Valentine’s Day is upon us once more. But this year we’re choosing to forgo dented heart-shaped candy boxes from the drugstore in favor of a giant Styrofoam go-cup of ultra-sweet daiquiri. After all, February 14th marks the kick-off date of another world-famous lovefest: The final week of parade floats, masked parties and pagan pageantry underway in New Orleans known as Mardi Gras.
The city of the Mardi Gras is never exactly somber, considering that the rum-fueled pedestrians weaving down Bourbon Street are so intrinsic to the NOLA way of life that at this point they should qualify for conservation status by Unesco’s World Heritage Committee. But the gumbo-like melting pot of French-Spanish colonial architecture, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, Creole cuisine and innovative music scenes (the bounce-rap icon Big Freedia plans to open a hotel and nightclub by Mardi Gras 2024) make the Big Easy a perfect backdrop for the festival's flamboyant living theater.
Using PRIOR’s travel guide to the curiosities that make NOLA tick as a compass, we mapped out the best king cakes, carnival queens, bottomless Sazerac cocktails and Southern-Gothic revelry on offer in the week ahead before festivities culminate on Fat Tuesday in a citywide jamboree. (Flashing for beads is strictly optional.)
Tuesday, February 14: Queens of the Kitchen 🍴
Best in Show: The Culinary Queens of New Orleans became the first and only procession marchers to honor the city’s women of food — chefs, bakers, caterers and candy makers — when they rolled on the West Bank last year. Fitting for Valentine’s Day, the theme of this year's floats is “Taste the Love,” so expect plastic wine glasses, glittered spatulas and chef’s hats thrown overboard.
Side Lines: It’s no secret that New Orleans’ rich flavors are largely the product of the city’s culinary matriarchs. The late Leah Chase, chef and co-owner of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, single-handedly brought shrimp Clemenceau and Creole gumbo to the lexicon of American dining. At Willie Mae’s Scotch House, the best seat in the house is beneath a portrait of Willie Mae Seaton, the dining institution’s legendary chef and owner whose classic American recipes help put fried chicken on the culinary map. And chef Melissa Martin of the Mosquito Supper Club, one of the city’s buzziest reservations, has created a sustainability-minded menu featuring crab cakes served in the shell (no breadcrumbs or stock added) and briny oyster soup with salt pork and sweet tomatoes (a childhood favorite recipe passed down from Martin’s grandmother).
Check out PRIOR’s guide to NOLA’s food scene, from historic dining rooms to innovative local haunts, for more.
Wednesday, February 15: This is How Hoodoo It 🧿
Best in Show: The Krewe of Druids is a mysterious parade pact who keep the faces behind their masks secret. Following them on the St. Charles Parade route are the 3,400 all-female riders known as Nyx, who will bring their motto “friends come and go, but a sister is forever” to life by throwing hand-decorated Nyx-branded purses from their pink-and-black floats.
Side Lines: NOLA is a city where a certain joie de mort is felt in the air, from the spiritual apothecary Haus of Hoodoo to the black magic of Greenwood Cemetery. LaLaurie Mansion, an infamous neoclassical building in the French Quarter, was once the stomping grounds of the socialite slash serial killer Delphine LaLaurie. The property has been plagued by reports of paranormal activity over the 200 years since. Drawn to the mansion’s dark mystery, Nicolas Cage, whose uncle, director Francis Ford Coppola, owned a house across the street, bought the “ghost-front property” in the hopes that it would inspire a horror novel.
