Imagine it’s Mardi Gras, and you are walking down Bourbon Street—the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Merry makers—many with a Hurricane or other libation in hand—flood the streets and revel all around you, all the while collecting as many strands of cheap beads as necks and inhibition allow.
Against the crowd’s noise, blues, jazz, zydeco, ragtime, and more pour from every filigreed cast-iron balcony and open doorway at every club, music hall, dive, and juke joint up and down the boulevard. Street merchants lend their own cadence hawking trinkets, gewgaws, and souvenirs.
And what cuts through all that clutter and sputter are the aromas that waft into the proceedings from the restaurants, food stalls, and street vendors. So varied. So pungent. So enveloping. So intoxicating.
You’ve just gotta have something to eat.
