(male narrator #1) New Orleans Restaurants With A Past is made possible by the WYES Producers Circle, a group of generous contributers dedicated to the support of WYES' local productions.

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[jazz music] I think Antoine's is fun for me because it is, it's old New Orleans.

It really is.

You get a sense of history.

You get a sense of background of importance.

Each different room has a different theme.

And so the themes are incredible to just sort of, as you wander through the different themes of the rooms, you're sort of wandering through New Orleans history.

[jazz music] (male #1) The dockworkers and the market workers began their days at three, four, five o'clock in the morning and what's lunch to us today was dinner to them.

And they served us a progression of courses, just as we're doing today for dinner.

[jazz music] (male #2) They had breakfast back in the late 40s, 50s.

They had breakfast with three courses and an eye opener and a bottle of wine was just unheard of, because of the quality and the concept.

It just caught on and it, it ever since then it's been very successful.

[jazz music] (male #3) Going to Galatoire's is like, uh, well it sort of reminds me of when I was growing up, like once a month we would go to a friend's house or the same person's house with the family, everybody would be there.

You would see people you knew, if there was people new in town, maybe you would see them.

And that's what it is at Galatoire's.

You go there uh, especially on Sunday nights, uh Friday afternoons.

You're much more likely to encounter an entire restaurant filled with locals then.

It's about as nice a way to spend a dinner or an early Sunday supper that I can imagine.

(female #1) When we took it over, we tried to make it look like it would have looked in the turn of the century.

And it still does to this day.

I mean, it's this kind of timeless atmosphere.

I'm Peggy Scott Laborde.

It's only fittin that in a cit that's almost 300 years old There would be restaurant whose lineage include a piece of that history.

Let's look back at some New Orleans dining establishments, past and present, along with thei signature dishes, memorable meal in our memorable city [jazz music] (male #3) My favorite way to do Antoine's is to go in, and start with the pomme soufflés, get a half dozen Oysters Rockefeller.

Find out if you can, what kind of fish is really fresh, and, of course, you don't want to eat too much because you want to save room for the Baked Alaska.

Also, the cafe brulot is there.

It's done so nicely.

And they have their own little cups Rather than just the demi-tasse cups.

They have the right brulot cups at Antoine's.

And it's like you're on your way to heaven, or like you're stopping off on your way to heaven to have a nice leisurely supper at Antoine's.

(Peggy This is a supper that is par of the city's culinary history.

In 1840 New Orleans was booming, with its thriving port located on the Mississippi River.

Men seeking their fortune came to this town of great possibilities and needed a place to stay.

Antoine Alciatore, newly arrived from Marseilles, had been a chef's apprentic in his native France.

He opened a pension a boarding house, typical of lodging at the time and cooked for his guests.

Quickly noticin that the dining aspect of his busines could be more lucrative, he opened Antoine's restaurant which, over the years, expanded to 15 dining rooms.

Antoine was a uh, hard working, uh salt of the earth kinda guy who served elegant food to a wild, wild west town.

You know, I've always considered uh Antoine's "the" New Orleans restaurant.

Incredibly, it goes back to 20 years before the civil war and its history is just incredible.

And I just always thought of watching 'Gone With The Wind' with Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara coming here to New Orleans for their honeymoon.

Antoine's would have been the kind of restaurant they would have eaten at.

(Peggy The restaurant ha the distinction of being one of the oldest fine dinin establishments in America.

(male #4) Oh goodness, Antoine's is my favorite restaurant and I always compare it with, it being like going to the opera.

If you've never been to the opera in your life and you see an opera in Italian, chances are you're gonna miss huge layers of what's going on.

And I think Antoine's is that way too.

You have to know about it before you can really get into it.

(Brobson) When you walk in there's a beautiful, very nicely lit room with the cashier sort of stationed out there; a beautiful room, a room that any restaurant anywhere in the country would be proud to have where you just walk right through, take a left and go back to what's called the large annex.

And most locals sit in the large annex.

That's my favorite place.

(Peggy We have Antoine Alciator to thank for the restaurant' most beloved appetizer, pomme de terre souffle "puffed potatoes".

He learned how to prepare them from the renowned French Chef Jules Collinet.

(female #2) They are an accident that became a signature.

Fried potatoes, if you twice fry them, will puff.

And so you get almost like potato balloons, for want of a better way of describing them.

They make little slices, little thin slices of potato and then they put in the oil.

Then they take it out the oil and then put it back in the oil and then it puffs up.

(Jessica) And they are just wonderful crunchy potatoes with, with air inside that are really Pommes soufflés, soufflé as in to blow.

So like you would blow up a balloon, the potatoes are blown up.

(Peggy Poppy Tooker was taugh a local culinary lesson during a business luncheo over two decades ago.

(Poppy) I'd order of course to start the meal pomme soufflé.

These Frenchmen, they'd never seen pomme soufflé and were quite up to date on food.

It's because that is the whole story to me about New Orleans food.

Galatoire's, Antoine's, and Arnaud's actually are like food museums.

That is where the food of the turn of the last century is perfectly preserved and perfectly served every single day.

In France, you see, they continued to evolve their cuisine, but in New Orleans, we just want everything to stay exactly the same.

(Peggy By the late 1800s Antoine Alciatore's son Jules was next in line to ru the restaurant and concocte a dish that he named after a 19th centur tycoon--Oysters Rockefeller.

Alciatore's descendant continue to keep the recip a secret.

No, no, no - no, no, no, no cannot have that recipe but I'll tell you a funny story about it.

When my husband and I were first, you know really going out together he said, you know we're good buddies now, tell me the secret of Oysters Rockefeller.

I said listen, I like you a lot but I can't tell you that secret.

And then finally we got engaged to be married.

And he said I'm going to marry you, for heaven sake, tell me the secret of Oysters Rockefeller.

I said well you know it's been a family secret all these years.

I just, I'm sorry but I just don't feel like I can tell you.

So he thought of it again, perhaps three or four months after we were married.

And he said heaven's sake I'm your husband now.

Tell me about Oysters Rockefeller.

I said, David I love you, more than anything in the world, but I think I'm gonna see how you work out before I tell you the secret of Oysters Rockefeller.

[laughs] So it's not a secret I give away lightly.

(Peggy) While it may be confidential, Mrs. Davis's son Rick does share some helpful clues.

(Rick) Oysters Rockefeller was a dish that Jules Alciatore created.

And he was actually working on, he was trying to come up with a, an escargot dish.

Uh, and he was playing around with the uh the condiments that were served on the tables every night.

And so he was fooling around with uh green onion, and uh celery and initially even some olives and so on, and, and, and sautéing those uh ingredients down with garlic and, and so on, and trying to come up with a better uh bourguignon sauce, he was trying to improve, he was playing with an escargot sauce.

And it didn't work on escargot at all, but for some reason he tried it on oysters and said 'Wow, this is great.'

You know this is, this is, but the problem with this dish is that it's so rich, and there's so much butter in it that we ought to call it Rockefeller.

It's just outrageous that it's so buttery, it's so rich.

And to me it's never been replicated.

I've had Oysters Rockefeller all over the world, but whatever it is, that anisette, and the wonderful greens that they use in it.

Uh, Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine's can't be beat.

(Peggy When Jules Alciator died suddenly, his son Roy found himself in charg of the family establishment.

(Yvonne) He had great taste buds and he, he would love to have almost, personally fixed every plate.

(Peggy That attention to detail can b found in an Antoine's dessert.

Baked Alaska is my favorite, favorite, favorite dessert.

Never get tired of Baked Alaska, but not many people do it and I don't think anybody does it as well as we do.

That butter pound cake and the delicious you know creamy French vanilla ice cream.

And the meringue that's just you know, beaten to the perfect texture, and then browned.

And then all the little decorations.

In my father's time, 90 percent of the time he made Baked Alaskas himself.

(George) Was a big football size of some kind of ice cream in the middle and they got these little things, they put little birdie looking things that they put on there, you know, and it's a nice, it's a nice way to eat ice cream.

(Tom) Baked Alaska was a very popular dish about a hundred years ago.

Kind of went away, you don't see it too much anymore.

Antoine's really does the best I ever had.

Although not everybody likes it because I would say it's a little heavy on the sweet side but you know that's how people did.

People used to cook a lot sweeter than we do now.

I've always thought of it as a study in vanilla cause every- the two main ingredients there, you have uh the meringue over the ice cream, and the ice cream is vanilla too.

And it's just all this vanilla going on.

(Peggy And if this dessert opene the door for more temptation, there's a beverage serve at the restaurant that's becom another signature dish.

(Yvonne) It's cafe brulot diabolique, and so the devil's brew in other words.

The waiters like to make a big presentation of it.

Because it'll have a big curl of orange peel, and they'll let you know, the coffee run down the orange peel and they make it, make little sparks.

They do you know all kinds of things to make it really exciting.

Dorothy Dix said that a real brulot should taste like liquid fruitcake so, and then of course when they spill it on the tablecloth, which acts as a wick, and then the alcohol burns off and nothing else burns, that's always a wonderful scene.

(Peggy In 1948, Antoine's reputatio spread when then New Orleans based novelis Francis Parkinson Keyes penned a murder mystery calle "Dinner at Antoine's.

(Yvonne) I was about 13 when the book came out.

And it was so exciting, all the parties and the hoopla you know about the book.

Good afternoon Mr Garaway.

Very glad indeed to welcome you to Beauregard House.

(Yvonne) And Francis Parkinson Keyes was a very prolific writer.

And it was a wonderful story about this particular room.

It was a murder mystery and there was a poisoning that took place.

And a lot of intrigue you know leading up to that and even more intrigue afterward.

(Peggy "This room is know as the 1840 room, It is reminiscen of the restaurant' original dining room.

Portrait of Alciatore family member grace the walls.

While such luminarie as the Russian Grand Duk Alexis Romanov and the Duk and Duchess of Windso have dined at Antoine's, every year carnival royalt gather for organization dinners.

One of the several that ha a room named after it is Rex.

(Rick) Rex, that was my grandfather Roy.

It was his, uh his uh vision.

It was a piece of courtyard behind what we call the large annex, the big red room.

And he closed in that piece of courtyard and the Rex Room was built inside.

My most invaluable, special Antoine's memory is that I got married there.

Actually, I thought that that was just the spot for a cooking teacher to get married.

It was the most festive, with the gold and the beautiful colors and both my husband and I are great Mardi Gras fans.

As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I married Nicky was cause he was the only man I ever met who would catch a really good parade twice.

So, it seemed like the king of carnival's very own dining room was just the spot to say, "I do.

(Peggy Each of the restaurant's dinin rooms may hav their own personality, but the most exotic was literally kept behind closed doors for many years- the Japanese Room.

(George) It's designed with a Japanese décor.

