The Best Thing I Ate on My Solo Trip to New Orleans

Table for One is a column by Senior Editor Eric Kim, who loves cooking for himself—and only himself—and seeks to celebrate the beauty of solitude in its many forms.

When I landed in New Orleans, it was 11:59 p.m. I had taken the latest flight out of New York on a Friday for a week-long solo trip to clear my head of the city noise. Once I got to my destination, I had to scavenge for lodging. I hadn’t booked a room in advance. This is how I usually travel: I fly late into a new city and check into the cheapest motel I can find next to the airport because, I figure, why pay for a whole day when I’m just catching a couple winks? It works 99 percent of the time. Unluckily for me, it was the weekend of an LSU v. UGA game, which meant absolutely every single room in New Orleans was booked.

I was desperate. I flipped through my phone book and called my friend Daniel, a cellist for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. He happened to be awake and gave me his address. I trekked to his apartment to stay for the night, until the next morning, when I was able to snag a room at a hotel in the French Quarter.

Things were looking up, or so I thought.

I decided to park myself at the hotel bar to look through the gargantuan list of restaurant recommendations I had collected in the weeks leading up to my vacation. My friend Amelia had forwarded a chain from her editor at Bon Appétit who claimed that “for old-school places like Galatoire’s, Commander’s, and Antoine’s, it’s all about the Friday lunch.” So I made a lunch reservation at Commander’s Palace for my last day. One of my writers, Shane, had sent me this email:

OH MERCY.
You must go to the Bywater and visit Island of Salvation Botanica. On Friday night, go to Blue Nile on Frenchman St. and hope that Kermit Ruffins is playing.
Chris Hannah has left Arnaud’s French75, but still get a cocktail there. When it’s second line season keep asking people what’s happening on Sunday.
Do NOT eat beignets at Cafe du Monde. Focus on the women who cook. I.e., Nina Compton at Compère Lapin.
Follow Pableaux on Instagram.

Shane’s guide (and a thousand others from friends) in tow, I set off on my New Orleans adventure.

The second best thing I did in the city was take Shane’s advice to follow Pableaux Johnson, a New Orleans–based food writer, photographer, and all-around good guy, on Instagram. He invited me to one of his red beans and rice dinners, a gathering he hosts every week, bringing together all manner of friends and strangers—some food writers, mostly New Orleans academics and musicians—around his dining room table with a big pot of the classic rice and beans supper, plus a super savory, crunchy-at-the-edges cornbread (a recipe he got from his dad).

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Pableaux’s house had a stained glass–windowed front door, and the way he grinned at me when I walked in looked as if he’d already known me for years. I brought him a bottle of Four Roses because Shane told me to. Conversation flowed, and I left that night feeling very full and very much less alone.

Despite the perfect evening I had at Pableaux’s (and some of the best red beans and rice I’ve ever tasted), much of the restaurant food I ended up eating the rest of that week was disappointing: heavy, greasy, and not quite what I envisioned considering the hype. Maybe it was because my list was so fat, but I felt that I had made all of the wrong choices despite the bounty of recommendations. I ate mediocre étouffée, limp beignets, soggy fried chicken, and one of the worst po’boys I’ve ever had. Perhaps it was that I had too many recommendations and didn’t know which ones to heed and which to ignore.

Regardless, I couldn’t help but feel that I had done the city wrong. I came for a relaxing time alone, but, save for my night with McCellist, my dinner with Pableaux, and the World War II Museum, I found the experience a little miserable overall. With each bad restaurant meal I had, I was reminded of how lonely I was. It didn’t help that I wasn’t talking to my boyfriend at the time and was feeling more depressed than usual.

That’s when I thought that maybe New Orleans just wasn’t the city for me.

Was it that certain cities lend themselves to solo travel more than others? Compared to densely populated Tokyo, Paris, and New York, for instance, New Orleans felt sprawling and difficult to get around. Where Portland, Maine and Honolulu offer the calm of quiet docksides, beaches, and bars fit for reading a book throughout an entire afternoon, NOLA was more suited for conversing with friends over jazz and whiskey shots, or strolling through the French Quarter for the Carnival celebration.

But what of us loners?

On my last day, I woke up feeling defeated. It was 9:32 a.m. on Friday morning and my flight was at 3. But the thought of one last heavy meal was more than I could take. So I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my long list, stopping at this one line from Shane:

Focus on the women who cook. I.e., Nina Compton at Compère Lapin.

I decided to ditch my big NOLA lunch at Commander’s and walked into Compère Lapin instead, right on Tchoupitoulas Street and Lafayette. It was a cool and quiet respite, just what I needed after the uncomfortable week I had just endured. There was one item on the menu that caught my eye: a butternut squash ravioli with broccoli rabe puree and ricotta salata. It was like a sip of water in the desert. After all the beignets and po’boys, my body desperately craved vegetables.

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The puree was so bitter, in the most pleasurable way, measured by the sharp cheese and sweet squash. It made me think of what Jennifer McLagen once wrote about bitterness:

Our tongues are covered in taste buds that are very adept in detecting even the smallest traces of bitterness. This is a natural defense system to protect us: many poisons are bitter, so our response when tasting something very bitter is to grimace and often to spit it out. This reaction is strongest in babies, as small amounts of toxins can kill them. As we age, we lose taste buds, and we also learn that not all bitter foods will kill us. In fact, we realize that many bitter foods, like coffee, bitter alcohols, and chocolate, stimulate our nervous system in ways we enjoy, so we actively seek them out. Over time we have also discovered that many bitter foods contain compounds that can protect us against illness, and positively influence our health.

My stomach was grateful for this vegetal reprieve, my heart full of renewed health.

I boarded the plane feeling that I had somehow redeemed myself. I had found a dish that I actually enjoyed eating. In recent years, so many people in my life have lauded New Orleans as one of their favorite food cities, but it took my last bite to finally find that one thing just for me.

What I learned, too, yet again, was that even when I set out on a solo trip for rest and relaxation, time to be with myself, what I end up finding is the exact opposite. And the things I end up learning, I never would have learned had I traveled with the comfort of another person. I never would have met Pableaux and been invited into his home. I never would have spent an evening with the cellist and had a taste of his favorite local bourbon before bed. I never would have felt the discomfort that led me to seek out the food I actually wanted to eat.

More recently, I found myself thinking back on the good parts about that trip. I realized that the best moments were, in fact, those when I wasn’t alone at all. Then, I thought about why I leaned into those moments in particular, and why maybe sometimes, what I’m looking for when I go somewhere new isn’t necessarily to be alone—it’s to reach out.

I thought about that dish for weeks after, especially the bitterness and how much I enjoyed it. Until one day, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to make it myself.

So I developed a risotto version. I blanched a handful of broccoli rabe for a brief two minutes (no longer) to maintain its vibrant green color. Over the sink, I wrung out as much water as I could and pureed it with some cream. The risotto base happened like an old habit: a little butter, shallot, and Arborio rice, toasted, then plumped up with ladleful after ladleful of Better Than Bouillon chicken stock. I folded the broccoli rabe puree into the creamy risotto and watched it dye a glorious viridescence. With plenty of Parmesan—both grated finely into the rice and shaved thinly over it—it tasted not unlike the broccoli-cheese-rice casseroles I grew up adoring, but much bitterer, much better.

My body thanked me for this vegetal elixir, as it did on that last day in New Orleans.