New-Orleans — Temps/Oralité #2

New-Orleans — Temps/Oralité #2

A couple of years ago I submitted a project for the 21st Joint Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) that was going to take place in New Orleans, Louisiana in June 2008. My project was: From Toulouse (Occitania-France) to Toulouse Street (New-Orleans). The proposal got accepted but I had to withdraw as scheduling and funding didn’t work out. However, I haven’t given up this idea  and I keep adding elements to my files. The idea started when I found out that in 1850 there was a restaurant called : “Le Toulousain” on 732 Toulouse Street, next to Bourbon street, in the French Quarter in New Orleans .

731 Toulouse Street

Café  Toulousain is long gone and is now an Irish Pub called Molly’s Bar. I stopped for a drink, but didn’t see any apparent vestige of the old restaurant. The top picture  is a drawing of Café Toulousain circa 1850 where you can read the name of the owner : J. Loubat. The name is common in New Orleans and so it is in Southern France.  Toulouse is a city in Southern France though Toulouse street was not named after it, but after Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Comte de Toulouse (1678-1737). He was one of the many children of Louis XIV born out of wedlock (17 are accounted for). Le Comte de Toulouse was the 8th child born out of the king’s relationship with La Marquise de Montespan, whose husband was from Gascony and never recovered.   The Comte Dumaine was the second born from that “bed” — as the French say —  he also got a street named after him in the French Quarter. Toulouse & Dumaine streets run parallel  two blocks apart and are oriented South-Est to North-West.


I am looking forward to dig more into the history of 732 Toulouse Street and I am determined to find out what was on the menu. Were they serving cassoulet? I bet they did!

Another intriguing piece of information I gathered while digging for the Augustus Saint Gaudens project at the New York library, was that a woman named Elvira Peyrafitte (also my last name) was buried at the St.Vincent de Paul Cemetery in New Orleans on December 5th 1915. My mother who keeps our family tree had no records of her. It turned out that the name was most likely Peyrefitte and not Peyrafitte, as mine is. One  thing is sure, both names have the exact same meaning:
peyre,peire/a —from the latin & occitan : stone;  and hitta/o/e (gascon) or fitta /o/e (eastern occitan) : raised.
Yes! my name means:  raised stone or menhir!  Anyhow, even if Elvira was not closely related I decided to try to find her grave.  I traveled by street car & by bus  to the non-touristy neighborhood of Bywater/St.Claude.


The neighborhood was deserted and the cemetery had no living soul except me. Not many graves were kept up. The only flowers were artificial and discolored. It is an old cemetery and here is some info gathered on the website  www.nolacemetaries.com:

These cemeteries [there are 3 Saint Vincent de Paul cemeteries next to each other] were laid out by Pepe Liuia, the famous fencing master of old Creole days. He was connected with the famous Dueling Oaks in city Park [showed in my last blog]. He was well known for teaching New Orleanians fencing skills and encouraged them to engage in mortal combat just for the sake of showing the art. He eventually settled down in the old farm section of New Orleans of what is now known as the St. Claude neighborhood. Some residents still refer to it as St. Vincent De Paul Parish. 6 years after the erection of the parish church, St. Vincent De Paul in 1838, Pepe cut his ground into cemeteries and named them after the patron saint of the parish. The tombs are built in the same order as those of ancient French cemeteries. Pepe Liuia, his wife, and his only daughter are buried here. His home bounded by Clouet, Louisa and Urquhart streets is still overlooking the cemeteries.

I often visit cemeteries alone and abandon myself to the particular energy  that emanates from them. But this one was triggering some awkward and a tad spooky feelings, especially when I entered the “oven vaults” section shown above. There was  long rows of graves, sometimes as much as one hundred of them, with four “ovens” stacked on top of each other up to a height of about 10 feet. I was literally surrounded by long time dead people.  I had to rethink my whole relationship to cemeteries and realized that in most cemeteries we look “down” on the dead.  Here they were all around and looking down to me! I adjusted and surrendered to the new experience and  I got quite excited when deciphering several graves written in French with names  that were very familiar to me.



