Another weekend, another bachelor party for another brother… and just like the last bachelor party in Montreal, the focus wasn’t really on food so much as it was on alcohol. So if you’re looking for a post about the awesome food in New Orleans, you’re probably not going to find it here, but this will still be an interesting article if you’re curious about what happens during a bachelor party in New Orleans… or at least, some of what happened. For the sake of everyone involved, I will not be disclosing all that went down, but I’m sure you can use your imaginations to fill in the blanks.
New Orleans Bachelor Party
I had never been to New Orleans so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I had a feeling it would be kind of nuts. My wife had her bachelorette party down there when we got married 5 years ago and she gave me an idea of what it was like, but she seemed more focused on the food whereas I knew that this trip was not going to be food-centric.
We arrived on Thursday morning at around 11am, checked into the hotel, and immediately grabbed a drink at the hotel bar. One of the cool things about New Orleans is that, as long as it’s not in a glass container, you can walk around the entire city with alcoholic beverages. This meant that I wouldn’t be forced to chug my drink if we decided to leave one bar to head to the next, which is good, cause I don’t drink a lot.
Essentially the entire bachelor party weekend consisted of drinks on Bourbon Street, not enough food to soak up the alcohol, way too much alcohol, and multiple trips to the casino… again, more than that happened, but that’s not for me to discuss here… If you’re thinking about heading to New Orleans for a bachelor party, it’s definitely a great time, but it can be a lot if you’re not ready for it. We had zero things planned for the entire weekend, outside of dinner at a brewery on Friday night, and while it was good cause it rained a decent amount, it was bad in the sense that it just lead to ending up in bars at 10am and staying till midnight each day. But I think everyone had a good time.
Bourbon Street and Nola Po’Boys
Pretty much every day we were down there we spent on Bourbon Street which is just a long stretch of dive bars and strip clubs. And you’d think with the selection of bars on the street we’d try a variety of different places, but nope… we ended up at the same two places pretty much every day, with a couple variants here and there.
The first day we ventured out onto Bourbon Street we found ourselves greeted by huge construction fences blocking off the actual road, which lead to hordes of people jamming through the narrow sidewalks, which was super annoying. Thankfully the construction ended a few blocks in and then opened up to allow for a better flow of traffic, but we already knew that it was going to be super annoying come Friday/Saturday night (this was Thursday morning). We weren’t quite ready to start pounding drinks yet, but we were ready to eat some food, which lead us to a place called Nola Poboys.
Nola Poboys is located right on Bourbon Street, but down the road a bit in what seemed like a slightly quieter area, but again, I could be totally wrong since it was about noon on a Thursday.
If you’re not familiar with a Po’Boy, essentially it’s just a sub sandwich… You can get it either hot or cold, and with a variety of different protein options. Every sandwich comes loaded with lettuce, tomato, pickle and mayo (unless you say otherwise). Usually, when you’re in New Orleans, you opt for a seafood Po’Boy, something like Fried Shrimp, but since I don’t eat much seafood, I opted for the Big Easy Po’Boy, hot, which is roast beef and ham.
When the sandwich came out I was actually surprised with the amount of gravy that was on the roast beef. for some reason I thought it was just going to be some dry ham and dry roast beef, with some lettuce (since I can’t eat pickles or tomatoes, and I don’t like mayo), but I was pleasantly surprised when it came out just dripping in gravy.
In actuality, I probably shouldn’t have eaten the gravy, cause I’m sure it had garlic or onions in it, but I dove right in anyways cause I was starving.
After just one bite I was impressed. It was a damn good sandwich. It was a little messy with the roast beef gravy dripping off of it, but the only way it would have been better was if the gravy was slathered over some fries and cheese curds for some delicious poutine. Even if it wasn’t mixed with fries, the gravy was delicious, the roast beef was awesome, and the ham tasted great. I was definitely happy with my choice for my first Po’Boy in New Orleans, and I think everyone else was happy too. I think the only minor complaint was that people didn’t realize that the fried seafood sandwiches were going to be a little spicy (I saw the sign in the front, but they must not have). It didn’t turn anyone off to the food, it was just a bit of a surprise on their first bite.