It was a big banquet room, it's also a dance ballroom, big enough to accommodate that kind of thing.

It was closed for World War II, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the head waiter here went up and locked the door.

They never used it as a room again.

Now why they just didn't call it the Roosevelt Room, I'm not too sure, and just keep going.

And it is a spectacular interior.

It is a totally, it was restored totally accurately, there was no hedging.

(Peggy In 1937 President Franklin Roosevel dined at Antoine's, and then New Orleans Mayo Robert Maestri sat next to him.

(Tom) And it's Mayor Maestri and Franklin D. Roosevelt and a bunch of other nobs and notables, sitting at a table at Antoine's clearly having lunch.

And the story was that they sat down and the lunch started off with Oysters Rockefeller, of course, which by that time was already a very famous dish all over the world, not just there.

And they started digging into them and Mayor Maestri is alleged to have said, "So how you like dem ersters Mr. President?

[laughs] (Peggy After a day that actually bega about three o' cloc in the morning, dockworker and French Market butcher were in search of a hardy meal.

Originally a butcher himself Frenchman Guillaume Tujague aimed to satisf those appetites.

His closest competitor wa Elizabeth Kettering better known as Madame Begue, who achieved national fam for her hearty breakfasts.

After Begue died, her family eventually sold the restaurant to Tujague.

Tujagues has been the same forever.

The waiter would just start bringing you this six course dinner, cause they only had one entrée every day.

You'd just walk in there, you would get the shrimp remoulade first, then they would serve you a bowl of soup, then they'd bring out a chunk of the broiled beef brisket, no matter what.

And then they'd bring you the entree of the day and then the dessert of the day and coffee in a glass.

It was very home-style, It always was that.

It was never a fancy restaurant in any way.

(Peggy Chicken Bonne Femme i one of the restaurant' signature dishes.

(male #1) Chicken Bonne Femme was brought here by Tujague's daughter, actually a very simple dish, it's individually pan-fried.

There's no batter, it's seasoned and with generous amounts of garlic, and parsley and cottage fried potatoes.

People ask me all the time about what the secrets and all are, and I think the secrets are that people try to go to too much trouble to make it.

It just needs to be kept very simple.

(Brobson) Chicken Bon Femme.

Every time I go, I have to order an extra order to take home to eat the next day.

I love the Chicken Bone Femme which is I guess a combination fried, sautéed, full of garlic.

Lots of garlic!

Lots of garlic!

(Peggy While there wa plenty of actio in Tujagues dining rooms, a steady stream of customer opted for a sto at the bar first.

The bar, originally from Paris has satisfied many a customer's thirst even during some "dry times.

(Steven) We have pictures of the bar during prohibition where there's no alcohol on the bar and three bartenders.

Adults being just like children ya know, doing what they're not supposed to do.

That, when you couldn't drink on election day, they would close the bar and open the back door, and that would be some of their busiest bar days.

And lawyers, judges, and everybody who's really not supposed to be doing it, they were in there doing it.

(Peggy After prohibition it turns out that there was some real creativity going o at Tujague's bar.

A family membe of a later owner invente a drink that became famous.

After prohibition, the liquor companies did mixology contests.

They were promoting drinking again, and did contests to promote the drinking.

And Phillip Guichet won an award in New York for the grasshopper.

White creme de coco, green creme de menthe, little cognac, a little cream.

It appeals to the ladies and especially appeals to people who like to have Chcken Bonne Femme.

It cuts down on the garlic a little bit.

[piano solo] (Peggy Jean Galatoire was bor in France at the foothill of the Pyrenees Mountains and eventually settle in New Orleans.

He got a jo at the original Victor' Restaurant on Bourbon Street and in 1905 bought the place.

With a name chang to Galatoire's, from day one it was a family affair, with four generations involved with the dining establishmen through its history.

(male #5) Jean Galatoire, he was married to Gabrielle Galatoire, but they didn't have any children.

So uh he had a lot of nieces and nephews that grew up in Pau, in the Southern part of France, and some of them came over and started working in New Orleans with my grandfather Leon Galatoire.

And then he had two of his brothers Justin Galatoire and Gabriel Galatoire, so the three Galatoire brothers were working at the restaurant and ended up buying the restaurant from Jean in 1917.

(Poppy) It is where New Orleans celebrates and New Orleans mourns, and New Orleans does just about everything right there in that restaurant.

I would say that Antoine's perhaps is a little more elegant.

Galatoire's is much more robust; uh, the energy level at Galatoire's is irresistible.

I mean, you go there and it's so much fun to go early before a, a full time, at one of the high times, and just hear the energy rise, and the energy and the voices Oh lord, the first time I went to Galatore's was as a child with my father.

Um, what I loved about that is that you can recreate that experience every single day because nothing at Galatoire's ever seems to change.

And it's one of my all-time favorite things to do.

My favorite is the fried chicken at Galatoire's.

I grew up eating fried chicken.

I love fried chicken and the fried chicken at Galatoire's is absolutely spectacular.

A friend of mine once described Galatoire's as just an old uh fried food house.

He says that's what they really excel at.

(Tom) There's a dish over there that is, it's on the menu, it's somewhat little known, and it's called Canape Lorenzo, and from a distance it looks like a hamburger.

And what it is, the bottom part of the hamburger is a piece of toast but the top part of the hamburger is this dome shaped mound of crabmeat, parsley, celery, various kinds of herbs.

It's like a stuffing almost, but there's a lot of crabmeat in it.

