New Orleans Food - Chef Susan Spice

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Spice Girl - Chef Susan Spicer's steady climb to the top

You won't recognize Chef Susan Spicer from television. She's not on a regular cooking show. But in the profession she's known as one of the nation's top chefs. To New Orleanians, she's as recognizable as any of the TV chefs.

Spicer's popularity came about the old fashioned way: from her restaurant Bayona, occupying an old Creole cottage on Dauphine Street in the French Quarter. Spicer is finally breaking into the media, though. She just signed on to do a cookbook.

"It's on the front burner now. I'm compiling list of recipes and things," she says. "I know from teaching cooking classes what people are interested in. But it also has to be pretty. It's gonna be for the home cook."

Since opening Bayona in 1990, Spicer has been one of the restaurant scene's brightest and friendliest faces. She speaks modestly about her food and keeps her hair back with a signature red or purple bandana, a holdover from her hippie days of trekking to pop festivals. But Bayona is marked more by its elegance and has consistently ranked as one of the city's top restaurants, as well as one of its most beloved. In 1993, the James Beard Foundation named Spicer the top chef in the Southeastern United States. The Beard Foundation awards are the Oscars of cooking.

Bayona is where Spicer's style came together. She's translating some of that style into her book. She describes it as being ingredient-driven, using solid technique and mixing tastes and textures in a dish. Her menus mix everything from Creole dishes to Indian and Thai curries, though not within a dish. She's no fusionist. But putting together a global menu even sounds easy when she talks about her approach. "For me it's just matching one from column A and one from column B," she says. "Today, I bought redfish and Copper River salmon, hangar steak and I have some chicken. Then I look at what sauces and sauce bases I have on hand. Then the produce. We have baby artichokes and some tomatillos I got at the market.

"I say, so these are the things we have to use, and, well, I can use the blackberries and blueberries with the chicken and just do a little pan sauce. Why don't we use the artichokes and chanterelle mushrooms with a nice little snapper. It's just matching things."

Breaking down the approach is what her book will try to do. "[It's] how to have a certain amount of spontaneity at home. Buy a piece of chicken or fish and bring it home and see what you have on hand and what you can do with it."

Though she established herself very quickly, she didn't get an early start. At the end of high school, Spicer thought about going to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, but her father refused to pay for it. Since she had done well in school, he was hoping she'd enter a field like engineering. Instead, she spent time traveling and trying different things. She tried working as a secretary, working for a printing company and cocktail waitressing.

Then a friend convinced her to go work in a fine dining kitchen. In the late 1970s, it was very uncommon to see women working in such kitchens above the rank of prep cook. Spicer had always liked cooking and was ready to try it seriously. In Chef Daniel Bonnot, she found a mentor. In the kitchen of Louis XVI in the French Quarter, she soaked up everything about cooking and food. Soon she took off to Paris to work for Chef Roland Durand in the Hotel Sofitel. When Spicer returned to New Orleans, Bonnot put her in charge of a new restaurant, Savoir Faire. The position was intimidating at first. As resumes came in, Spicer knew she was hiring chefs with more formal training and more experience. But that worked in her favor. "I came to a realization after a year," she says. "I discovered that my standards, what I was willing to aim for and adhere to, seemed to be higher than what those people were willing to do. It was kind of a turning point for me. I realized I was more of a perfectionist. I had the maturity. My work ethic was pretty well developed."

Spicer worked at Savoir Faire and traveled to California and France again to learn more. Eventually she opened another new restaurant and became one of several chefs who launched their solo careers at the Bistro at the Maison Deville. With its small kitchen and intimate dining room, it's a natural showcase for whomever is in charge. While there, Spicer met a regular customer who convinced her they should open a restaurant together. They opened Bayona in 1990 and turned a profit just six months later.

