Doing My Fest: Part Two
An exciting menu of people watching and local fare
Last year, after returning to New Orleans for the first time in nearly two decades, I published Doing My Fest: Part I, reflecting on my former tradition of going to the New Orleans JazzFest with friends. Soon after, I began drafting this piece. Because of major life events including a child’s graduation, a parent’s hospitalization that turned into long-term care needs, a grown child’s moving out and more, it never got published.
I share it with you now after attending JazzFest again this year with two of the friends who participated in the rental house experiment, plus a handful of other gal pals from high school. It’s been more years than you can count fingers on a hand since we all saw each other, so there was plenty of catching up to do!
I’d say the tradition has been successfully revived! What food + travel traditions have you enjoyed in your life? Which ones have fallen out of practice that you’d like to revisit?
January 2025
I was in escape mode, scrolling through vacation rental listings on a chilly New England night. The wishful traveler in me was easily drawn to a charming waterfront house with its own dock and furnished deck overlooking the water.
I pulled the fleecy collar of my sweatshirt up to my chin, thinking about how nice it would be to escape to t-shirt weather in New Orleans. I started reminiscing about the silly good fun I’d had with friends at JazzFest. The memories had been made in what felt like a former life.
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We hadn’t been for almost two decades. Most of my Fest friends and I no longer live near each other. Being dispersed across different states with greater, more complex responsibilities than the ones that once defined our lives means too we don’t see each other much.
Maybe, just maybe, it was time to do something about that. Clicking through details on the vacation site, I made a sudden decision to pitch everyone on a reunion in the coming spring. I’d even bring my teenaged boys this time, and initiate them to the multi-sensory experience that makes JazzFest the special event it is.
I pictured relaxing with everyone at the rental house, sharing conversation and cocktails on the deck, everyone pitching in to throw together hors d’oeuvres and casual meals. It would be completely removed from the way we used to “do” Jazz Fest, when we would rush back to our hotel rooms in the Warehouse District to shower and dress after a day of music at The Fairgrounds. The lucky among us would even grab a short disco nap before we all went out to dine at a big name restaurant where our server would have us powering through our meal, and yes, lots of cocktails, before the next reservation took over our table.
This fresh vision I was conjuring meant that our respective beds would be only x feet away when any one of us decided we were done for the night. We’d skip hauling out for a second shift at music clubs into the wee hours to cozy in instead. Besides, my boys were too young for New Orleans night clubs.
I texted the property link to my husband and friends. “Care to jump on the bandwagon?”
The first reply quickly shot back from Florida: Yes!!!! I’m in!
Then, from a friend who lives north of me: That sounds like fun I would love to.…
Without the need for hotel and restaurant reservations, trip plans came together fairly easily. We were going back to NoLA!
May 2025
The vacation rental was in suburban Slidell, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Slidell is a small city that grew out of the second Industrial Revolution after many workers who built the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad connecting New Orleans with Meridien, Mississippi made it their home base.
Decades ago when we visited for JazzFest, we stayed downtown in New Orleans’ warehouse district, which was convenient to everything. We could walk to the French Quarter and the downtown shuttle bus stops, the casino by the Convention Center, and the Riverwalk shopping and dining mall, which was a great spot for taking in sunset views over the river. The warehouse district itself boasted wonderful funky clubs and eateries. A variety of entertainment was walkable outside our doorstep.
With the rental house, we traded the liveliness of being downtown for a peaceful waterfront view. Who could complain about starting the day with breakfast al fresco like this?
That, and the drive between the house and the festival Fairgrounds in New Orleans took about 25 minutes each way. Traveling from to and from the suburb meant we got to evade the worst of festival traffic. No more shuttle bus trips that had us moving nowhere fast after a long day of dancing, eating and drinking in the sun. I still have vivid (and embarrassing) memories of the end-of-day bus rides involve an ever-increasing, burning urgency for a restroom that met with a lot of silent prayer to invisible traffic gods to shorten the distance between gridlock and relief.
In comparison, our seven-seat rented minivan on the reverse commute route took on the sheen of luxury transport.
And when we hoofed across the race track and through the Jazz Festival welcome arch, it felt like homecoming. Anyone who has revisited a place from their past knows what it is like to discover that that it not quite as you remembered it. Signs get changed. Buildings get renovated, knocked down, new landmarks take their place. This time at the Fair Grounds, there were new features and renaming of some of the stages, which seemed slightly strange at first. Overall, though, the layout of the festival felt mostly the same, inviting that feeling you get with a true friend, the one you may not talk to for ages, but when you do, you pick up right where you left off.
Food, Glorious Food
That familiarity extended to the concession booths. People attend JazzFest for more than the impressive musical lineups. They also come for the food. The annual two-weekend event is a multi-faceted celebration of New Orleans’ colorful culture flavored by African, Spanish, French, Cajun and Native American roots. Dozens and dozens of stalls run by local caterers and community organizations sell tasty regional specialties and beverages.
