I’m one of many people who came down here to help after hurricane Katrina in 2005. Originally I was only coming for a couple of weeks, but that turned into the rest of my life.
When I first saw New Orleans, about eight months after Katrina, a lot of areas were unpassable and roads jammed with debris. You had to look in the newspaper to figure out which stores and restaurants were open each day. But what impressed me was the people – though they were facing a terrible situation, they were so resistant and stronger than you’d think possible.
One of the most important things for them was getting Mardi Gras up and running again for the next spring, to show that New Orleans was bouncing back. People were not giving up. The idea of moving or living in another part of the country just never entered into it.
Here’s some good advice on Mardi Gras. Don’t come down for the carnival weekend itself, as the crowds can be insane, with about one million people in the streets. It’s fantastic but if you come down the weekend before, you still see excellent parades and get a much better hotel rate.
Forget Mardi Gras balls – they are private so you can’t get into them. Go to the Krewe of Endymion’s blowout instead. They have a big extravaganza each year after the parade with celebrity music performers and floats and so on, and you can buy tickets online.
The neighbourhood walking krewes are the thing. They don’t have big powered floats, so it’s more intimate. Nobody buys a costume or cheap beads, everybody makes something, which for me goes back to the original spirit of Mardi Gras. It’s best to see them through the French Quarter and the Marigny neighbourhood, and now the Bywater to some degree.
I’m the captain of a sub-krewe called Krewe Of Python (No Relation), and yes, we focus on Monty Python sketches. For our first parade, earlier this year, we dressed up as characters from The Holy Grail, handing out holy hand grenades of Antioch. Next carnival we are doing The Spanish Inquisition, so we’ll be dressing up as cardinals and handing out edible rosaries.
New Orleans is very different to other American cities because it is one of the few parts of the US that was not settled by the British. It was settled by the French and then taken over by the Spanish so it is historically very different. Culturally it has more in common with the Caribbean than, say, Chicago or New York.
New Orleans has the US’s only true indigenous cuisine. There are other great food cities, like New York or San Francisco, but the food is not particularly native to them, whereas many of the famous dishes in New Orleans were created here. That comes from being a port city which has fantastic, fresh seafood and the combination of French, Spanish, African, Caribbean and wherever-else cultures.
Creole cuisine is very rich with a lot of butter and butter-based sauces – gumbo, famous desserts like crème brûlée and bread pudding. People come down here and love it, then after three days they’re like: “I need a salad. I really need a salad!”
There’s supposed to be several ghosts in the hotel where I work, the Bourbon Orleans. It’s a grand old dame with a fascinating history – it’s been a ballroom, a convent and an orphanage over the last 200 years – and children and a Confederate soldier who committed suicide are said to roam the corridors. About a month ago a gentleman came to me and said he’d seen a ghost in the night. Though personally, I’ve seen far stranger things happen on Bourbon Street – most of them unmentionable here.
The hotel does not pay me to tell people where to eat, I am paid to match guests with their likes and tastes. It’s very subjective but here are three that I really like: Peche is a fantastic seafood restaurant in the Warehouse district run by chef Donald Link: the speciality is whole fish that you split with fellow diners. Marti’s, in the French Quarter, is a new restaurant that has retained the magnificent old art deco interior (unusual in New Orleans). The food is Creole with a modern twist, and in a beautiful setting. The penne pork is particularly good, the quail is excellent, and they also serve great oysters on the half-shell. For tradition, I always recommended Galatoire’s, which goes back to 1905 – it’s really old school Creole. Don’t make a reservation though as it will be on the first floor, not the historic beautiful ground floor room. If you want to get into the ground floor, you need to wait in line – and men must wear jackets.
Stay out of the French Quarter if you want to find good live music. Go down to Frenchmen Street instead: you have a fantastic choice of jazz – contemporary, traditional, brass bands – playing every night and you are not paying French Quarter prices for drinks, so it’s much kinder on the pocket.
I tell people to walk up and down Frenchman, stick your head in listen, see who’s playing. They always have a posting outside of who’s playing, but it’s more fun to discover it on your own.
My favourite spot down there is The Spotted Cat. It’s a small place, bare boned, bar in the back, stage in the window. There is always a good crowd in there dancing and singing – you can hear the music out on the street. I was part of Krewe du Jieux, which held several events there – in fact four years ago I was the King of the Jews, the only Irish Catholic King of the Jews in the city’s history! But that’s New Orleans for you.
I love the fact that men here call other men baby all the time, or boo, as a term of endearment.
I run a pub quiz every Tuesday at a punk bar called Siberia. I love geek trivia and do quizzes about video games or JRR Tolkien.
The Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone is an actual carousel which revolves 360 degrees every 15 minutes. It has to be my favourite cocktail bar – it’s a beautiful bar and they have great live music too.
• John Fitzpatrick is the concierge at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel
