ROUSES_JulyAug2019_Magazine

Letter from the Editor by Marcy Nathan, Creative Director

For this issue I asked our team members to submit their Asian hidden gems: restaurants that don’t get a ton of publicity, but that you just have to try. Mine’s out of the bag: Lilly’s, now and forever. Everyone’s answers were very telling. I guess it’s true; you are what you eat. We got more than one Asian buffet (“It speaks to my inner fat girl”). A few “weren’t dere no more.” Others were too well-known to be considered gems, like this one, which came from Kenneth, our regional district manager for Alabama and parts of Mississippi: a sushi chain called Rock N Roll Sushi, started — where else? — in Alabama. Kenneth is a fifth member of the band Metallica. He has close-cropped hair now, but I guarantee he wore it much, much longer in the past (and wore way fewer sleeves). The rolls at Rock N Roll are named after bands and singers. Kenneth, of course, likes the Metallica, but Rock N Roll also has a Guns N Roses roll and a Slash Roll, but no Springsteen Roll. May I suggest Thunder Roll, or Streets of Philadelphia Roll? I don’t know why the Led Zeppelin roll is made with softshell crab rather than the ZZ Top one. And I’m pitching for a jamming Grateful Dead buffet — or, hello , Phish? This issue is a tribute to all the women, men and cultures that make the Gulf Coast so unique. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed making it. Especially McNally, our store artist, who orders crab rangoons — those crispy crab and cream cheese wontons — at every Asian restaurant she’s ever visited. We shot this issue over two days, and by the time we were done, McNally said she had eaten so many crab rangoons that her body was at least 90 percent cream cheese. Mine was easily more than 50 percent egg roll. And I guarantee if you’d tested Jeremy’s blood, it would’ve been pure peanut sauce. Bywater Bakery, New Orleans "This spot is owned and run by our former bakery director, Chaya Conrad, and it’s really cool. Chaya and her husband, Alton Osborn, go to Thailand on the regular. Last summer they introduced a Monday night pop-up, Bywater to Bangkok, with Chaya cooking her favorite Thai dishes from a recent trip to Chiang Mai. Everyone was talking about those Pandan Filled Rice Crepes. I legit can’t wait to see what they have on the menu." - McNally, Store Artist

My father — whose memory these days is fallible — can still recall with perfect accuracy our family dinners at Trey Yuen, Genghis Kahn, and House of Lee. Trey Yuen required a 24-mile drive across the Causeway and a lot of hoopla, with four young daughters fighting the whole way over who would get to sit in the way way back of our station wagon during the drive. Food memories are that powerful. Today, Vietnamese food is a national sensation, but nowhere more than in New Orleans, which has the largest Vietnamese community on the Gulf Coast. Before Katrina, you had to travel to the outskirts of the city to get good pho, but now it seems like every restaurant in town is fusing its menu with dishes and ingredients from Vietnam and other Asian cultures. From gumbos to seafood boils, “local” is a mere matter of perception. The whole world is local in New Orleans. I still sometimes get pho on the West Bank — we have three stores there and another opening in Marrero later this year. When I’m headed east to our stores in Mississippi and Alabama, I’ll stop at Dong Phuong for banh mi. But more often than not you’ll find me (and at least a few friends from Rouses) at Lilly’s on Magazine Street. Lilly is one of those people who makes you feel as though you’ve known her your whole life; she has an innate sense of hospitality. (Sarah Baird profiles her on page 16) . Lunch at her Lower Garden District restaurant is practically a rite of initiation for anyone who works in our Downtown New Orleans office. The food is delicious. Jeremy, the downtown store director, says the same thing every time we go: “I could drink that peanut sauce.” (Lilly, consummate restaurateur that she is, always packs extra for him when we order takeout.)

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