While her early focus was simply Bayona, Spicer has expanded her reach and notoriety. She was one of the early enlistees in the Superbowl weekend's Taste of the NFL. Spicer has been New Orleans' sole envoy to the annual party and fundraiser. In recent years, she started Wild Flour Breads, a baking company that provides many of the city's top restaurants with different varieties of bread. In 2000, she launched a new restaurant, Herbsaint, downtown on St. Charles Ave. She's a partner in the restaurant and chef Donald Link oversees the menu of Louisiana-French cooking. Spicer has also served as a consultant for newer restaurants, as well.

As her notoriety and that of the profession has increased, opportunity is knocking often. In November, she will be a guest chef at a major Tokyo hotel in a series presenting top women chefs.

"Travel is one of the new perks," she says. "That's one of my big loves."

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New Orleans Cemeteries

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Working in the cemeteries is rarely considered desirable work. But it is in New Orleans. Visitors to the city can't seem to stay out of the Cities of the Dead. So there's a peculiar niche for some of the people who practically live in them.

Robert Florence is like many new New Orleanians. He moved here on a whim. But by odd circumstance he learned from relatives that one line of his family came from New Orleans. He traced his geneology and soon found himself combing through cemeteries looking for the family tombs.

As he became more intrigued by the cemeteries fate threw him another strange card. While pursuing a job with the National Park Service in the swamps of Barataria, a job opened up in their French Quarter bureau instead. He became a tour guide for the historic district and neighboring St. Louis Cemetery I.

Eventually, he started his own tour business (Historic New Orleans Walking Tours). He and his brother completed a coffee table book showing the cemeteries, their beauty and some of the people who care for them, New Orleans Cemeteries: Life in the Cities of the Dead. In 1998, he co-founded Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries, a group committed to tomb restoration.

New Orleans cemeteries are famous for their rich architectural schemes. Predominantly done in classical revival, the skylines of the cemeteries are as compelling as the city's itself. Elaborate stone tombs are adorned with ironwork, statues and carved marble markers. If the tombs were like small mansions for the dead, then there were also more affordable condos in the form of wall vaults. Long rows of mausoleum-like vaults fill many of the cemeteries and familes used them for multiple burials as well.

Oddly, the city's cemeteries sit in well traveled areas. Most, when they were laid out, were on the outskirts of the city. But as the city grew they were enveloped. So cemeteries now lie next to some of the New Orleans' livelier sites and attractions. St. Louis I and II border the blocks where Storyville bordellos once buslted and early jazz came of age. St. Louis III lies behind the Fair Grounds. In the heart of the Garden District, Lafayette I sits across the street from the internationally renowned restaurant Commander's Palace.

The above ground tombs are part of the local culture. Popular myth explains that they were built above ground because of the swamps and high water table. Parts of the city are actually below sea level. But this misses some of the heritage behind the tombs. Above ground tombs are not uncommon in France, Germany and Spain where early colonists came from. The tradition carried over to the new world. The elaborate tombs were meant for succesive burials by a family. And the family that owned the tomb maintained it through the years.

At first, colonists did attempt to bury the dead on the natural levees created by the river. Some of those coffins resurfaced during floods. But many of the early colonists intended to build above ground family tombs before they learned the Mississippi's flooding habits.

St. Louis I is the city's oldest cemetery, founded in 1789. It contains the city's most famous tomb, that of voodoo queen Marie Laveau. She's buried in the Glapion family tomb. It sits next to the tomb of former Mayor Ernest N. Morial.

Different organizations own the cemeteries. The city owns some, like historic Lafayette I in the Garden District. The Archdicese of New Orleans owns St Louis I, II and III. Other cemeteries are owned by private companies and secret societies, such as the Masons and the Odd Fellows. Upkeep of tombs is generally the responsibility of the tomb owners, whether they are a family or a fraternal organization, like the Fireman's Charitable and Benevolent Association. Some cemetery companies and the Archdiocese offer contracts for regular upkeep, but the city does not. Over the years, as families have moved away, many tombs have fallen into disrepair.

