well as different Italian dishes and cannoli. I saw and tasted varieties of squash and apples, freshly squeezed apple cider, fragrant grapes, bacon cheeseburgers, shredded, cooked carrots, and much more. It was certainly eye opening for an iced-tea lover like me to face waitresses who replied with an astonished ‘we don’t serve iced tea in the winter’!"

My mother’s international culinary lessons continued throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. We consumed fancy dining books checked out from the downtown Alexandria library, each picking our favored menu selections. When friends or family came over, she created the perfect setting, whether for snazzy hors d’oeuvres or sloppy Joes, bringing out the nice cloth napkins rolled up in plastic orange or faux-wood napkin holders. Occasionally we had fondue parties, just us, spreading a blanket on the floor, and setting out little dishes of bread, potatoes, and pickles. And she took me to international food festivals at MacArthur Village mall, or to have pupu platters with spareribs, shrimp toast, and rumaki alongside Shirley Temples with extra cherries at Port ‘o Call.

I credit Mom’s culinary instruction as the catalyst to my entry into a variety of gastronomic circles. To this day, I’ve taken this curiosity about international cuisine to Paris, where I wrote a food column; to Seattle where I worked as a writer and proofreader for Sur la Table; to Manhattan, where I schmoozed about the city’s culinary cliques as a writer, an international chef coordinator, a one-hit wonder caterer, an executive and PR assistant to a restauranteur, and a connoisseur of indulgent late-night Dom Pérignon and Ossetra soirées. And then, in 2013, back to Louisiana, where I began to dish up the memories of where it all began.

Sarson’s malt vinegar is a delicacy of England, where the Brits prefer it doused upon their chips. Chips, French fries to us, were not invented in France, but in Belgium where they are instead dolloped with mayonnaise. Belgium is also the birth country of Henricus “Henry” Mertens who married Mary Catherine Verheyden who bore Jesse Joseph Mertens, born in Alexandria, Louisiana in 1910. Jesse went on to marry Bonnie Belle Welch, who then bore Jack “Jay” Mertens who, after his father, ran the specialty store Owl Fine Foods—where Mom first taught me about malt vinegar.

Owl Fine Foods closed in 1990, transitioning into a sanctuary for the Heritage Arts and Crafts Center, and then for the Abundant Faith Ministry. Encouraged by the community, entrepreneur John Callis attempted to purchase the building in 2016, but unfortunately the price was too high alongside the work he knew would have to go into it. “There is so much history in the building, there are thousands of stories,” he said. “I hear new ones each week from people that shopped, worked, and lived in the area.”

Steve Schoppert, for instance, remembers that during the 1980s, there were chocolate ants offered right beside the caviar and the Mad magazines. Myrtle Gaskin Rambin told me: “We moved to the Garden District in ‘78. The Owl was so convenient to get groceries. My sons loved it because they could walk or ride their bikes.”  Susie Weber Drell recalls days when, as a child, she’d dash to The Owl to run errands for her grandmother—“Fast forward to the ‘70s when I moved back here, and took my own children there in the stroller to grab things for supper.” John Loden says he and his brother Mikey would walk or ride their bikes “to pick up stuff for my mama!”

In April 2018, the building the grocery store once inhabited was scheduled for demolition. Fortunately, in September 2018, a deal was finally reached between Callis and the owner. Callis, originally from Mesquite, Texas, moved to Louisiana thirteen years ago. “Now that I have lived here for over a decade, I wish I lived here all my life,” he said. “This state is wonderful, with so many things to do and see, and the cuisine is the best in the country.”

When speaking with him, it’s obvious that rebuilding the property has been a test of love and determination. “The building has been completely gutted and the inside is all exposed brick. The front windows have been restyled, and the roof is now a beautiful pressed seam design. The awning, which was completely rotted, was refurbished and all of the glass bricks were removed and will be repurposed for the nose of the kitchen. There is also a green space next to the parking lot.”

Mr. Callis plans to open The Owl later in 2020 as a gourmet bistro with grab-and-go entrée options as well as indoor and outdoor seating with kitchen views, citing New Orleans faves including Luke, GW Finns, and Brigtsen’s as inspirations. He’s still looking for the right chef who will bridge his Louisiana fine-dining ideas with international flair, but he has promised a menu of local flavors, including seafood, rabbit, and veggie options, peppered with nostalgic delicacies. But staying true to the store’s original identity, he’ll also offer a retail section with a selection of wines and gourmet, international delicacies including cheeses, charcuterie, breads, spices, and oils.

The city that the Owl is re-opening to is quite different from the Alexandria of the ‘70s and ‘80s. The bustling walk-through section of MacArthur Village Mall and the Port ‘o Call have long since closed. And my mother has been gone for over a decade now. I think of her and her food memories, her travels and her ever-developing palate.

"I have eaten lobster rolls in Florida; grouper, mullet, smoked salmon in Seattle; lots of Middle Eastern dishes, and yummy Thai and Indian food. My dining horizons have extended to escargot, eel, caviar, sushi, rabbit liver, ‘weeds’ (at a gourmet food-tasting), and much much more. I am an adventurous diner. There are so many great food memories. I can only say this, one of these days, I really WILL master chopsticks!!"

We can’t travel back in time, so instead I am looking forward to the opening of the new Owl later this year, where I hope to wander the aisles thinking back to those halcyon days, and maybe pick up a bottle of Sarson’s vinegar while I’m there.