And it is just delicious.

(Peggy) Trout Meuniere Amandine, Galatoire's most popular dish, reflects the root of the restaurant's founder.

When Jean Galatoire first started the restaurant, he saw the potential of a very successful restaurant, and he wrote back to France and had some French chefs, young French chefs come over to work at the restaurant.

And they looked at the local seafood and started cooking it in a French way.

The best single restaurant dish in New Orleans is a grilled pompano with brown butter at Galatoire's.

It's the perfect fish.

It's just a wonderful fish.

It's not too strong but it's not a mild flavored fish either.

It has a lot of fat in it that grills and broils beautifully.

It does not need a sauce of any kind, although, the little brown butter gives it a nice little dimension that you could take or leave as you're eating it.

And they put so much effort into getting really nice pompano in there that, it's one of the few restaurants in town that you can count on for having a really nice one.

When they tell you it's good, it really is gonna be good.

(Peggy) While the wait staff is of course an integral part of any fine dining restaurant, at Galatoire's they play a starring role.

Well the waiters really have a free spirit there and, and uh seems to operate more independently, they cover the whole restaurant.

The mark of a good waiter at Galatoire's is one that can size up the situation, that can tell you a good joke and then tell you a little gossip.

[laughs] And of course bring the food out eventually.

They can get it going with anybody.

You can be an out of town tourist from Des Moines, Dubuque, Duluth or any of the other dah cities and come in there and if you stroke the waiter a little bit the right way with what you're saying and your curiosity about the restaurant, they'll respond and the next thing you know you're relating at a level that really customers and waiters rarely relate at.

And that's what makes it fun.

(Peggy Yvonne Galatoire Wynne a third generatio family member, was a fixtur at the cashier's desk.

She worked there over 60 years.

She manned, she managed the desk and sort of uh, we'd call her Miss Galatoire.

She was kind of in control of a lot of things around the desk.

(Brobson) Liking somewhat eccentric waiters, liking waiters who thought for themselves, who thought on their feet.

The verbiage back and forth.

She apparently was quite a lady.

(Peggy Since the renovatio of a second floor that is once again used for dining the legendary line that used to form in front of the "no reservations establishment is almost a thing of the past, except around holidays.

But memories remain.

Back in the 80's we had a long line on Friday before Mardi Gras like always, and Senator Bennett Johnston was in the line, and I got a phone call from President Ronald Reagan, said he wanted to talk to Senator Johnston.

So I went outside, I knew he was in the line, and I called Senator Johnston.

I said, you have a call from President Reagan, come on in.

And everyone in line thought that we were using that as an excuse to sneak him in ahead of everyone, but no.

When he was finished talking to the president, Senator Johnston went back out and took his place in line.

And the customers in line were very happy to see that he wasn't getting any special treatment, that he wasn't sneaking in.

He was waiting in line, just like everyone else.

(Peggy In a restaurant that has passe the century mark, it's little surpris that some tradition have evolved.

Well the waiter will come along and, [laughs] [waiter taps glass] ting, ting, ting, ting I got a birthday, Griffin, on the count of three, let's sing happy birthday Griffin.

One two three, [crowd sings along] Happy Birthday to you Happy Birthday dear Griffin, Happy Birthday to you.

[waiter taps glass] ting, ting, ting Now at any other restaurant this would be really, really hokey.

But at Galatoire's it fits perfectly.

If I were to go there and nobody would get happy birthday sung to them, I'd say what's wrong here, there's something wrong.

It's always been a very informal place really.

(Peggy While the restaurant i no longer family owned, Gooch is still able to follo the course se by a Galatoire family member.

(David) We like to keep everything the same.

We don't like to change too much.

We're still that way.

I've learned that from Yvonne.

And we like to keep it say, "toujours le meme chose.

Always the same thing.

And that's what people, when they come to Galatoire's they expect it to be the same and that's the way we like to keep it.

[1920's style music] (Peggy Leon Bertrand Arnaud Cazenav was better know as "Count Arnaud.

And while the titl was actually "honorary, it reflecte the regal bearin of this dapper Frenchman.

Originally coming to Americ to pursue a medical career, he instead parlaye his knowledge of fine wines and food into the hospitality business.

Beginnin as a wine salesman, he ultimately opene a bar and nightclu in the French Quarter, but his goal was to ow a fine dining restaurant.

He opened Arnaud's in 1918.

Succeeding hi in operating a restaurant that expanded into 11 building was his daughte Germaine Wells.

She considere the restaurant business as "theatre in two acts lunch and dinner.

(female #1) Germaine was very theatrical.

She, she really wanted to go into the theater, and her parents wouldn't let her, and uh but she always had that love for, for theatre, and vaudeville and opera.

And um, so I, I think she was pushed into the restaurant, but she did look upon it as theatre as well.

She always had a big hat on, lots of jewelry, big jewelry and gold lamé or something really fancy, you know.

[laughs] Everybody noticed when she walked into the restaurant.

(Peggy In the 1950's Wells use her theatrical flair by staging an even that continues to this day.

Well, she had been to the Easter parade in New York and she decided New Orleans should have an Easter parade, and she started it, and they do it to this day.

And she would have all of her lady friends come to her mansion on Esplanade, and they would have champagne, and then they would get in the carriages and they'd put wax flowers, by the time I met her, on the carriages.

And um, they would go around the Quarter and end up at the Cathedral, and go to mass and then get back in their carriages and go to the restaurant and have lunch.