I couldn’t locate Elvira —the grave location was not very clear so I might have missed it or her tomb stone  was missing, this area had been severally flooded during  hurricane Katrina and some “oven vault” stones are missing— but I sure found some other fellows from my beloved Pyrenees!
There was André Dupuy, born in Lespitau —canton de Saint Gaudens— on November 27, 1837  who died on October 10, 1867. Was he friends with Eléonore Fréchède, born on November 5th 1838 who died on December 20, 1867? She was  born in Betplan in the Canton de Mielan about 50 miles away from Lespiteau. Did they go dancing with André Ibos?   André was born in Villeneuve de Lécussan and died November 19th, 1868, he was 40 years old, about 10 years older the other two. André & Eléonore died the same year, André Ibos the following year. Did they travel together? Did they work at the same business? Did they hang out at Café Toulousain? Where they friends of J. Loubat? All I can say is that is was another inspiring & humbling time to think of their journey. And if their graves were marked so consciously with their place of origin it was for a reason: they wanted their “paìs” to be remembered. I can relate to that, I like calling myself a Gasco-Ricain, to give a better indication of where exactly I am from. My identity doesn’t come from a “country” but from my geography as (etymologically) “earth describe-write.”
 I can smell a performance project on my stove;  The Transcontinental Étouffée / Eth Estouffat Transcontinental! To be continued…
The sky was darkening, rain drops started marking the ground.  I made it in time to the bus stop to catch the bus right before the downpour began. I got off at Esplanade and Nth. Rampart, it was still raining so I stopped at the first restaurant/bar in sight. It was Buffa’s Restaurant & Lounge, the place felt like a neighborhood hangout. The TV, blasting some series or other, kept the waitress and the two customers riveted. The waitress brought the menu keeping an eye on the suspense. The menu had regular bar food offerings and I was about to settle for a salad when at the bottom I read: Rice & Home made Beans $8 add a sausage $10 — perfect! That is what I needed, beans and souls are so closely related! Had I known how much pork was already in the beans I might have skipped the sausage, but I ate my entire plate, except for the bread! I also ordered a glass of red cab from Oregon to complete my communion. I felt so satisfied and so content. An immanent sacrament where a visible sign of an invisible reality occurred. As I said in the first post:  if one is attentive & tuned in,  a timeless, boundless & profound journey is all yours in New Orleans!




New-Orleans—Temps/Oralité #1

New-Orleans—Temps/Oralité #1


Gold Mine Saloon getting a face lift before the All-Hands-On-Deck fund raiser

I got back Tuesday night from New Orleans. My mind still loops images, smells, tastes, & feelings. New Orleans is a place where present and past souls can mingle & converse  if one is attentive & tuned in:  a timeless, boundless & profound journey is all yours there!

First night out, my hosts, poets Megan Burns and Dave Brinks, took me to the launch of the anthology A Howling in the Wires. This collection of texts covers blogs, poems and stories in response to Hurricane Katrina and is edited by Sam Jasper and Mark Folse —see Megan Burn’s blog Solid Quarter for more details.
My last visit to Nola goes back to early November 2005, only a few months after the devastating hurricane Katrina. The French Quarter was slowly reopening for business, the rest of the city was still pretty empty, many areas were still without electricity, destruction was everywhere and people where still totally shell shocked. So, last Thursday’s reading brought me back five years later right into the midst of her/his-stories written back then — poignant offerings that touched & humbled me deeply. Despite the ordeal this community experienced having to go through the material and psychological reconstruction, their sense of dignity and humor, generosity and compassion is unaltered and contagious.
 The volume is available on line and I recommend getting it: http://gallatin-and-toulouse-press.com/shop.html.

Of course, compared to my 2005 visit I found the city beautiful and vibrant.  Sunday was the 5th anniversary of Katrina and though you can still see  feel the stigma, people have moved on, and New Orleans feels to be a culture of the now. So thank you, David Brinks, Megan Burns, for hosting me, and for giving me the opportunity to perform at the “All-Hands-on-Deck” event. Thank you, Gina Ferrara and Jonathan Kline for getting together the last night like we did 5 years ago, talking longly and fondly.

It might take me a few postings to recount most of the moments, places & tastes, I wish to share… Voilà for the the first one.


