Barbara's Travel Blog

Foodies in NOLA

It’s been so long since I've regularly posted on my blog, I scarcely know how to do it anymore, but I thought I’d better get back in practice with our upcoming trip to Panama (December 2009/January 2010).

(As an aside, is it just me or does 2010 sound ridiculously futuristic? Aren’t we all supposed to be wearing space suits and driving flying cars by then?)

Anyway, since I started my current job (at Waggener Edstrom, doing PR for Microsoft) I haven’t traveled much, except pretty regular trips to Seattle. But last week they sent me to New Orleans for the annual Microsoft partner conference, and I brought Dave along as my own personal tour guide (since he lived there, up until Hurricane Katrina).

The first half of the week was mostly work for me, while Dave visited some of his old haunts and probably sweated off a few pounds from the crazy heat and humidity. But on Wednesday I shed my work shackles and was free to enjoy New Orleans’ many opportunities for indulgence.

While we did do some traditional tourist activities such as riding the streetcar, checking out grand old southern houses, walking along the Mississippi river and people-watching on Bourbon Street, our primary focus was food and drink. We’re huge foodies, so it was of critical importance to us that every single meal was top-notch. I’d say all in all we did pretty good, with a few surprises misses.

So for those of you who are interested in the foodie blow-by-blow, here you go:

• Mr. B’s Bistro – wandering through the French Quarter our first night, Dave spied this place and remembered its reputation for great BBQ shrimp. We popped in and ordered the shrimp and soft-shell crab to share. I vaguely recall the crab being pleasant, but the BBQ shrimp will live forever in my memory. They serve huge shrimp, whole with shells and heads, swimming in a rich, buttery BBQ sauce with a kick to it. Quite possibly the best sauce I have ever tasted, and thankfully it’s served with fresh French bread to sop it all up, otherwise I might have embarrassed myself licking the bowl. Interestingly enough though, we returned here on our last night and shared the shrimp and a bowl of gumbo, and we both found the gumbo to be bland and boring. If you go here, be warned it’s definitely targeted at tourists – but everyone deserves to try Mr. B’s BBQ shrimp at least once in their lives!

•  Creole Skillet – we chose this location because of its proximity to the convention center, as I was still working, but ended up really liking it. I had a version of eggs Benedict with spicy crab and crawfish instead of ham. Yum! I suggest ordering this dish with cheese grits, and asking them to serve the Benedict over the grits, so the flavors all blend together.

•  7 on Fulton – Ugh, total mistake. This place was not my choice, and fortunately Dave was spared, since it was a work dinner. I didn’t realize until I got there that the restaurant was in a hotel, and if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the sparse crowd and sub-par service should have alerted me to what was ahead. Oddly, the restaurant seemed to be out of half of the dishes we requested (and even our desired bottle of wine), and then when the food was served it was completely mediocre. My crab, arugula and lemon curd salad was completely overpowered by the lemon flavor – I couldn’t even taste the crab. I don’t even remember my entrée, that’s how uninspired it was.

•  Herbsaint – in a word, WOW. Great service, truly fantastic food. I started with the lobster bisque, which was divine, and Dave had the gumbo, which was also great (but couldn’t hold a candle to the bisque). For my entrée I had rolled veal with fresh cappellini pasta, and honestly I had no idea pasta alone could taste so amazing. Of course, needless to say, such an experience comes with a hefty price tag.

•  Emeril’s Delmonico – the last of the work dinners for the week, and a huge disappointment given Emeril’s reputation. The restaurant itself is beautiful and the menu looked fantastic, but the food across the board was, in a word, boring. We sampled several appetizers, including BBQ shrimp, rabbit ravioli, spoon bread and mussels, and found nothing that really lit our fire. Same with the entrees and desserts – I found myself longing to be back at Herbaint. To top it off, the waitstuff had a somewhat bumbling nature about them, as if this was opening night and none of them had practiced. The icing on the lousy cake was when we were made to wait 20 minutes to get our check (that’s 20 minutes after every last bit of dessert had been eaten and coffee drunk), in spite of my multiple attempts to flag down a waiter. Apparently at Emeril’s when you have a group large enough for a built-in 20% tip, service is not a priority.

•  Coop’s Place – this is a little dive bar on the edge of the French Quarter that Dave had remembered having good all-around Cajun food. He was right – we shared a sampler plate with gumbo, Jambalaya, fried chicken, red beans and rice and shrimp etoufee. My favorite of all of it was the red beans and rice, the best I had the whole trip.

•  Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville – normally stopping for drinks at a chain bar wouldn’t warrant a mention, but it must be said, this was quite possibly the best margarita I’ve ever had. So much so, we went back again the next day. The atmosphere is super-cheesy, but the bar staff are friendly and the drinks are strong and tasty.

