Ian McNulty: I took my mom on a New Orleans restaurant tour, returning love through food

I hope you already have your plan down for Mother’s Day. Me? I’m over here turning over the latest gift my own mom gave me, one that resonates through New Orleans food and hospitality.

New Orleans is a hospitality town, and that doesn’t just mean it’s a draw for tourists and convention business. I think hosting is part of the cultural DNA of this city. One of the great pleasures I take from living here is showing people a proper time when they visit. I want them to tell stories of us when they go home. 

Long before I made New Orleans my home, however, I feel the hospitality gene was nurtured in me by my mother.

A gift in return

I watched how she hosted friends and family, the pride of presentation on the table, the pacing to extend good times with good company, from drinks and greetings through finales and farewells.

She also was my first guide to the world of food that extended beyond the chicken parm and lasagna that were her make-ahead weekday standards (being from an Irish family, of course, she cooked mostly Italian food).

There was her delight at bringing the family to her favorite local Chinese restaurant, and the openness to try something different when the first Indian restaurant opened a few towns away. These were my first nibbles at the edges of a food world that would eventually come to rule my realm, professionally and personally.

As our lives have progressed and our relationship has evolved, I’ve learned to love the process of reciprocating the experience of sharing and hosting, and I got a gigantic serving of such recently when mom visited New Orleans to celebrate a milestone birthday with our family.

We did more than dine at wonderful restaurants, though honestly not much more, because I know that is what she likes and that is where this city excels like nowhere else.

My mother likes to try what’s new. One of the delights of this trip was visiting restaurants that are not new at all (for the most part, quite the opposite). But they were new to her, and I love how a restaurant that New Orleans knows by heart can feel like a vast revelation to first-time visitors.

First, oysters

We started with something familiar though, the oyster bar at Pascal’s Manale Restaurant (1838 Napoleon Ave., 504-895-4877), where you slurp oysters while standing across the marble counter from the man shucking them. This is a sacred space to me and a regular stop when I have visitors, including my mother, a late-blooming oyster lover.

We never ate oysters when I was growing up, much less raw oysters, which were then regarded as highfalutin. That’s never been the case in New Orleans, though. The abundance and rituals around them are a pleasure I discovered here, and now one my family pursues together.

The next night was dinner at Rosedale (801 Rosedale Drive, 504-309-9595), a love letter to New Orleans food written by Susan Spicer, a legend among New Orleans chefs.

Sitting on the patio at sunset, with a plate of shrimp Creole done the way New Orleans mostly knows from home cooking (which is to say, perfect), with a bistro-worthy wine list in a casual neighborhood restaurant, I could see the spell of enchantment starting to weave together for the guests.

Family and food

There was a stop for boiled crawfish around lunchtime the next day at C&A Seafood (1429 S. Norman C. Francis Pkwy., 504-822-8497), always reliable and tasty, and we crashed a friend’s paella party, catered by the highly impressive pop-up Paella NOLA. The main act was an early dinner reservation at Brigtsen’s (723 Dante St., 504-861-7610).

Here’s a restaurant that feels less like a business and more like an expression of home and the extended family that Marna and Frank Brigtsen have built here through nearly 40 years.

Dinner tells a story of New Orleans flavor through gumbo, BBQ shrimp, the magnificent trout meuniere, the smoked duck and the always-changing, never-fried mixed seafood platter.

The final dinner of the visit entailed a journey over the river and through the exurbs to Mosca’s (4137 Hwy. 90, Westwego, 504-436-8950).

This is a destination restaurant for a taste of rustic Italian cooking from generations past, carried through to the present by one family, and adopted by many other families as a ritual, with shared platters of garlicky chicken a la Grande to pass around and oysters Mosca to dig out of metal pans and wine to drink from tumblers.

With its remote location and decades of lore, this is a restaurant that people make plans to visit, and those plans include who they will bring with them, because they want to show them and share it, because that’s what we do with restaurants we love.

Family stories

These restaurant meals were not just about the delicious dishes. They’re now part of a family story of an important birthday and the joy around it, and recounting their pleasures is now another way my family connects.

New Orleans culture is a gift to ourselves, one we create by participating in it, and it’s one so easily shared with others through hospitality. Our restaurants, and the restaurant people behind them, make dining out in this town such a natural way to do that.

At Mother’s Day, when we want to express our love for mom, I’m grateful for how they bring us such a rewarding way to do that through food.