After lunch, the rest of the guys made it into town and we made our way over to a bar on Bourbon Street called The Beach. It was a little slow on a Thursday afternoon, but the music was good and the drinks were cold, and that’s all we were looking for. It also wasn’t the last time we’d end up there.
Bourbon Street Pizza and Razzoo
Ok, so as you’re walking down Bourbon Street, you’re surrounded by bars and strip clubs for the most part, but there are also tons of places selling frozen drinks like daiquiri’s, pina coladas, and margaritas. These are usually served in some oversized, ridiculous-looking, souvenir cup and loaded with cheap booze. However, these places usually also serve pizza by the slice, which hits the spot if you’re looking for food between bars… but don’t expect good pizza.
Coming from Chicago, I feel like I know what good pizza is, and the bar pizza in New Orleans is not good. But again, if you’re hungry and don’t want to sit down anywhere, then these places will do the trick. We ate at the same pizza place 2 out of the 3 nights we were there, and almost ate there a third time, but couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. I honestly don’t even remember the name of the place we got pizza, I just remember it was next to Razzoo, which was the bar we always seemed to end up at every single day.
Razzoo was a decent bar to be at though. It always seemed like there was a decent crowd, lots of bachelorette parties, and 3 for 1 drink specials throughout most of the day. Yes, you heard that right, it was basically like $8 for 3 beers, which is a steal compared to Chicago. At most of the bars, liquor was also 2 for 1, so every drink you got was a double shot for like $7-8… But drinks aside, Razzoo always seemed to have a good crowd and an entertaining woman keeping everyone hyped up. We spent the majority of our time on Bourbon street at this bar all weekend.
Beignets at Cafe Du Monde and Muffuletta’s
Friday morning was a little rough for everyone, but once we got up and moving we decided to walk down to the famous Cafe Du Monde for some coffee and Beignets.
Cafe Du Monde is open 24 hours a day, serving coffee and Beignets, which is fried dough covered in powdered sugar, essentially it’s like a funnel cake, but in a different shape. When we got to the restaurant, the line to actually sit down inside was pretty long, and even though it seemed like the turnover was pretty quick, since everyone’s just eating beignets, we opted to jump in the carry-out line and get our beignets and coffee to go.
Each order of beignets gets you 3 of them, so between the 3 of us, we got 4 orders cause we figured 3 wouldn’t be enough since they aren’t the biggest things in the world… We were wrong. I only managed to eat about 2 and a half of mine, and nobody dipped into the extra order we got, so it just ended up going back to the hotel where I tried to eat one the next day and it’s not good.
As far as the beignets go, I thought they were good, but they honestly just reminded me of a funnel cake in a different shape. They might have been slightly ‘fluffier’, but that could just be me trying to make an excuse for them being something special. Don’t get me wrong, they were delicious, but so is a funnel cake at the carnival. Any dough that you fry up and cover with powdered sugar is going to be delicious, so I guess I just didn’t see the draw of these ones. It definitely hit the spot in the morning though, so I can’t complain.
After we were done eating our beignets, a friend came up and had a giant muffuletta sandwich in his hand that they didn’t finish while they were eating. A muffuletta is basically just a big round sandwich full of lunch meats and cheese. It was pretty good, but I couldn’t try too much after chowing down on the beignets.
Fried Alligator, Oysters and Burgers
Friday night was the only night we had anything planned, which was just dinner reservations at a brewery called Crescent City Brewhouse. Nobody was really looking for any fancy dinners during this trip, so this was the best we were going to get.
We started off with a couple appetizers, mainly the fried alligator and the oysters, for the table. We were supposed to get a dozen wings, but for some reason they never showed up, so we just canceled that order and had it removed from the bill.
I’m not a big seafood person, and I’ve had oysters before and can’t get over the texture, so I stayed away from those, but it seemed like everyone else enjoyed them quite a bit. They were a lot bigger than most orders of oysters I’ve seen (see image at top), and contained a lot more slimy, weird, oystery-shit than most oysters I’ve been around. But like I said, don’t use me as your basis for judging oysters, I don’t like the smell, I don’t like the taste, and the consistency of them makes me want to puke, so let’s move on.