•  French Market Restaurant & Bar – we stopped in here for the happy hour special – unlimited 50-cent oysters. So good we ended up eating three dozen between us. I think this is the first time I’ve ever truly had my fill of oysters.

•  K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen – K-Paul’s is one of those landmark NOLA restaurants everyone should go to, not only because it’s delish, but also because K-Paul was one of the stalwarts who fed the locals and the troops during the Hurricane Katrina recovery. Long after Emeril fled the city, K-Paul was there cooking up food on the sidewalk in front of his restaurant for anyone who wanted it. We had a great meal there, though the food was so rich and decadent we ended up going back to our hotel to sleep right after, instead of hitting Bourbon Street. Between the two of us we had gumbo, shrimp bisque, fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade, stuffed soft-shell crab with mouth-watering filling, and beef filet in a rich brown sauce that takes a week to make. All were amazing, but the tomato & shrimp appetizer was so good we returned for a rerun of just that dish a few days later. And to top it off, Dave got to meet K-Paul and thank him for his service during Katrina!

•  Café DuMonde – who can go to New Orleans without having beignets at Café Dumonde? It’s an institution for a reason. Cafeteria-like service and faltering air conditioning can’t ruin the delicious beignets, a cross between cake and donut, drowning in a pile of powdered sugar. Yum!

•  Fiorella’s Cafe – this place is actually an Italian restaurant, but after scouring Chowhound, we learned they are rumored to have the best fried chicken in town. We picked some up after breakfast at Café Dumonde and took it back to our hotel room for an impromptu picnic while we waited out a big thunderstorm, and it definitely lived up to its reputation!

•  Dante’s Kitchen – We got out of the French Quarter for dinner one night, heading uptown to this cute restaurant just a couple blocks off the streetcar line. We enjoyed checking out the grand old houses along the way, and the restaurant itself is in a converted Victorian. The food was great, and priced slightly more down to earth than what we’d been seeing in the French Quarter. Afterward we took the streetcar halfway back and headed to Bon Temp Roulez to hear some live music (the Soul Rebels).

•  Lil Dizzy’s Cafe – This stop was the result of another of my missions – this time to find the best mac and cheese in New Orleans. Lil Dizzy’s got mostly great reviews on Chow Hound, and everyone raved about their mac and cheese. We went to their newer location, at the Wyndham hotel, but sadly we were sorely disappointed. The restaurant had no character at all, and the mac and cheese was soupy and had a strange underlying flavor (I believe it may have been mayo). The fried chicken we also had there was okay, but overall this place was a let-down.

•  Green Goddess Café – For our last meal in New Orleans (not counting the airport), we stopped in at this casual little café that got rave reviews online. You know a restaurant is serious about its food when their web page features their manifesto. The vibe was very laid-back Portland, and the food was great – a total fusion of different flavors and cultures from around the world. We both had Vietnamese iced coffee, and Dave had a tasty frittata while I had pulled pork and tangy slaw over a jalapeño pancake. Excellent!

If you made it this far in the blog entry, you must love food as much as we do (or perhaps you’re planning a trip to New Orleans yourself). Either way, I hope you enjoyed it even a fraction as much as we did!

A Day in the Life

My boss complained about my snoozer of a blog entry earlier this week, so it looks like I'll have to resort to writing about my business travel. Last night and today I was in San Francisco for a processor launch at the Four Seasons, which sounds more exciting than it actually was. People who don't do much business travel think it's all very glamorous and fun. Those people are wrong.

After a late evening flight on a cramped little Horizon Air plane, I arrived at my hotel around midnight. Did I mention my hotel was the Marriott? Yeah - if you thought Intel was springing for employees to sleep at the Four Seasons just because we have an event there, you were wrong again.

Six hours later (keeping in mind that I'm one of those people who needs a full eight hours), I woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, and did an hour of e-mail before looking up and noticing I was late. Around the block to the event (suitcase & laptop bag in tow) for four hours of standing in heels, applauding on cue, and politely schmoozing.

The highlight of the day was a stolen hour gabbing with a CNET reporter (and fellow blogger) about corporate blogging trends and strategies, with a tangent on child-rearing philosophies (his, since I have no legitimate grounds for having any).

Then off to the airport, quick get online to catch up on e-mail, oh wait, flight's delayed, more e-mail, now hurry up and get on the plane so we can wait on the tarmac for what feels like eons, wait for the beep so I can open my laptop and do yet more e-mail, say a silent thanks for Horizon Air's free beer and wine, finally land in Portland, fight the traffic home, and finally - breathe a sigh of relief... home at last.

Ready to sign up for corporate life yet? :-)

Congrats to Ash

Congratulations to my reporter friend Ashlee Vance, who was published in the Economist this month. You can read his fabulous article about the Los Alamos National Laboratory here.

