Little Sparrow Farm was born on a long-vacant lot in Mid-City New Orleans, surrounded by the area’s traditional shotgun houses. (Photo by eustatic.)
The Feeding the City series is profiling several cities with thriving urban-agriculture and alt-food scenes.
In the land of gumbo and beignets and crawfish and rabbit-n-dumplings, of Haitians and French and Anglos and Africans, life moves at a slower pace, with more color and spice than most of America. There’s time for food and music, and for parties to celebrate both.
New Orleanians have always taken pride in all things local, but since Katrina and now the oil spill creeping in from that blessed and cursed Gulf of Mexico, that pride has swelled immeasurably from Gulf shrimp to Ninth Ward greens to edible schoolyards.
Things grow here. And people know how to grow and how to cook. Hard-core foodies could take a week to sample the white-table-cloth restaurants relying on serious local sourcing. The chefs from Bayona, Coquette Bistro, Dante’s Kitchen, Cochon, M Bistro, Herbsaint, and Patois are becoming regulars at city farmers markets. Emery Von Hook, director of markets... Read more
