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Where Y'Eat: When Wintry Cravings Trump Temperature

Ian McNulty
Muriel's Jackson Square wearing its holiday finery during a season of hearty food cravings in a subtropical city.

The seasonal cues we get this time of year in subtropical New Orleans are often more subtle than the conventional images sent our way as the build up to the holidays hits full stride.

But when I see green garlands edging the roofs of our streetcars, when I pass under strings of lights carried across the roadway on the long limbs of live oaks, or even hear the whistle from City Park’s miniature train drifting down the turns of Bayou St. John — well, it can be just as evocative of the holiday season as any snowy scene dialed up from Christmas central casting.

And perhaps not surprisingly given this town’s preoccupation with the dinner table, these signs of the season in New Orleans are enough to stir cravings for hearty comfort food and cozy settings, no matter what the thermometer might say. 

Not coincidentally, this is also the time that New Orleans restaurants start working more wintry foods into their menus. This happens all around town, though for its fullest expression look torestaurants participating in the reveillon this year.

An annual holiday program, reveillon is based on a very old Creole tradition, a meal once practiced in the home after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Though this earlier incarnation of reveillon just about went extinct, the custom was radically modernized and moved into restaurants, where you can find some 45 examples on offer around New Orleans through the end of December.

The modern reveillon is coordinated by French Quarter Festivals, Inc., the group that hosts its namesake music festival in the spring, and much of the reveillon revelry does center on the French Quarter, though restaurants across the city and beyond do participate. All serve multi-course meals for a fixed price. Some of these are pitched as bargains to lure locals out to the restaurants, while others swing for the fences, embracing reveillon as a chance to really do it up with dinners that are lavish, lengthy, and often very pricey.

One thing they all share is an emphasis on hearty flavors tuned to the winter harvest and traditional dishes of the holiday table, even if they’re sometimes reconfigured in highly contemporary ways. Check out the menus posted on the French Quarter Festivals Web site and you'll find a slew of reveillon dishes revolving around venison, duck and quail. Oysters are now approaching their seasonal high point, so they’re in heavy rotation too. And some menus go for nostalgic holiday flavors, like the jellied beef spread daube glace, an antique of a dish, and bûche de Noël, the French Yule log cake.

Plenty of the reveillon restaurants engage in another old New Orleans custom — lagniappe, which in this setting usually translates to a complimentary winter warmer from the bar. In fact, this year there’s a whole side program, called Reveillon on the Rocks, that brings more bars and lounges into the fold with holiday-themed drinks. 

The weather may keep us guessing this time of year. But seasonal food cravings and the urge to gather for those end-of-the-year celebrations – those are much more dependable. All across the city, our restaurants are setting festive tables to satisfy them.

For details on this year's reveillon program at New Orleans restaurants, see www.holiday.neworleansonline.com/reveillon.

Ian covers food culture and dining in New Orleans through his weekly commentary series Where Y’Eat.

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