(Peggy And at that lunch there's no doubt that Arnaud's signature dis would have been served Shrimp Arnaud.

(Jane) The sauce is a play on the classic remoulade sauce, which was French, which is a mayonnaise based and it was the Count's secret recipe.

So when we first got the restaurant, we had to buy the sauce from Germaine, and it was a big mystery about what the, what the recipe was.

We couldn't make it ourselves.

When she died and we actually bought the property, we got this mystery recipe and it was written on this little piece of paper in pencil, and it made no sense whatsoever.

So Archie got Warren LeRuth in who was a food chemist.

That's how he started his career.

and he remembered the way the sauce should have tasted in the old days, and we worked with him and developed the sauce, and to make it that real pungent taste that it is today.

(Tom) Oh, I think it's the definitive version of Shrimp Remoulade.

And it has a taste like nothing else and it's, it's really good with the shrimp but one of the reasons, and this is not well known, is that when they boil the shrimp for the Shrimp Remoulade at Arnaud's, they under boil them a little bit.

They are not quite as cooked as you'd want them if you were eating peel and eat boiled shrimp.

And then they put them in the sauce.

And the sauce is so acidic, that it actually finishes this cooking process kind of in the way that ceviche cooks in its acidic marinade.

And I think that little touch right there is one of the things that makes it really excellent.

I mean, I think it's one of the great dishes.

I love it.

(Peggy By the late 1970s Wells, now up in age, leased and eventually sol the restauran to Archie Casbarian, who had extensiv hospitality credentials, and had managed bot the Royal Orlean and Royal Sonesta Hotels.

He was the best person to take over that property.

He had the same visions that her father had.

He had really high taste levels.

He was smart as a whip.

He loved food and beverage.

He'd left it in good hands.

[pageant style music] (Peggy Casbarian learne of Germaine Wells' lov of Carnival.

She had ruled as quee over 20 Mardi Gras Balls and had kept her gown over the years.

He built a small museu in her honor on the second floor of the restaurant.

She had the mannequins and everything.

So we had the um, the costume curators from the Louisiana State museum do the exhibit, but before we opened it Archie decided he was going to have a big reception.

And so he called Mrs. Wells.

And so he said look, we're going to open this museum tonight and I'm having a party for you, we'd like you to come.

And so she was all excited and she called him back and she said, I have a copy of one of the dresses.

I'm gonna wear it to the party.

But you have to get me a crown.

She poured herself into this strapless gold lamé dress full of rhinestones.

And she called him Sonny, she never called him Archie.

I don't even know if she could remember his name, but she called him Sonny.

So she said Sonny, do you know how, have you ever been a king before and he said no Mrs. Wells, I haven't been a king.

And she said well, you just hang on to me and when I stop you stop and I'm going to wave my scepter, and so he says ok, and sure enough they went round to the Count's room, which is our large ballroom and she waved that scepter just like a queen of carnival.

It was wonderful.

(Peggy The Brennan nam has now become legendary in New Orlean restaurant histor and across America.

At the beginning there wa Owen Edward Brennan.

(male #2) I thought he was a very good-looking man.

I've been told by other people, they thought he was a very good-looking man, and he really had charisma, before the word came in to be fashionable.

I mean, when he would go in a room, even as a little boy I could tell, the whole room would light up with his personality.

(Peggy Born in the Irish Channe and the oldest of six, Brennan had a hea for number and an ease with people.

His career reflected it Restaurant manager liquor salesman, and then owner of his own bar, the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street.

By the early 1950s he opene Brennan's Vieux Carr Restauran across the street from his bar.

(Tom) The story behind that is that Count Arnaud used to come over to Owen Brennan's bar which was the Absinthe House, right across the street from where the restaurant would wind up, and they would josh each other as restaurateurs have a way of doing.

And Count Arnaud says, so you're busy in here, and he says yeah well, we stay busy every night with all the people who come over after they eat in your restaurant to complain about how bad it is.

And Count Arnaud says, what are you talking about?

What does an Irishman know about food?

You couldn't cook if your life depended on it.

And Owen Brennan took this as a challenge and he opened up the restaurant and he said, well I'll show you what I can do.

And he did.

(Ted) He would make all these friends, mostly at the Old Absinthe House and then at Brennan's; people coming through town, columnists, successful people, politicians, movie stars, you know, not only did he want to get Brennan's publicity in the press but he just liked having people in cocktail circles talking nice about the restaurant across the country.

(Peggy Brennan was tryin to figure out a new publicity angl for his restaurant when a friend who wa a renowned journalis came up with an idea.

(Ted) Well breakfast at Brennan's is actually, comes out of what was going on at Antoine's at the time.

Frances Parkinson Keyes had written 'Dinner at Antoine's,' which just gave them fabulous worldwide publicity.

A friend of my father's, Lucius Beebe, who was a bon vivant and he wrote for Gourmet magazine, they were having lunch together one day and Lucius recommended to my father, well, you're not going to be able to fight dinner at Antoine's, why don't you try to concentrate on another concept or another meal.

And that's when my father decided to go with the three-hour Creole breakfast that Madame Begue used to serve.

(Peggy) Brennan's signature dish is Bananas Foster.

Well, Bananas Foster in a city like New Orleans especially at that time in the early 50s, there were literally bananas all over the docks.

So my father challenged his chef at the time, Paul Blange, come up with something using the banana.

At the same time, Holiday Magazine, which was 'the" travel magazine at that time, had asked my father to come up with a recipe for an article they were writing about breakfast at Brennan's.