Photo album link

Here's a link to the rest of the photos from last week: http://babas.typepad.com/photos/crbtrip/

The end of a long week

I think I may have jinxed myself in my last blog entry, because things took a bit of a turn for the worse upon my arrival in Sri Lanka. In case you're not familiar with it, we learned in one of our school visits that Sri Lanka is a small island nation located south of India, and is about the size of West Virginia.

Anyway, after clearing customs, we were routed the wrong way out of the airport, and landed on the sidewalk, instead of the VIP area where our vans and security guards were waiting.

After about 10 minutes of sweating buckets in the intense heat and humidity, the vans showed up. Unfortunately, I was misdirected to the luggage van, which had no air conditioning. By the time the driver figured out the error, the other vans had already departed - so I enjoyed over an hour ride with the hot, dusty wind on my face. It was an interesting ride though, giving me a chance to see a lot of the local life. It reminded me a great deal of Central America, with lots of little open-fronted stores and dogs running around everywhere.

Thankfully, the rest of the Sri Lanka visit ran smoothly. I did indeed get the full night of sleep I'd been hoping for, and the next day's activities weren't quite as hectic as the rest of the week had been.

It was fascinating putting on an Intel-scale event in such an emerging country. There were no venues that could hold a keynote the size of the one we were staging, so we ended up having to fly in a massive tent from India and create our own venue on a hotel lawn.

After the various activities of the day, we had a team dinner complete with local dance performances. Then another long van ride to the airport - this time air-conditioned and with a police escort - followed by a five-hour flight to Hong Kong. I was back in my own bed (well, mine for two more days) by 6:30am.

And now it's time to get packing - I'll be on my way back to Portland on Monday!

P.S. FYI, I've added some photos to my blog entries from earlier this week, and I'll have the rest of my photos up in an album soon.

Getting better all the time

I guess the old adage is true about it being darkest before the dawn, because today was the best day of the week so far (not counting the sight-seeing day in India).

My night yesterday finished the crappy day in fitting style - I arrived at my hotel room in Kuala Lumpur at 2am to find my Internet connection not working. So I gave up, skipped my nightly report, and enjoyed my five hours of sleep.

But this morning, everything went right - my Internet connection was working, my stomach started to feel better, I was able to print the morning report at the business center with no issues - these are the simple things that make a big difference. I also got an hour to catch up on e-mail, which did wonders for my sanity.

The highlight of the day - of the week, really - was a visit to a local school for a presentation to the Minister of Education about Intel's education programs. A teacher presented, telling us about how the Intel Teach to the Future program has helped her motivate her students and bring their grades up. Then a group of her students presented examples of the work they've done on computers. It was so endearing, and the teacher's talk really made me feel so great about working at Intel.

Even better though was the female high school student who talked about how participating in Intel's International Science and Engineering Fair got her excited about science and gave her self confidence. Then her mom, who is also her science teacher, got up and talked about the changes she'd seen in her daughter, her other children, and her other students, after participating in the fair. I know this sounds cheesy, but several of us were in tears by the end of it.

We finished up the day with a press conference and an interview, then headed to the plane to depart during daylight hours (gasp!). We're set to arrive in Sri Lanka at 6:30pm - unheard of! I just might get a full night of sleep tonight…

A long day

It's a good thing I visited Beijing previously and enjoyed it, because today wouldn't have sold me on it.

We had another short night (6 hours sleep this time) followed by a long day of government meetings, award ceremonies and a TV talk show. These were interspersed with walks in and out of buildings in the bitter, dry cold.

Today's meals were a disappointment all around - we had not-so-appealing sandwiches on the bus for lunch (with mayo, which of course meant I couldn't eat them), then to make up for the bad lunch, the local team bought us local food to have for dinner on the plane. Unfortunately, it wasn't so great either.

We had a 3+ hour flight from Beijing to Hong Kong, where we stopped for an hour to refuel, and now we're continuing with another four hours to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we land after midnight.

At the moment we're watching the movie "Memento," and enjoying a cheese and cracker plate - the high point of the day. Here's hoping tomorrow's a better day.

The madness continues

Upon landing at 1am today in Chengdu, our charter jet was greeted by dozens of cheering Intel employees and government representatives. Thus started the team's repeated experience of waving goodbye to crowds from the bus.

On to the hotel, a 40-minute drive, but thankfully upon arrival we had already been checked in by the local team, so we were able to just head straight to our rooms. Actually, make that suites - a waste really, considering that most of us spent a whopping five hours in them. But I did appreciate the spread of treats and the framed silk panda print I found waiting for me.

I did my nightly report, then crawled into bed at 2:30am, realizing when I set my alarm for 6:30am just how miserable I was going to be the next day. And miserable I was - I was so tired all day, I actually felt nauseous.

