The best way to get to know your new home is to write about it.

I wrote a series of stories about New Orleans and her people for gonola.com. Excerpts from my faves are highlighted below, but read the whole set to get a quick Nola fix.

The Praline Queen Passed Down Delights

There’s a praline-colored building on the corner of Magazine and Dufassat Street, home to Tee Eva’s Pralines and Pies. A fitting color since inside you’ll find some of the best pralines in New Orleans.

Eva Perry was born by the sugar cane fields in St. Charles Parish but she grew up on Washington Avenue. Her grandmother taught her to make some of those pies that would one day sweeten up Magazine Street. It’s a legacy Eva would eventually pass on to her own granddaughter, intentionally equipping her both with family history and a future means of supporting herself. She now runs the shop and follows Tee Eva’s recipes with exacting precision.

A Meal Meant So Much More

The first world war was barely over and the Prohibition Era only a few months away when Arnaud’s opened its doors at 813 Bienville Street in 1918. Inside those big-windowed brick buildings with Italian-tiled floors, Prohibition rules didn’t exist. Actually, a lot of rules didn’t exist save one near and dear to Count (a self-titled addition) Arnaud: the pursuit of pleasure at the table. A meal that is just a meal, he believed, was a wasted opportunity for enhancing one’s life.

How Ella Brennan Pioneered the New Orleans Culinary Landscape.

“I don’t want a restaurant where a jazz band can’t come marching through.”

If you’ve ever nodded along during a New Orleans jazz brunch, licked the spoon after devouring a Bananas Foster, or sipped on a 25 cent lunchtime martini, you’re experiencing the after-effects of one very special New Orleanian.