And he went to Chef Blang and after some trial and error, that's the recipe he came up with and he put it on the menu, at the time it was called Bananas a la Foster.

And he named it after a very good friend of his, and a customer and a debonair gentleman of New Orleans, Richard Foster, who owned the Foster Awning Company at the time.

(Peggy Blange combined banana with butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, banana liqueu and rum over vanilla ice cream.

The talented chef who was Dutch, was beloved in and out of the kitchen.

(Ted) He just did a great job.

He was just a great, great natural cook and he had a great personality too.

But as far as cooking and taste-buds, he was just in a league by himself.

(Peggy Blange was devote to his career literally to the very end.

When he died, he wanted to be buried in his uh chef's uniform, with his toque next to him and he had a uh knife and a fork crossing his heart and he was buried like that and that's the way he wanted to be buried.

(Peggy By the early 1950s Brennan's Restaurant had develope a national reputation.

This succes along with the prospect of a rent hike prompte Owen Brennan to move his restauran to Royal Street.

In 1955, shortl before openin at the new location, Brennan die of a heart attack.

At the time his three sons wer too young to run the business.

His sister Ella who had bee kitchen supervisor, took over the managemen of the restaurant.

In the early 1970s Ella Brennan moved on to operate Commander's Palac and Owen Brennan's sons assumed managemen and ownership of Brennan's.

Today Owen Brennan' portrait hangs in his restaurants ancient carriage-way.

No doub he would have been pleased to see that Brennan's achieved the fame that he was always striving for.

(Peggy After an evening ou in the French Quarter, a ritual for many local has been a visi to coffee stand at the French Market.

Cafe du Monde opene in 1862.

Morning Call opened a few years later.

(male #6) There's been an ongoing argument about uh, those two, who had the best coffee, who had the best beignets.

Some people would say you know Morning Call would have the best donuts but Café du Monde would have the best coffee or vice versa, or you know there's a lot of allegiance there.

And I remember as a child sitting in the back seat of the car and my Mother and Father would go to get coffee and donuts and I would be in the back seat in my pajamas and they'd bring the coffee and the donuts and the big can of powdered sugar, and they hand me-of course, I didn't drink coffee at that time, but they handed me the donuts, and the powdered sugar, and I would [makes sound of shaking powder] I had to powder to catch every square inch of the donut you know, make sure I didn't see any, any color, it was all white, had to be all white.

So needless to say I had powder everywhere, back seat, pajamas, I had to almost go home and take another bath and change clothes.

(George) And he'd say donuts, I was going to get some donuts, powered donuts.

My dad, he couldn't put me- if I couldn't sleep.

I'd be in my pajamas, I couldn't sleep.

Ok, here we go, we'd get in the car, we'd drive down to take the ferry boat to Algiers, and by that time I was like groggy or we'd go down to the Morning Call and pull up.

They actually served you in the car.

You know and that would put me to sleep, too, a little chocolate milk with some, with a donut.

So of all the eating places in town, then that's probably the earliest that I ever remember going to.

(Peggy And there were alway stories to tell.

(Bob) When I was an adult, I was sitting in there drinking coffee one night and uh they have these huge sugar bowls.

These things are immense.

Just minding my own business having a cup of coffee and all of a sudden I heard some commotion.

And some guy had an overcoat on, it was during the winter time, tried to put this big huge sugar bowl under his coat and walk out the front door.

And somebody saw it and a couple of employees ran after him, and they grabbed him.

After that when I went back, I noticed those sugar bowls, they put a lock chain through the uh back of them.

(Peggy Morning Call relocated to suburban Metairi in the 1970s.

In 1880 Emile Commande opened a Garden Distric dining establishment that was on of the few fine restaurant outside the French Quarter.

(Tom) He ran this place in a kind of a classical style.

He had been to Delmonico in New York, which was the dominant restaurant in America at that time and he kinda made it along those lines, but it always had, of course, a distinctly New Orleans flavor to it and then the Moran family owned it for a long time.

And it was always a beautiful place, but it was not particularly known for its food during most of the 20th century, but the Brennans bought it in the 1960s and they were just kind of operating it and not really doing a whole lot to it.

And then the family had that famous break up and Ella and Dick and John and Dottie and Adelaide all moved over to Commander's.

And they went in and they said well, this is going to be our headquarters now.

We have to make this into something.

(Peggy Making it "into somethin was a goal achieved by the Brennan that has earned the a national reputation.

(Tom) Ella and Paul Prudhomme and the other Brennans and then all the people who followed their lead after that, what they did, was say we don't have to make food that tastes like French food.

Why do we make something like oh Crabmeat Imperial?

Which was basically a casserole of crabmeat with mayonnaise, and some green onions.

You know, what statement does that make?

How about crab and corn bisque with a nice hint of spice to it, maybe even something like tasso in there to give it a little smoky- that was very original.

That had not existed before.

And it was distinct to this place.

It used local everything, local flavor, and it transformed our sense of taste in this town.

It really changed everything.

(Peggy Commander's signature dis is Bread Pudding Soufflé.

(Jessica) I love the Bread Pudding Soufflé.

It's got all of those things.

It's bread pudding but it is so light.

It is a soufflé.

So it again is that wonderful idea of taking a classic and adding in innovation.

(Peggy The concep of the Jazz Brunc was invented at Commander's.

(Tom) There's no question about where that came from.