The day consisted of the routine morning briefing, followed by a press interview, then I got a short break during the government meetings. The big highlight of the day though was the opening ceremony of our new manufacturing plant in Chengdu. Virtually every government official was there, and Craig (our chairman) was recognized with honorary citizenship to Chengdu.

The ceremony itself was pretty entertaining - kids performing, Chinese girls in traditional dresses, drummers, etc. - but would have been a lot more tolerable if it hadn't been outside in sub-freezing temperatures.

Following the ceremony, we took a tour of the factory (a first for me), then held a press conference and headed out. The last stop of the day was a lecture to about a thousand university students, which I decided to bag out on in favor of a nap in the back of the bus. I felt immensely better following an hour and a half of rest.

After the lecture, we made our way to the airport, thanks in great part to a police escort that led the way. The traffic in Chengdu was a nightmare, but apparently our group was important enough that every couple miles traffic in both directions would stop, and we would drive on the wrong side of the road and pass it all up - very cool!

Now we're back on the charter jet on the way to Beijing, enjoying a fantastic dinner of genuine Szechwan food from Chengdu, and getting a little silly after a day of seriousness.

I know - it's a rough life. ;)

My jet-setting life

Day two in India was night and day from day one. It kicked off with an early morning briefing to Intel's chairman, followed by three TV interviews, then I was rushed off to do two hours of editing on videos of India government ministers endorsing our announcements of the day. Back in the van to the Oberoi, a fancy hotel where we were hosting an industry panel and press conference to announce a billion dollar investment in India.

Admittedly, most of this is stuff I might do on any given big PR event day. But it got slightly surreal when minutes after the press conference ended, we were whisked away to the airport where we had special VIP customs clearance, and then headed to the charter jet.

Now, if you're thinking "corporate jet… plus leather seats… champagne… caviar…" well, you'd be right. No kidding. We were served a gourmet meal, fine wine and cocktails, caviar, heated brownies - I could get used to this.

But even on a charter jet, it turns out there are classes. First class are the four larger leather seats at the front of the plane where the execs sit, while the TAs, PR and security scum sit in the six less large seats behind them. Okay, it's absolutely nothing to scoff at, but there go my pipe dreams of hob-knobbing with the execs.

I can't stop yawning, so I'm going to try to take a nap now. We don't land in Chengdu (China) until 1am, then we still have customs and a 40-minute drive to the hotel before we can crawl into our beds. But oh wait, that's not until after I send out the nightly trip report. :P

Monkeys and elephants and snakes, oh my!

Where to begin… I guess all my blog entries this week will be a bit rushed, since I'll have to squeeze them in between rushing to & from flights, TV interviews, press conferences, morning briefings, etc. etc. etc. But it feels like so much happened today, I don't know how I'm going to do this in 10 minutes! Photos will definitely have to wait until the end of the week.

First, getting in last night - what a trip (and I don't mean the flight!). We landed in Delhi, India (we being me and my boss, Mark) on a commercial flight (hereafter I'll be on the charter jet). The airport was crazy, even though it was 2:30 in the morning, and aside from the hordes of people, we also noticed men with machine guns poised to deal with whatever.

On to the hotel - a 45-minute ride that was bar-none the craziest driving I've ever seen. Several times we passed broken down trucks, motorcycles and carts blocking the road; everyone was honking non-stop; our driver would take random detours onto gravel roads, then connect back to the main road; but the biggest eye-rubbing, "is this for real?" moment was passing two elephants, plodding along as part of the traffic on the highway. Unreal!

We had various mishaps with the hotel - Mark's lights wouldn't stay on last night, mine wouldn't stay off this morning while I was trying to sleep, and to top it off my bed smelled like urine - but overall it's a really nice place, and I'm being treated like a queen because I'm part of an executive crew. My 24-hour butler has been quite responsive.

Today Mark and I hired a taxi to drive us around and see some of the sights, but to be honest we found the drive more interesting than the sights themselves. Everywhere there was something fascinating to see - crazy traffic, tent communities, cows on city streets, people getting their haircut on chairs by the side of the road, kids begging for cash at the taxi door, sorry looking dogs, endless construction to the point of it looking like a war zone.

We got out at one monument and were bombarded with attention - everyone wanted us to buy something or pay for a photograph of their animal or perform for us. We fell prey to a couple - the snake charmer and the monkeys. I have to say, while I loved my first hands-on monkey experience, it made me so sad to see these little guys on leashes and collars, and they just seemed kind of mad at the world (which I can understand). One of them hopped onto my lap on command for a photo, but he started biting my thumb midway through (thankfully it was a light bite, so no harm done). But if I was in his position, I think I'd bite people too.

Anyway, I'm off to dinner with the India PR team now, then packing up to check out tomorrow morning, participate in a long day of events here in Delhi, then off to China in the evening. Onward ho! (No jokes please, it's just not that original.)