Laissez les bons temps rouler!

“…the city of Stella, Blanche and Stanley, the city that to William Faulkner was 'the labyrinthine mass of oleander and jasmine, lantana and mimosa," a place one admirer said 'could wreck your liver and poison your blood,' the city of the Italianate mansions of the Garden District and forlorn housing projects like the one named Desire -- a place that gave America most of its music, much of its literature, a cracked mirror glimpse of American exotica and a fair piece of its soul…”

- Peter Applebome, New York Times, 8/31/05

Bayona
430 Rue Dauphine
New Orleans, LA 70112
504-525-4455

Memory is a capricious thing, and one is never quite as much its master as one thinks. I ought to have written this when it happened, but as it turned out I was reminded of this restaurant just recently by someone who had been there and even now still remember what I had. It helps, of course, that I still have the receipt from when we went. Yet I remember, too, flying into a post-Katrina New Orleans from Phoenix – Sarah having arrived earlier than I – and getting picked up by Jeffrey from the airport in his Ford Explorer. It was a warm, cloudless evening bordering on the muggy, the perfect kind for staring out of open car windows on long rides at high speeds; but there was no time to waste on ruminating about the weather. We were off to Bayona.

I first met Jeffrey when I moved to DC – around the same time that he did. He had grown up in New Orleans and was a damn likeable chap, as well as being a gentleman and a scholar in equal parts. He was also that rare breed of sensitive individual that is not built to last on this earth; and it sometimes seemed that he carried the weight of the world on his back, but to his credit he hardly ever looked the worse for wear. Jeffrey was an excellent person to talk to about any and everything. I soon found out that, among other things, eating – and eating well – was important to him, and naturally we became friends.

He had a habit of going on about things that made sense to him but not necessarily to his audience; but his manner was charming and his enthusiasm infectious, and you soon got around to his way of thinking. I was regaled with stories of a restaurant in a faraway place called Bayona, and reverential descriptions of the food and its creator, Susan Spicer. It was the perfect name for a chef, really, and I quickly became enchanted.

When I finally made it to New Orleans it was the first Mardi Gras after Katrina, and Jeffrey had moved back to his hometown. Sarah and I went to visit for the weekend, and arrived on the last night before Bayona was to close for the Mardi Gras weekend. Good fortune, then, as we sat to dinner – friends reunited and hardly believing it – in a quirky little Creole cottage in the French Quarter.

It was night-time, and we did not get to see the courtyard about which we had heard so much, but the inside of the restaurant was delightful enough. We each had appetisers – I had the carpaccio – and Jeffrey called for a bowl of their famous cream of garlic soup for us to share. It was rich and tangy yet not overwhelming, and Sarah went on about it for quite some time; but I could not see what all the fuss was about and was perfectly content with what I had ordered for myself.

The thing that strikes me even now about Bayona was that the staff and the service were all extremely pleasant and effervescent. It is not easy to keep up the good cheer when you are waiting on many different tables at once, rushing to and fro between the kitchen and the restaurant trying to keep track of orders coming in and going out. Our waitress and servers were in all probability tired and overworked and looking forward to the end of their work week, but they never once let us see any of that, never once dropped the façade, and always had a big smile or a few kind words for us each time we stopped them.

We had, respectively, the lamb, duck and striped bass as entrees – and Sarah’s fish came in a black bean dressing that was quite out of this world. As for myself I quite enjoy eating red meat, and washing it down with big, full red wines. It makes me feel as if I am part of a greater cause; that this is the way it has always been done and the way it should be done for many, many years to come. That night we drank an inexpensive Burgundy red – Vincent Girardin, Maranges 1er cru, Clos des Loyeres, 2002 – and if it had been any good it was probably lost on us as we talked the night away.

(I have since then become quite a fan of Burgundy reds. They are much more approachable than Bordeaux reds, often earthier – which I like – and yet for the most part have the same strength and character and complexity.)

It was obvious that our waitress was a dessert person, for she perked up on its mention, and took immense pleasure in delivering her recommendations. My tastes tend towards the savoury more so than the sweet, but I had to have the Bananas Foster, especially while in New Orleans. It was a good flavour, and strengthened my belief that the best desserts usually have alcohol in them. I had a glass of port to go with it and felt quite pleased with myself.

I doubt that Bayona, when I went there, was functioning to the best of its abilities, as it had been only a few short months after people had started returning to New Orleans after Katrina, and so I hesitate to judge the food. I would have liked to have gone at a time when the shadow of the city’s great disaster was not still hanging over it. We had a grand time though, and what I saw was enough to convince me that the spirit of Bayona was the spirit of New Orleans – genuine, warm, hospitable, and rooted in history. I knew now that it was this spirit that made Jeffrey who he was and what made dining at Bayona so enjoyable, and a spirit that, flooding notwithstanding, would never die.