Live Oak -City Park- New Orleans

The centennial live oaks of City Park awed me as I reflected on the fact that they witnessed the Bayougoula, Mougoulacha, Chitimacha, Oumas, Tangipahoa, Colapissa, and Quinipissa native American tribes, along with many storms and hurricanes, as well as many duels. These evergreen oaks that have survived and outlived all kinds of weather, humans & other pests, for hundreds of years, induce a sense of temporal magnitude rarely experienced.


City Park also hosts the New Orleans Museum of Art. “Unframed but reflected by Michel Angelo Pistoletto” is the caption I posted when I uploaded the picture of this piece on my Facebook page. The mirror painting by Italian artist Michel Angelo Pistoletto raised another notion of temporality. Here, unlike the deep & linear temporality of the live oak, I faced and inscribed myself  as a non-chronological layer of time. You will notice the Philip Guston painting  reflected in the back.

Another painting that stood out for me and provided a not so linear experience was the piece by New Orleans artist George Rodrigue. He is famous for his blue dogs and his relief efforts for Katrina and the gulf. The Aioli Dinner was painted in 1971. Here is what the Museum has to say about the painting:


“The Aioli Dinner was Rodrigue’s first major painting with people. He designed the painting using combinations of photographs taken of the Aioli Gourmet Dinner Club, a group which met once a month on the lawn of a different plantation home in and around New Iberia, Louisiana.
Only men sat at the table, each with their own bottle of wine. The women standing in the back row cooked the food, and the young men around the table served dinner. One of the older men, however, made the aioli, a garlic-mayonnaise sauce. Rodrigue’s grandfather Jean Courrege sits on the left near the head of the table, and his uncle Emile is the third boy standing from the left, peaking his head in between the others. All of the figures are portraits of people who lived in and around New Iberia.
Rodrigue chose the lawn of the Darby House Plantation as the setting for his painting, because the house was still standing in 1970, when he began work on the piece (it has since been torn down). Today the paintings hangs at the New Orleans Museum of Art.”


Wendy Rodrigue, the artist’s wife, keeps a  blog where she gives interesting details about the painting and the Rodrigues‘ family history.  I like the naive quality of the painting very much, but what piqued my attention was the fact that it was called “Aioli Dinner” A très typical dish of the Provence region.  According to Wendy Rodrigue’s blog, the family insisted on their French background, and though I am just assuming that this was a family tradition, they must have come from the Provence region. The name aioli (alhòli) comes from Provençal alh ‘garlic’ (< Latin allium) + òli ‘oil’ (< Latin oleum). Often referred to as a garlicky mayonnaise, real Aioli has only olive oil and garlic. It is made by pounding garlic with olive oil and salt in a mortar until a smooth texture is obtained. Now a “grand aïoli “, also called “l’aïoli monstre” or simply “l’aïoli” consists of platters of poached salt cod (bacalau) — sometimes bigorneaux (winkles) are added — and a variety of steamed or poached seasonal vegetables with ample bowls of the hand-made garlic mayonnaise served as a wonderfully pungent accompaniment. Le grand aïoli is especially popular for large village gatherings. I will be sure to investigate the “Aioli Gourmet Dinner Club” more closely as I deepen my research on Southern French immigration to New Orleans. But that will be the topic of another post.

Today I will close with the trade mark sandwich of New Orleans the Muffuletta. These sandwiches can be found in many places in the Big Easy. Of Sicilian origin, this sandwich consists of a round loaf of bread about 10 inches across, filled with Italian salami, olive salad, cheese, Italian ham, and freshly minced garlic. The key ingredient is the olive salad that gives the sandwich its special flavor and pleasant look.

The Italian Market, Central Grocery on Decatur Street, proudly claims to be the home of “The Original Muffuletta.” The sandwich was supposedly invented in 1906, when an Italian immigrant, Signor Lupo Salvatore, owner of the Central Grocery, started making the sandwiches for the men who worked the nearby wharves and produce stalls of the French Market. I visited the beautiful store right after my beignet breakfast at Café du Monde so I decided to return on Sunday… Unfortunately Central Grocery is closed Sundays & Mondays. Really craving to sink my teeth into a Muffuletta I decided to settle for “Frank’s” restaurant next door. Their sign advertised “World Famous Original Muffuletta”, and though I have nothing to compare it with, I found it most delicious — and that comes from someone who is not much of a sandwich fan. I will try to make it, and found this recipe (which makes sense) on the “Nola Cuisine Blog. Stay tune for more!