When we ordered the fried alligator I told myself that I had to try it no matter what. I had to try at least one ‘weird’ food while we were down in New Orleans or I wouldn’t have anything decent to write about. And I will say, I’m glad I tried them.
The dish came out and looked very much like popcorn chicken, but the alligator meat is a lot leaner than chicken and almost dissolves in your mouth. The breading was perfect and even the tartar sauce that went with it was delicious. I’m honestly shocked that I’m writing these words, but I really did enjoy the fried alligator and would definitely order it again if the opportunity presented itself. I’m not sure if this is how all fried alligator is, but in this state, it was awesome.
As for my main entree, I just kept it simple, and FODMAP diet friendly, by sticking with a burger with cheddar cheese and bacon. It was a decent burger, but not the best burger I had during our time down there. I would say that the burger I had from The Bayou Burger was a touch better than the burger at the brewery. It could have been cause I was slightly drunk when we at at The Bayou Burger Saturday night, or it could have been the fact that I was just happy we weren’t eating shitty bar pizza slices again for dinner, but either way, both burgers did the trick and were tasty.
Breakfast at Cafe Fleur De Lis
Saturday morning was another rough morning, but everyone knew they had to eat so we fired up Yelp and found Cafe Fleur De Lis. Cafe Fleur De Lis was a typical breakfast place a block or so away from Bourbon street and we were able to make a reservation through Yelp, which is always helpful.
The menu is pretty standard when it comes to breakfast, but it was just what everyone needed that morning. I ended up getting the ‘Big Easy Breakfast’ which consists of 2 eggs, sausage and bacon, hash browns or grits, a short stack of pancakes and toast. I probably could have gotten the normal 2 egg breakfast and just eaten my brother pancakes that he didn’t touch, but I wanted both eggs and pancakes and this was the way to do it.
I’m always amazed how different places cook eggs over-easy in completely different ways. Some places leave just the yolk runny, while the egg whites are fully cooked, other places the egg whites and the yolk are super runny, and sometimes they just overcook the entire thing and I get no runny yolk. On this occasion I got runny yolk, which I like, and runny whites, which I don’t like… The eggs were still fine, and did the trick, so I’m not too upset by it, I just wish there was a bit more consistency when cooking eggs certain ways. I don’t want to have to ask for them over-medium and then not get the runny yolk I love so much…
Rain, Rain, Rain
After breakfast most people went back to the hotel to get ready, but we went to the casino to gamble a bit more. Over the course of the weekend I turned a $5 bill into $282 on $5 hands of video blackjack… I then proceeded to lose $115 of that, but I still came home a winner, so I can’t complain.
After the casino we made it back to the hotel to meet everyone, but as soon as we got there it started pouring so we took shelter for a while until we couldn’t stand just sitting in the hotel bar any longer.
Without many options right outside our hotel, we ran across the street to Jumanji, a Chicago bar that was conveniently located right next to our hotel. It’s actually not called Jumanji, it’s called The Jimani Lounge & Restaurant, but at first glance everyone thought the sign said Jumanji, so it stuck.
We waited out the rain and then made our way out to meet the rest of our group at a bar called MBR, I think. All I know is that we made it about a block before it started down pouring again and we were forced to buy ponchos to protect ourselves. Even with the ponchos we were all completely soaked, but that didn’t stop the party. The bar we got to was the diviest bar of all the dive bars we went to that weekend, and our group, along with another bachelor party, were the only ones in there. The bar itself even started flooding due to the sheer amount of rain that was coming down, it was insane.
And that was it. The last night a few of us ate at The Bayou Burger, as I mentioned above, and went back to the casino before calling it an early night.
Overall I think the trip was a success and I think my brother had a good time on his bachelor party. There was obviously a lot more that went down while we were there, but that information will be kept in the memories of those that were with us that night.
I know there is a lot more food to be had in New Orleans, and a lot more to the city than just Bourbon street, so I would not be opposed to going back down there for a somewhat more relaxing vacation, as opposed to the debauchery that goes along with a bachelor party. So if I ever do make it back down there, let me know some food spots and dishes I should be sure not to miss!
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