The business publication Crain’s Chicago Business reports that one of the biggest names in the Windy City’s restaurant scene plans to open a new restaurant in New Orleans.

Chef Rick Tramonto has racked up quite a few national culinary accolades during his career, and this week he will unveil a new partnership with Louisiana chef and food entrepreneur John Folse. The chefs plan to announce details on Wednesday.

When Xavier Laurentino, owner of the Spanish restaurant Barcelona Tapas, explained the concept for last month’s inaugural Riverbend International Tapas Crawl, he told me he hoped it would eventually grow into a regular event.

That seemed like a good idea to me, though it’s come together faster than I thought.
This Wednesday, Aug. 25, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., a group of restaurants clustered in the Riverbend will host the second edition of the Tapas Crawl, and participating chef Frank Brigtsen says it will now be an ongoing dining event for the neighborhood held on the last Wednesday of each month.

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Up until a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t eaten meat in almost four years.

I wasn’t entirely meat-free. There are the occasional seafood po-boy and Gulf-caught fish. And I eat cheese and eggs and drink milk — on the conditions they come from safe, humane and local sources, if possible. I don’t support factory farming. Period. And for obvious reasons.

Last month, I cut all of those foods from my diet and committed to a vegan diet for a month. I wrote about that experience in this week’s Gambit. And judging by the comments and emails I’ve received about it, I did it wrong. Never mind that I consulted with a vegan dietitian, as well as Peter Singer, a vegan scholar if there ever was one, and my vegan friends, who have navigated the halls of New Orleans restaurant culture and could steer me in the right direction — and that was what I wanted to find out: can a vegan experience the restaurant culture in New Orleans the same way a non-vegan does, which is something people in New Orleans live to do and some would feel they can’t live without. I let a few others answer that in the article.

And I ate well. I won’t bore you with my month-long meal plan, but it was balanced, healthy, nutritious, and I surprised myself in the kitchen. Katelynn Phillips said it perfectly: “If you think about all the plant varieties in the world, there are thousands. And there’s really not that many meat options, so there is a ton of stuff you can eat … People are just used to the American diet.”

But I had cravings — omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches, mostly. (I settled for a cheese pizza — manchego on flatbread — at the end of the month.)

As the month went by, I opened up the conversation to both vegans and people who eat meat, like Scott Gold. I don’t personally agree with much of what Gold said (like the “sad, deprived existence” comment), but he echoed points made among many in the meat-eating community. I hoped his voice could lend some balance to the issue. It’s one thing to introduce why one should consider veganism, but it’s another to leave out the voice on the other side of the fence, which there clearly is, as Gold illustrates. After all, not only was I writing a personal experience, I had to produce a balanced story. I wasn’t eating meat, anyway, so whose team was I rooting for?

But when I went out to eat the weekend after I finished the month, I ordered a sandwich with bacon. I didn’t expect to order it, and I didn’t feel guilty about it. It wasn’t a decision I thought I was going to make, ever, but I did, and I’m in no rush to eat meat any time soon.

Perhaps that’s where I went wrong, according to some readers: I didn’t end the month deciding to become vegan full-time. Bottom line was, It wasn’t for me, at least right now. This was just one man’s attempt, not a vegan manifesto. At the very least I hope I started a conversation about veganism and hopefully readers will make better eating decisions because of it.

In a letter to Gambit, Derek Zimmer offers some (delicious) advice:

Buy a bag of kidney beans, a container of seasoning, and maybe a tub of Earth Balance spread, and treat yourself to some classic red beans and rice. Heck, grab a pound of soy-based sausage if you must! Top that off with a loaf of Leidenheimer’s French bread if you’re feelin’ real saucy, and that’s simply days of leftovers! Alternatively, touch a couple boxes of the ol’ Zatarain’s Jambalaya mix, add some chopped bell peppers, mushrooms, whatever (maybe more of that aformentioned mock sausage), and — tadaa! — you got yourself a delicious plant-based meal in 30 minutes! There’s also this thing our ancestors invented back in the day called a “roux” — basically you heat up oil, add flour, then water, which you then use to to make a cabbage, potato, bean, etc., stew! Oh, and ever heard of okra gumbo? Whew! What what a “sad, deprived existence” veganism in the Big Easy is! (Though certainly no where near as “sad” and “deprived” an existence as those of the animals inside factory farms!)

