After months of planning a 3 weeks trip to Japan and Singapore for our honeymoon, my husband and had to postpone the trip to Summer of next year. We were sad but expecting it. Planning a wedding is stressful, planning a wedding during a pandemic is more stressful, then having to postpone your destination wedding a month in a half before the date is unbelievable stressful. Don’t get me wrong, overall 2020 has been a great year but it’s been a lot to handle, and my husband and I were looking forward to a vacation. Since we ended up eloping in August (we are still having the actual wedding next year) we decided to take a “honeymoon round 1” trip within the USA. We considered several places, but ultimately my husband really wanted to go to New Orleans and the culture is really appealing to me.
What’s the first thing that came to mind when he suggested New Orleans? THE FOOD. I’ve never really been to the south before with the exception of Florida when I was a teenager, so this was a very new experience for me. I already I knew I loved southern food but I never had real southern food before. Needless to say, the food was to die for! Below are my favorite meals from the trip.
Royal House
We took a walking tour of the French Quarter and our guide mentioned a historical fact about the building that I do not remember BUT what I do remember is that he said Mick Jagger was having lunch there when he led a tour group by once. If it’s good enough for Mick Jagger, then it’s good enough for me! We started off with drinks and Chargrilled Oysters.
These oysters were to die for! The parmesan butter sauce that they were topped with was good enough to drink. As I’m writing this, I’m drooling over these!
Next we order entrees. I got the Gulf Shrimp and Grits. The grits were delicious! They had smoked gouda in them. They were creamy and you could taste the smoked gouda but it wasn’t overpowering.
The shrimp was a BBQ style shrimp. I’ve never had BBQ style shrimp before, I kind of expected BBQ sauce and that was not the case. It was the prefect combination of smoky and spicy. The Royal House boasted a ton of classic New Orleans dishes but you cannot overlook the Gulf Shrimp and Grits!
Café Du Monde
How could I possibly get through this post without talking about Café Du Monde? To be honest, I didn’t really want to mention this place because everyone raves about it, but it actually lived up to my over hyped expectations.
The Beignets were warm, fluffy, and delicious! It was like a little heavenly cloud melting in the mouth. I’m skeptical of anything coated in loads of sugar because usually the sugar is compensating for the underwhelming vessel it’s on but that was not the case. I tried one with the sugar dusted off and it was still amazing. The coffee…well I’m a tea lover not a coffee person so I cannot attest to it but it’s apparently good enough that they sell their own ground coffee. I of course had to come home with a box of their beignet mix because how could I not?
Unfortunately those are the only two places I could really recommend. A lot of places were doing take out only. One of our days was spent taking a cooking class at the Mardi Gras School of Cooking and that would have made the list but I feel it’s narcissistic of me since I made it. However, I do highly recommend taking a cooking class there. I learned a lot, and the food we made truly was some of the best food I had in New Orleans.
Jericha Good 