Dick Brennan was in London, just on a trip and he went to a hotel and the hotel was serving a brunch as hotels do, and on the other side of the lobby, there was a small jazz band, just playing jazz, just in the lobby.

They apparently always had a little band or orchestra playing in this hotel.

It's a pretty classy place.

And Dick Brennan looked at that and put the two things together in his mind, went to a phone and called Ella Brennan back at home.

Not thinking that when he called her, it was 4 a.m., and said, uh, Ella, jazz brunch, just remember that.

Jazz Brunch.

And she said, Dick, what are you talking about?

Just remember jazz brunch.

When they came home, they said you know, this is just such an obvious idea.

It had never been done before.

And they did it at Commander's Palace.

And it was you know, I don't have to tell you now it's all over the world.

Everywhere you go you find it.

[jazz music] [jazz music] And now let's recall som of the restaurant that are gone, but the memorie are still with us.

In 1973 what had long been a Chinese laundr on Bourbon Street was transformed into on of the city's first casua dining chain restaurants.

Way before Bennigan' and Applebees, Houlihan's, with its eclectic décor, enjoyed a followin with locals and visitors, and for one enterprisin student, provided a uniqu summer job.

Well Houlihan's was sort of a chain restaurant, but they had a great oyster bar up front and of course the people from the national chain didn't quite know how to deal with oyster bars.

So I was always making sure they sold the beer and they had a good sort of dry white wine for the fancy people who like that with their oysters.

And it was just a lot of fun because if you're an oyster opener, you really get to talk to people.

And so it was a great way to meet different people who came in.

Plus I love oysters.

When you're sitting there as an oyster opener and people aren't around, you can always shuck a few and have as many oysters as you want.

The food wasn't particularly good, but they did have something that was of great appeal to local people, and that was ten cent oysters.

This was in the 70s.

And I once went in there and I just reached into my pocket, put a ten dollar bill on the counter and I said, give me a hundred.

And they did, and I ate em.

[laughs] And they were great.

They really were.

I'll never forget that day.

(male #7) Going to Houlihan's on Bourbon Street and getting the onion soup with the cheese on top and then the little French bread that's holding it from sinking, and just sticking your spoon in it and going in and it's just so good and so hot you'd burn the roof of your mouth with it.

There was a ton of mozzarella cheese and they would brown it and it was just, it was like taffy.

Uh, just something I miss growing up, even though Houlihan's, it's not traditionally New Orleans, it's not one of the traditional restaurants.

It's just something I remember on a personal note.

(Peggy The smell of tomato sauc or "red gravy would lead yo ust a block awa to Toney's Pizz and Spaghetti House.

Opene by the Bonomolo famil in the 1930s, this Bourbon Street fixtur featured New Orleans Italia dishes and much more.

(Tom) It was a bargain not just by Bourbon Street standards, but by any standard.

It was cheap to eat there and they were open, breakfast till like 1 a.m. And they had pizza in the evening, they had these wonderful buttermilk biscuits for breakfast.

I think the most interesting dish they had was something called stuffed macaroni, and it was sheets of pasta and they made this stuffing that was kind of, it had meat and breadcrumbs and parmesan.

I don't even know what was in it.

And they'd roll it up.

And they'd serve it with the red sauce.

And then you'd get a side order of meatballs or Italian sausage or whatever you wanted with it.

t was really a great dish.

Toney's on Bourbon Street was a garlic experience if there ever was one.

They had a garlic bordelaise recipe there that you could taste, and the people around you could smell for days.

And I grew up in North Alabama.

My mother probably used one pot of garlic a year for the yearly roasted lamb you know, and then I come down here and there's just garlic everywhere.

And then you go into Toney's and you get that spaghetti bordelaise with, with, uh the oysters.

That was more garlic than my mother used in a decade in one meal.

(Peggy New Orlean can aptly be describe as a seafood town.

If you were hankerin for a catfis there was Barrow's.

It opened in 1946.

(Tom) Barrow's Shady Inn.

They had catfish that I still think is the best that's ever been served here.

It was light as could be.

It had a little glow of pepper.

And they wouldn't say how they did it.

The recipe was very secret.

It was passed on from father to son and then to son-in-law is actually the guy who ran it last, and Billy Barrow's daughter.

And they let me back in the kitchen once and I happened to see there was a lot of catfish sitting there marinating and all I noticed is that there was something red on it.

I don't know what it was.

I suspect it might be hot sauce but it was great.

A girl friend of mine at the time, she and I went there, and she was eating and she says, you know what this stuff is, it's popcorn fish, you just can't stop eating it.

And you don't need to put anything on it, you just, you could pick it up with your fingers and just eat and then it's gone.

And it's just terrific.

And it really was.

It was an interesting place.

It was really more, looked like a bar more than a restaurant.

[jazz piano] (Peggy Theodore Bruning originally from Germany, opened his restauran on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain at West End in 1859.

Entering the restauran you couldn't help but notice the bar originally from the forme West End Hotel.

(Bob) The first thing you notice when you walked in there was the bar.

It's a huge massive wood carved bar that I think it came from the 1800s.

The thing was just immense.

And all the intricate woodwork was just beautiful.

(Tom) Bruning's - I loved Bruning's.

Bruning's was, let's see, the 3rd oldest restaurant in New Orleans when it closed, since 1859.

It was out in that classic space out over the water there.

They were famous for the big flounder.

They called them doormats.

The flounders are so big, they were like doormats.

And they sold more of that than anything else.

It was a great old place, it was less expensive than anybody else.