It is only fairly recently that the cemeteries have become important to the city as historic treasures. In 1974, there was a proposal to destroy several city bocks worth of wall vaults in the St. Louis cemeteries. Save Our Cemeteries formed out of the successful efforts to save the wall vaults.

Save Our Cemeteries'(525-3377) main mission is to educate and promote preservation. They encourage New Orleanians to think of the cemeteries as outdoor museums. And they encourage people who grew up in the area to locate, maintain and even use their family tombs. "If people don't use their family tombs then they will become forgotten," says executive director Louise Fergusson. Her family maintains a tomb in Lafayette I.

Save Our Cemeteries has become more involved in tomb restoration. They also fund the upkeep of Lafayette I, keeping it clean and trimming the grass. They offer tours of Lafayette I to support their preservation efforts.

Tomb restoration is the primary focus of Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries (947-2120). Member tour companies all work in the cemeteries. They are Florence's Historic New Orleans Walking Tours, Bloody Mary's Tours, Haunted History Tours, Magic Walking Tours, New Orleans Ghost Tours, New Orleans Spirit Tours, New Orleans Tours and the Voodoo Museum. Their eventual goal is to restore one tomb per year in every historic cemetery. A single restoration costs between $3000-$4000.

Friends creates an avenue to encourage public support and participation in preservation. Some the tour operators also do it on their own. Mary Millan, also known as Bloody Mary of Bloody Mary tours has taken Odd Fellows Rest under her care.

At the end of the Canal Street bus line called "Cemeteries," Odd Fellows Rest is owned by the Odd Fellows, a world-wide secretive benevolent society. The cemetery is laid out like a pyramid, with a mound in the center forming the eye, just like in the ancient Egyptian symbol printed on the dollar bill, and used by both the Masons and the Odd Fellows.

Bloody Mary chose Odd Fellows because she grew up in and still lives in the neighborhood. She gives daytime tours of St. Louis I and evening tours of Odd Fellows. She visits the Odd Fellows regularly during the day to maintain it, repairing damage from both neglect and occasional acts of vandalism. She also keeps an eye on the increasing problem of cemetery theft, an unfortunate side effect of the popularity of the cemeteries, the fiction of Anne Rice and consequent growth of "gothic" imagery and subculture.

Cemetery tours have helped fund restoration of the cemeteries. They also help educate. And part of the mission is to protect the cemeteries. As popular as Marie Laveau's tomb is, it is plagued by desecration. It has been marked with X's, supposedly by those seeking favor. In reality, that's a gimmick for the gullible. Local voodoo priests and practitioners abhor the myth. Local preservationists dread the practice. And tour operators say there's only one thing you should take from a cemetery: That's a picture.

Florence once received a brick in the mail. An unsigned letter explained that it was a brick from Laveau's tomb. And the perpetrator had nothing but bad luck since taking it. Florence, among others, was only too happy to see it returned to its rightful place.

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New Orleans Music - Blow by Blow

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New Orleans' long line of trumpeters carry on a rich jazz tradition.

Throughout the first century of jazz, New Orleans produced many amazing musicians. Louis Armstrong became the city and jazz's first great ambassador. Entering jazz's second century, many talented trumpeters are following in his footsteps.

It is nearly impossible to overstate the drama of Armstrong's miraculous climb to world-wide recognition and popularity. He was born at the turn of the century into extreme poverty in a neighborhood bordering Storyville, New Orleans' official red light district. Not yet a teenager he was placed in a "Colored Waifs Home" after police caught him shooting a pistol on New Year's Eve. He played in the home's band and took to the cornet, an instrument very similar to a trumpet. By his late teens, Joe "King" Oliver took him under his wing and into his band. Oliver then took him to Chicago, where the two became famous in the early '20s.

Armstrong spent the next decade increasing his fame for his virtuoso playing and entertaining. Thereafter, he rarely returned to New Orleans. Through the decades, styles changed and he sometimes played with less talented groups of musicians, but his musical genius remained unquestionable. Coupled with his huge personality, his talents took him around the world as a band leader well before his hometown was desegregated.

