The New Orleans I Hoped For

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Today has been an amazing day. In one day, we did some relaxing, some exercising, some exploring, some learning, and had one of the best meals we've ever had. And we're going to Preservation Hall in an hour. That's a good day.

Our day really began at about noon, when we went out to lunch at a salad bar type place called Press It Bitrot, where we had fantastic and large greek salads freshly made to order for a very good price. We followed this up by walking all the way across the French Quarter to the meeting place of a bike tour we signed up for. The tour is called the Original Creole New Orleans Bicycle Tour presented by the Confederacy of Cruisers. We met at Washington Square Park. We were in a group of 7 and a tour guide, all on these wonderful comfortable cruiser style bikes that are some common down here in New Orleans (and the Keys as well). We quickly got off the beaten path, and made our way deep into the Faubourg Marigny neighbourhood, where we learned about the early history of New Orleans, about some of the interesting characters of the city, about the different areas of the city, about the architecture, the culture, race relations, education, food and more. We traversed the Bywater, including the Faubourge Marigny and Ninth Ward, some of the French Quarter and Treme. It was just what we wanted: off the beaten path, different, very informative, active and fun. And the guide was great. So knoledgable and a great speaker. And there was a couple from Dundas in the group....can you believe it?

On the walk back from the stop point we got caught in the rain, and desptite having lots of balconies to walk under, and an umbrella, we got totally soaked. We quickly got ready for dinner tonight (the one I've looked forward to most of all) and were off. We were to eat at August, John Besh's top restaurant.

The meal was amazing. We were greeted by very friendly, proper and knowledgable staff, perused the menus and order. We had the following items:

Amuse Bouche (nice surprise)
- A seafood custard with some sort of foam with roe and a crouton served in an egg shell

Appetizer
- Duck and Pork Dumplings with small veggies and herbs served in a curry broth.

Entrees
- Tempura Soft Shell Crab with vietnamese melon herbs and spicy peanut sauce
- Breaded Trout with crab, mushrooms and hollandaise sauce

Dessert
- Napoleon of Nougative with valrhona chocolate bavarois and salted toffee ice cream
- Banana Pudding with peanut butter, marshmellow and vanilla wafer ice cream

Final Amuse Bouche Thingy (another nice surprise)
- White chocolate truffle, praline, apricot jelly

This was certainly one of the best meals of our life, possibly the best restaurant experience we've ever had. Fully and utterly recommended.

And now we are getting ready to go to Preservation Hall for a great show of classic traditional New Orleans Jazz.

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