For more information, here are some New Orleans-related vegan and vegetarian groups and blogs:

www.pakupaku.info

www.nolaveggiefest.com

www.meetup.com/vegetarian-515

www.veganorleans.com

Who doesn’t like pizza? (A damn Communist, that’s who.) And who doesn’t like Italian Pie? That’s right, nobody. So we at Gambit World HQ in Mid-City were excited when we learned that Italian Pie was uprooting itself from its neighborhoody Bienville Street location and moving to the little Restaurant Row that’s sprung up around Canal and Carrollton since the storm. More lunch options for us!

But then we realized there are now four pizza places within about a block of one another:

(Clockwise from top: Wit’s Inn, Venezia, Theo’s Pizza, Italian Pie. Gambit World HQ is in the upper-right corner. And we left off the national-chain pizza place that’s on this map, which would’ve made five.)

Now, they’re all substantially different. Wit’s Inn serves good bar-food pizza and is a great place to watch a game and have a few drinks. Venezia serves the epitome of the red-sauce “pizza pie.” Theo’s has an amazing cracker crust and some toppings that sound eccentric but turn out to be delicious. And Italian Pie is a go-to spot for basic pizza that’s ideal for takeout (although the new location, which opened today, has little flat-screen TVs built into the booths, so they seem ready for football season).

No complaints with any of these pizza purveyors. But between them and the surfeit of Mexican/Central American places in the same area (three!), we’re just wondering: Can we get a good Thai restaurant up in here? Or po-boy shop? Or Vietnamese joint? (Doson Noodle House has Vietnamese noodle bowls, but not one of those Da Vinci Code-sized menus you get at Vietnamese places on the West Bank.) What kind of food would you like to see on Mid-City’s Restaurant Row?

Because there is, finally, if such a thing is possible — enough pizza.

EDITED TO ADD: Don’t get us wrong; we’re very grateful. You know who’s really screwed when it comes to lunch? Our colleagues at The Times-Picayune, that’s who. Ever tried to get something to eat around 3800 Howard Avenue?

Ambrosia. Far from an immortaility-inducing elixir of the gods, it’s a relic from the era in which “salad” was a loosely-defined term encompassing molded things made of gelatin and canned fruit. But Cat Cora makes it sing. Her version of it, which she acknowledged as that Southern dish “you only see at weddings and funerals,” gets much-needed revisions with fresh Bing cherries, grapefruit, watermelon and a honey-vanilla whipped cream topped with roasted coconut flakes. She gives a similar treatment to coleslaw — sometimes a soggy, mayonnaise-y mess resembling the “grass” you find in Easter baskets — by subbing out cabbage for julienned broccoli that stays crunchy even under a spicy vinaigrette (the secret ingredient? Tabasco sauce).

It’s this mix of Southern flavors with a modern, margarine-free consciousness that informs Cora’s new cookbook, Classics With a Twist: Fresh Takes on Favorite Dishes, which she promoted in an event at the Lakeside Mall Macy’s on Thursday. This is the third cookbook for the supremely busy chef, who splits time as a restauranteur, appearing on television, working as a spokesperson for charities and product lines and of course, battling in Kitchen Stadium on Food Network’s Iron Chef America, on which she has the distinction of being the only woman to earn the show’s coveted title.

Cora took a few minutes to talk to Gambit before signing cookbooks and whipping up the aforementioned ambrosia and broccoli slaw, as well as flank steak tacos with pineapple salsa, before an audience on the department store’s third floor.

Is this your first time in New Orleans?
No. I grew up in Jackson, Miss. and I went to college at USM, so I was in New Orleans a lot. I kinda grew up in this city. So even though I’m from Jackson, I kind of think of New Orleans as a second home, a second Southern home, because I spent so much time here.

Do you have a favorite New Orleans restaurant?
A lot of my friends have restaurants here. Donald (Link) has Cochon, and that’s great. But I also like some of the old classics — especially because I don’t get down here often — like going to Galatoire’s, Brennan’s for brunch, or whatever, and doing some of the classic places. Central Grocery for a muffaletta and cold beer, that kind of thing. A friend of mine, Scott (Boswell) owns Stella! I went to culinary school with him. I have a few newer ones I like, but I also like the old classics, as well.

Will you be dining when you’re here?
I’m only here for the night … my sons are with me, so we’re going to go down to the French Quarter and show them around, because they’ve never been here before. So, like I said, we’ll hit some of the classic places.

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