New Orleanians’ love of food is profound, almost spiritual. It seems fitting that the aromatic flavor base underpinning many Creole and Cajun dishes is called the “holy trinity” or simply The Trinity, a chopped mix of onions, bell peppers, and celery, much like the mirepoix (diced onion, carrots, and celery, often cooked in fat) of traditional French cooking.
Food is so celebrated that JazzFest goers cheekily flaunt it on their sleeves. Playful
t-shirts and accessories nod at the culinary culture. Hats take on the shape of tacos and po’boys. Official Bayouwear festival shirts feature jaunty printed textiles of red beans and rice, watermelons, alligators (yes, gator is a food), and crawfish. Crawfish show up all over the grounds in the shape of earrings, on camp chairs, t-shirts, and parasols — and of course, the food stalls themselves. Little surprise, since 90% of the crawfish harvested in the U.S. comes from Louisiana.
Greatest Hits…
I have to be careful here. True aficionados protest greatest hits compilations, be they music playlists or can’t-miss culinary experiences, because some beloved gem is bound to be left out. With over 60 food stalls at JazzFest, you’d have to eat impossible volumes of food to fairly pick out the universal stars among all of them. I have not tried all there is taste at JazzFest because the appeal of tried-and-true favorites is so strong, especially when you can get them only once a year.
One of the first items I always indulge in to kickstart my day is a frozen café au lait. You can buy them hot or iced, too, but I’ll opt for frozen any day, especially in the Louisiana heat. The frozen au lait is a giant cupful of moderately sweet, dark roasted New Orleans-style chicory coffee with a slushy, granita-like texture and slightly nutty flavor with a whisper of chocolatiness. A couple of vendors sell them, including the famous Café du Monde stall where you can also get signature beignets fried hot and finished with a snowy coating of powdered sugar.
Rose mint herbal iced tea is a great option for anyone wanting a flavorful, refreshing drink without caffeine and extra calories (if you stick with unsweetened version. Sunshine Concessions also offers the tea pre-sweetened with honey.) Naturally lightly sweet, the tea’s subtly layered floral + fruity-herbal taste makes it a truly unique and enjoyable beverage, and a tasty way to stay hydrated.
In these last two years, I managed to expand my go-to repertoire to include two trout dishes sold by L’il Dizzy’s Cafe: Trout Baquet, grilled trout topped with crabmeat and served with a generous wedge of lemon, and Trout Dizzy. The grilled filet in the latter is topped with a rich, fresh shrimp and crawfish sauce.
For most of my friends, crawfish bread, a loaf baked with a rich, craveable filling of crawfish tails, two kinds of cheese and Cajun spices, is non-negotiable. (I haven’t tested it, but this recipe looks like a tasty version that you can make at home.)
My friend Betsy always looks forward to Crawfish Monica, a satisfyingly creamy spiral pasta dish studded with chunks of crawfish that debuted at the Jazz Festival in the 1980s.
Mrs. Wheat’s of New Orleans offers three kinds of hand pies, aka empanadas, at the Fair Grounds. Their spicy meat pies, crawfish pies start with Trinity seasoning, and like their broccoli & cheese pies, end up as finished pockets of light, crispy crust filled with flavor that make a great snack or light lunch. If you can’t make it to the festival but want to get a taste of it wherever you are, get them shipped frozen to your home.
What would a Louisiana tasting sampler be without po’boys? Two varieties at JazzFest score special points in my crowd: the cochon de lait po’ boy, made with seasoned, smoke-roasted suckling pig cooked slowly to melting tenderness, shredded, and overstuffed into French bread with cabbage slaw, and the soft shell crab tucked into a fluffy roll with pickles. My son Peter doesn’t eat a lot of shellfish, but he dove into the fried crab sandwich, his first po’boy ever, with no regrets. One of the wonders of New Orleans’ cooking is how they manage to fry so much food without it seeming greasy. Peter enjoyed his with hot sauce, just like in the photo below. Other po’boys available at JazzFest include alligator sausage, crawfish sausage, shrimp, roast beef, crabmeat, and the unique Asian-influenced Yakiniku, which is like a hybrid marriage of banh-mi and cheesesteak.
Pal Hathaway says the pheasant andouille gumbo is her number one favorite among many beloved dishes. Veggie lovers appreciate the seasoned sautéed Jama Jama spinach, which makes a tasty side to some of the heavier, protein-laden dishes to help the health-conscious make sure to eat their greens!
So many more options fill the Fair Grounds, from local Jambalaya (think paella, Louisiana style, a rice-based dish that incorporates shrimp, crawfish and other local seafood and sausage (like andouille), vegetables and spices), to tacos, banh mi, Louisiana BBQ, chargrilled oysters, snowballs, sweet potato pie…
It’s worth checking out for yourself. If you do, let me know what you ate and loved!
As always, next year’s festival will run the last long weekend in April and the first one in May, beginning April 22 and closing out on May 2. Last year, festival organizers announced the musical acts for the 2026 event early, in mid-December, and I’m keeping fingers crossed that they will do it again for 2027. Keep tabs on all the details at nojazzfest.com.
Thank you for being here!
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