But it kind of was the Keystone of West End park.

(Peggy Opened in 196 Sid-Mar's, a favorit in nearby Bucktown.

A screened porch wrappe around the restaurant allowing outdoor dinin without the nuisanc of mosquitoes.

(Poppy) Sid-Mar's was my favorite, favorite lakefront restaurant.

I loved the boiled seafood.

I am a boiled crab fiend, and my most favorite, favorite meal at Sid-Mar's was to go there and sit at the tables and crack the crabs and drink a beer, and I can tell you I have spent many an afternoon lingering over lunch with my Daddy, with my best buddy, Michelle, who's a crab lover like I am.

We would get a huge pile of crabs and polish them off.

(Peggy In search of a cool breeze, historicall New Orleanians have traveled to the Gulf Coas on weekends or on vacation.

Annie's Restauran in Henderson Poin was a popular destination.

(Allain) Annie Pagano, oh she was a wonderful gal.

A very pretty woman, but I remember Annie's when the Highway 90 bridge passed right, right in front of Annie's and there was a dangerous turn, uh, right uh, right there.

Very pretty woman, always at that restaurant.

Knew, knew everybody.

Of course, one of the dishes of the house was Shrimp Smegee.

Uh, uh, and it was a wonderful shrimp dish with some type of melted cheese over the top of it.

I loved Annie's on the Gulf Coast, and they had just terrific fried beer batter shrimp, that were as good as I've ever- I've never had them any other place except there.

I mean you went in and had the seafood nets and the regalia around everything.

(Peggy The place may not have been fancy, and the locatio on St. Charles Ave near Julia St. was at one time considered Skid Row but from the late 1940s the Hummingbird Hote and Grill was considered an oasis with hearty foo at all hours.

(Ted) Oh the food was great.

Especially when you had too much to drink.

But they did a great breakfast.

I've got to tell you that even compared to breakfast at Brennan's, when you'd go there 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, it was substantial food.

Well it was sort of a European, had the European flavor, kind of like a little dump you would stay in maybe in Amsterdam.

A lot of Europeans stayed at the hotel, cause it was a hotel, it was the Grill on the bottom but there was a hotel upstairs.

I'd say before all the renovation we've had, it was our bowery at the time, and that's who would be in there.

Transients, uh homeless people, uh, Uptown people.

Uh you'd go there during the Mardi Gras ball season and people would be in there in black tie and it was just something to behold.

Many a time I believe I saw the light come into the sky while sitting in the Hummingbird Grill, fried eggs and toast, and of course grits.

The grits were a prerequisite, but it was the atmosphere.

It was the characters in there.

(George) Oh it had little booths, you know, little connect along tables, what do you call that substance, you know, um sort of faux marb - [laughs] faux marble tables.

Formica.

And they had all these wonderful dishes in there.

And every day, the menu was hand-lettered, it was beautifully lettered on a big blackboard.

And nothing wrong with the food.

The meatballs and spaghetti, stewed chicken.

It always had good food.

You'd go in there and get say a plate of red beans and rice, and you'd get a freshly baked square of homemade cornbread and nobody else was doing that, in those days.

They cooked better than anybody knew except the regulars.

Lots of cops.

It was very safe cause I was, by that time I was living down there in 1980.

And um, so police would be there 3 a.m. just when you need them you know.

And it was open all night so it was like a beacon, and there were all sorts of people that would come.

You'd go in there and you'd see debutantes.

It was like, it was a a social gathering.

[laughs] It was, what ended up being called, it was a very diverse place.

Diverse.

[laughs] But I think they came in in shifts, you know.

I always felt like I was doing something scandalous that I shouldn't have been doing by just eating breakfast at the Hummingbird.

Of course, this is New Orleans, so you could have a cocktail with your breakfast at the Hummingbird.

I, I don't know how, how much of a good thing that was for the hangover the next day, but um, the party always continued there.

(Peggy And whil some of the restaurants that we've recalle are no more there are vestiges.

The ornate antique ba that was a fixture at Bruning's Restauran has been restored and has found a hom in the Southern Foo and Beverage Museum.

After Hurricane Katrina Sid-Mar's lost its location due to the United States Army Corp of Engineers' flood prevention construction, and has relocate to Metairie.

The buildin that housed Houlihan' is now Rick's Cabaret, self-describe as a gentlemen's club.

The structure that was hom to the Hummingbird Hote and Grill has been converte for retail us and apartments.

So what else can be sai about restaurant with a past?

Just that they raised the ba for all esl that was to follow.

And for that we can be gratefu everytime we're handed a menu.

Well even during the time of Arnaud's, you know, during Prohibition, they would serve coffee, you know, which was liquor in the coffee cups, and the police would come and arrest him.

The Count was friendly with the judges.

So as soon as they got down to Central Lockup or whatever it was called, they'd be released.

One call from one of the judges and then it was back to business as usual.

When the storm hit, everything was fine until the electricity didn't come back on for over four days.

I don't remember how long it was, but it was at least four days.

And nobody thought this was going to happen, I mean we didn't have refrigerated trucks ready to take the wine or anything.

So the wine basically was going to boil back there in 120 degree plus temperature, in our wine cellar, which used to be the slave quarters for the building.

And when my brother and the chef figured out that they weren't going to be able to save any of this wine, we had some nice duck and lamb and beef that were still in our freezer and they defrosted it and each night I would call them from Dallas where I had evacuated to, and they were just having red wines like you wouldn't believe.

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