Back in New Orleans, many new trumpeters gained fame. The legendary Al Hirt grew up in New Orleans and played a swinging style of Dixieland jazz. Hirt, known as "Jumbo" to his friends, preferred to play melodic popular music rather than pursue the more esoteric sounds of modern jazz. He had been trained in classical music and led and played in big bands after World War II. But he made it big recording music with his New Orleans-based jazz band starting in the '50s. His popularity translated into regular television appearances and a 15-year run as Playboy magazine's favorite trumpeter. He ran a lively and popular club on Bourbon Street for years, only a couple blocks down from former bandmate, friend and clarinetist Pete Fountain.

Hirt also, perhaps only incidentally, passed on the legacy of New Orleans trumpeting superstars. At a rehearsal, he gave a trumpet to the son of his piano player to give him something to do. The piano player was Ellis Marsalis. The boy was Wynton Marsalis and the trumpet was his first.

Wynton Marsalis has climbed to the top of the jazz world. He is the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. He has recorded prolifically, won Grammys in both jazz and classical music and won a Pulitzer Prize for music.

While Marsalis lives in New York, New Orleans is not suffering for lack of accomplished or rising star trumpet players. One of the young lions is Nicholas Payton.

Though Payton is just 29, he has been playing the Jazz Fest for two decades, starting with his father Walkter Payton's Snapbean Band. At the age of 19, Payton was invited to join Elvin Jones' Jazz Machine - as musical director. Since then he's recorded several diverse albums including a Grammy-winning collaboration with Doc Cheatham and a tribute to Louis Armstrong.

"I am one of the few people fortunate enough to make a living leading my own band," Payton says. It keeps him on the road most of the year. When he's in town, a good place to catch him is at Snug Harbor (626 Frenchmen St., 949-0696), a jazz club that favors modern and progressive styles of jazz but includes plenty of traditional New Orleans jazz as well.

Another blazing New Orleans trumpeter who has climbed to the upper echelons of modern jazz is Terence Blanchard. Blanchard was chosen by Downbeat magazine in 2000 as its readers' choice for jazz artist of the year and for best album. Blanchard's music gets well beyond jazz audiences though. He wrote the musical scores for many Spike Lee films, including Clockers, Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, as well as for MGM films such as Original Sin. Blanchard was recently hand chosen to succeed Ellis Marsalis as the director of jazz studies at the University of New Orleans.

There are several local trumpeters who favor more traditional styles of jazz and play more frequently in local clubs. Wendell Brunious and Gregg Stafford both play more traditional jazz at clubs such as Preservation Hall (726 St Peter St., 522-2841) and the Palm Court Jazz Café (1204 Decatur St., 525-0200).

Many New Orleans musicians make their name in the marching brass bands that play jazz funerals and "second line parades." The ReBirth Brass Band was co-founded by a young trumpeter named Kermit Ruffins. Blowing their brass band standard "Do Whatcha Wanna," the ReBirth broadened the brass band repertoire. Brass bands originally jazzed up spirituals and hymns for jazz funerals. "When the Saints Go Marching In" is an old hymn. The ReBirth brought funk and soul sounds into the music. They covered Earth, Wind and Fire and other popular music of the '70s.

After roughly a decade with the ReBirth, Ruffins left to focus more on an old style of New Orleans jazz. "Traditional New Orleans is a strong backbeat with a steady swing," he says, citing Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" and "When You're Smiling." Ruffins takes his band, the Barbecue Swingers, to all sorts of New Orleans nightspots, from jazz clubs to corner bars (Vaughan's, 800 Lesseps St., 947-5562) to dancing and big band clubs.

As always, there are younger trumpeters climbing their way up the ladder. Irvin Mayfield is making waves with Los Hombres Calientes. They are infusing jazz with afro-Cuban and Latin beats. Mayfield forms the core of the band along with veteran percussionist Bill Summers, who got his own early start with Herbie Hancock. As jazz carries into its second century, youth and tradition are well acquainted in New Orleans.

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