A Meal Meant So Much More
PROFILE
His original menu, written entirely in French, was vast—nine oyster appetizers, 51 seafood entrees and 40 vegetables (with potatoes prepared 16 different ways). It was indulgent, charming, provocative.
Much like Arnaud Leon Cazenave himself.
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.