Four restaurants and 130 miles of affordable family feasts
Many of my fondest memories of growing up in New Orleans involve grand restaurants. My father, Andy Benson, a real New Orleans character in a city jammed with them, was a humble man; but he liked to acknowledge big- time family achievements by hosting members of the extended clan—who would do their best to smile and get along for the day— at one of the city’s old-line eateries.
I remember digging into a slab of Mile High Ice Cream Pie at the long-gone Caribbean Room when my brother, Andy, graduated from Tulane Medical School around 1975. My sister Beth’s 1978 wedding reception at Elmwood Plantation impressed me with memories of rich crabmeat au gratin and simply amazing, gigantic butterflied fried shrimp that remain my standard bearers to this day. Daddy surely breathed a sigh of relief when his own father, “Paw-Paw Benson,” was given the “all clear” as he recovered from a bypass surgery of the sort we would now consider primitive. We celebrated the occasion with a trip to the now-defunct Versailles and platters of chateaubriand.
I have many memories of the original Delmonico restaurant on St. Charles Avenue, the scene of my sister’s college graduation dinner (veal cordon bleu for me) and my own thirteenth birthday celebration with thirteen of my friends (Shirley Temples). Delmonico was also where I first learned a new method of torturing my mother, one of those squeamish ladies who turned her nose up at mold, fungus, and slime masquerading as “food.” Throughout my childhood my father’s admonishment to at least try everything I encountered allowed me to irk my prim, unadventurous mother; seeing the horror on her face as her elementary-school-age daughter slurped raw oysters from the shell gave me a little thrill. It also opened a world of possibilities and simple pleasures for me.
My father simply delighted in sharing new foods and experiences with his family, and I have carried on the practice with my own daughter, Cecilia, who is now sixteen. Like me, she associates many occasions with the foods she ate during them. Ask her about her first visit to Galatoire’s when she was three or four, and she will recall biting the end off of one of the restaurant’s elegant soufflé potatoes and employing a small teaspoon to absolutely cram the remaining hollow cylinder with béarnaise sauce. One bite and the thing exploded.
These days with teenagers in tow I rarely indulge in outings to the grand, old eateries of my childhood, favoring instead to bring my daughter and her friends on road trips where we discover more affordable, often ethnic, eateries. Here are a few of the places we have either recently visited or plan to hit this summer.
Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery & Restaurant, New Orleans
To celebrate the last day of final exams I treated Cecilia and her friend Claire to a trip to Dong Phuong, which is located way down on “the Chef” Highway not far from where it becomes a thoroughfare linking a collection of fishing villages. They had never been there before; and following a lunch that included half of a cinnamon-kissed Mandarin duck served with steamed jasmine rice for $8, I gave the two of them carte blanche at the adjacent bakery. They took the offer seriously and started piling the counter with artfully decorated individual slices of impossibly moist devil’s food cake, steamed buns stuffed with barbecued pork, armloads of airy puffs of pâte au chou filled with silky vanilla custard, wedges of verdant tapioca cake, pork and jicima meat pies, loaves of the most perfect French bread, technicolor agar agar cakes, coconut balls, and more, more, more—each thing more beautiful than the next. Someone observing the melee asked if I was going to stop them, saying, “At this rate they are going to break you.” Wrong. The total bill for the lavish pastry feast they shared with their friends later that day was $26—an absolute bargain and a small price to pay for a fun memory.
Que Rico! Cuban Cafe, Slidell
“It still kind of scares me sometimes when these old, old Cuban men come in here,” Iderlin Carillo said. “They’ll look around and ask, ‘Is this real Cuban? Give me a colada (Cuban coffee); we shall see.’
“It happens every time: They sip their coffee, nod, and tell me to feed them. They eat and eat, real slow, thinking about every bite. Sometimes they just smile and nod when they are done. But the best is when they smile, nod, and say, ‘This food? This is like my mother used to make.’ That just fills my heart with such pride. It brings such joy to my life to be able to remind those old men of their mothers.”
I stumbled on Iderlin’s unassuming eatery a few weeks ago while exploring the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain with a friend, and I just cannot wait to get back there. The plan is to return in a few weeks when Cecilia’s friend Julia returns home for a visit from Dallas. The most expensive thing on the menu is a platter of two gigantic Cuban tamales served with roasted pork, grilled onions and mojo sauce served with rice, black beans, sweet plantains, and zesty cabbage salad for $12.99. The platter will easily serve four.
I will feel like a kid at Christmas as I turn them on to the restaurant’s croquetas (ham, two for $1; chicken, two for $1.50), bistec a la Palomilla, media noche and picadillo sandwiches, and tres leches cake.
Rocky & Carlos, Chalmette
The first time I brought Cecilia and Julia to Rocky’s was immediately after its post-Katrina reopening in 2006. I recall standing in line with our trays laden, cafeteria-style, with delicious things like veal Parmesan, dripping roast beef poboys, lasagna, fried catfish, rich macaroni and cheese made from thick bucatini pasta and drenched with thick red gravy alongside rolls of beef braciole, and little dishes bearing either bread pudding or spumoni ice cream. When we reached the cashier to pay, there were little gold boxes stacked alongside the register, and they were filled with curious-looking little necklaces made entirely from fava beans and gold beads. It turns out the necklaces were rosaries a regular customer had made and was selling to raise money to properly re-bury his mother, who had been lifted from her resting place during Katrina’s flooding.
That pretty much sums up the vibe at Rocky’s, which despite its justifiable fame, is all about the community in which it exists. If more evidence is needed just check out the seats of honor reserved closest to the buffet for the guys who come for lunch every day from the Chalmette refinery across the street.
The Dinner Bell, McComb, Mississippi
Each summer our family escapes for at least a few days to a friend’s weekend home in Tylertown, Mississippi. We’re content to just lay around the house, maybe loafing by the pool or floating down the nearby Bogue Chitto river in canoes by day and either barbecuing or frying on the back porch at night. It’s pretty much a slacker’s paradise, but there is one force powerful enough to motivate us to shower, get in the car, and drive: the silent beckoning of The Dinner Bell forty miles away in McComb.
We are hardly alone in hearing the clang of this bell. The restaurant is only open from 11 am–2 pm every day except Monday, and there’s always a line out the door. Once inside we will sit around one of the large, round lazy Susan-style tables, which are absolutely loaded with all manner of home cooked Southern specialties like crisp-on-the-outside-smooth-on-the-inside corn fritters, perfect fried eggplant, creamy chicken and dumplings, country fried steak with gravy, butter beans flecked with ham, flakey pies, and lofty cakes. Just sit there, spin the lazy Susan, and reach for all the Southern comfort foods you grew up with—or simply wish you had. Then wash it all down with glasses of ice-cold sweet tea.
Jyl Benson is the founding editor in chief of Louisiana Kitchen & Culture magazine and the author of Galatoire’s Cookbook: Recipes and Family History from the Time-Honored New Orleans Institution (Random House).
Details. Details. Details. Dong Phuong Oriental Bakery & Restaurant 14207 Chef Menteur Highway New Orleans, La. (504) 254-0214 • dpbanhmi.com Que Rico! Cuban Cafe 1901 Second Street Slidell, La. (985) 201-8215 Rocky & Carlos 613 W. Saint Bernard Highway Chalmette, La. (504) 279-8323 The Dinner Bell 229 5th Avenue McComb, Miss. (601) 684-4883
