Five Days of Unbearable Hangovers in New Orleans
Mosquito Supper Club in the Milan neighborhood of New Orleans with a new friend.
In the beginning
The first evening I arrived in New Orleans, I went to the Quarter (as do many) and had a Sazerac (as do many). I took my drink on the road—the bar was closed because of COVID—and walked through the streets. I quickly fell in love and texted my friend Matt, a journalist and previous resident of New Orleans, that it was too bad you can only have your first Sazerac for your first time in New Orleans, once. And he replied: “But you can drink so much that you forget you had your first Sazerac.” That was a far better way to end the thought and the evening…so that’s exactly what I did.
I ended up towards Frenchman Street, saw a little live music on the street—horns, jazz, and such—in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood and having a bite at Elysian Bar along with another cocktail. I could have ended the evening there, a reasonable move, but…I am rarely reasonable when it comes to drinks, food, and adventure in new cities. Besides, the plan had been to meet my friend Lily at Vaughn’s Lounge in Bywater.
Lily and I hadn’t seen one another for nearly 15 years. We met many years ago at the Rockport Film Workshops in Maine. She had been busy the last decade actually making documentary films (Bayou Maharajah and Buckjumping, both about New Orleans). We had the obligatory awkward few moments at Vaughn’s that come along with blank periods between friends. But we filled it in with more cocktails and too many smokes and I learned that everyone in fact seems to roll their own cigarettes in New Orleans. The night ended with a meal at Bacchanal Fine Wine & Spirits, one that I can only remember was delicious and blurry, and drunken songs at Lily’s house in the Bywater. I don’t recall how I got home.
Drunken songs at Lily’s.
The next morning arrived with a hellish hangover. I walked 12 miles through the Garden District, the Lower Garden District, Central Business District (CBD), the Quarter, and then back to my hotel eventually at Hotel Pontchartrain. A few recommendations in the area…
Mammoth Espresso for an espresso tonic
Molly’s Rise and Shine for their Grand Slam “McMuffin”
Pêche Seafood Grill for oysters and steak tartare with a smoked oyster aioli
A walk in the Lower Garden District.
I’d like to say that the next few days were a bit more tame, like going to the WWII Museum (something I had on the list) or a ferry ride to Algiers Point, or City Park for a stroll. All were recommended and I did none of them. The fact is, is that I continued my city walks and stuffed myself full of more oysters and mezcal. I don’t regret it…except for one afternoon when I was to meet a local author, Stephen, for a pub tour through an Airbnb Experience—something I had never tried. Before meeting Stephen, I was having a bathroom emergency and popped into Superior Seafood & Oyster Bar and ordered a Bloody Mary. Quite the nice decor and an even better toilet. All of the booze was certainly causing some gastrointestinal distress. But I pressed on.
Stephen and I met at Fat Harry’s for a gin and tonic, walked the Tuoro neighborhood, and had another drink at Mayfair Lounge and discussed the writing process and its extraordinary difficulty. We said our goodbyes after a few more drinks and now I had to choose between sobering up and sleeping well…or to continue drinking. So I continued on and filled myself with BBQ at The Joint in Bywater, and entirely too many gin and tonics at Friendly Bar in Marigny.
I was hungover again the next morning and caught the end of City Slickers from my hotel, a wonderful movie for a hangover that requires very little brainpower. I checked into the Ace Hotel in CBD and an hour later, I was lounging by the pool and discussing COVID with a couple from Mississippi, both of whom worked in the medical field. They told me that anyone more or less could drive to Mississippi and get vaccinated.
And as I’m writing this, I think probably a better narrative here would have been that I drove to Mississippi to get vaccinated. I did not. I went to Seaworthy, ate a ton of oysters and drank too much mezcal (this is after all titled “Five Days of Unbearable Hangovers in New Orleans”). Lily and I met back up in the evening, I was already slurring, and watched her friend Sabine McCalla perform on the roof of Ace Hotel. I got entirely too krunked and decided that tomorrow would be a sober day.
The next day in fact was not a sober day. There was, however, more pool and gym time. (Note: do not stay at the Ace Hotel if you’re trying to be a good tourist. They make it entirely too easy to dine in their wonderful restaurants Josephine Estelle and Seaworthy, their cafe Lovage, the venue Three Keys, and Alto, the rooftop garden and pool.) That evening, I met Lily and her friend Camille, a wonderful documentary photographer (pictured at the beginning of this post), and had what was definitively the best meal I’ve had in the past year at the Mosquito Supper Club. The menu…
Sweet potato biscuits with steen’s cane butter
Point aux pins oysters with tarragon vinaigrette and chervil
Higgins crab claws with pickled sweet peppers and green garlic aioli
Roadside crawfish hand pies
Perilloux beet salad with kumquat vinaigrette, yogurt farmer cheese, peanut hummus, and nasturtium and radish shoots
Velma Marie’s oyster soup
Evans seared speckled trout with covey rise sugar snap peas, creamer potato, and sauce vierge
Louisiana carrot cake with toasted pecan and ginger ice cream
The waitress and sommelier afterwards joined us for drinks and way too many cigarettes. I went home at 2am. The next morning, I woke at around 6:30am and pretty thoroughly hated myself and wished that either City Slickers were on again or that I could in fact, given the probability that I may be having a midlife crisis, also venture into the southwest on a supervised cattle drive…preferably with Ryan Gosling instead of Jack Palance. But that’s for a later post.)
I had an Americano and breakfast sandwich from Lovage, worked out, sat at the pool, and then headed to the airport. And that was more or less that. It was a fog and a wonderful one at that.
