Goodbye New Orleans!

So Brian just finished up his two year residency in orthodontics at LSU in New Orleans in June, and we packed up our things and left the great friends we made in New Orleans to head back to Memphis where I will be starting a pediatric dentistry residency at UT.  I am going to make my first blog about New Orleans while I can still claim to have just lived there.  This picture is us on Bourbon Street right after the Saints won the Super Bowl.  New Orleans is such a fantastic city and I like to think we lived there for the perfect two years.  Many people from home ask "How's New Orleans?" like its an injured war vet not back to one hundred percent yet.  It is worth visiting just to see how special the city is and also realize that the French Quarter, the delicious restaurants, and great entertainment are all still there and still so much fun. 

Anyway whenever people are going to New Orleans, they ask for restaurant suggestions, and it is so hard to narrow it down to anything you could possibly cover in a weekend.  There's the best place to get a roast beef po boy or shrimp po boy or oyster po boy, the best place to get bbq shrimp (which isn't bbq at all), the best fancy New Orleans restaurants, and the list goes on.  But if you do ask anyone from New Orleans where to get the best Po Boy, they will follow it by "What kind?" because they really are all that good and you do have to specify.  My overall favorite po boy would have to be the Fried Green Tomato and Shrimp Remoulade Po Boy at Crabby Jack's.  If you're in the French Quarter and want to go to cool, nicer (off of Bourbon Street) bars, the Swizzle Stick Bar in the Loews Hotel is really cool (the Adelaide Swizzle is my favorite drink), the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is neat, and the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone are all great spots.  The Delachaise is a hole in the wall looking bar on St. Charles that has amazing bar food (although its really too delicious to call it bar food) and great selection of different liquors and wine. 

We have too many favorite restaurants to even mention, but one of our latest favorites is La Boucherie.  It is tiny and you need reservations but its so so good.  Try the Krispy Kreme Donut Bread Pudding (AMAZING).  We also like Clancy's because it was down the street and has a cool local but fancy atmosphere.  We also like: Dante's Kitchen, Jacques-Imos, Bennachin (its a tiny African restaurant in the French Quarter), Cochon, Luke, just to name a few.  All of the other restaurants you have heard of or people tell you are delicious too.   A great website to look at if you're heading to New Orleans or want to get some great recipes is http://www.nomenu.com/.  It is tom Fitzsimmons' website and its great.  He has a ton of restaurant reviews and rankings and he's usually pretty accurate.  Alright I could go on about New Orleans forever and I'm missing it already!