Ray’s New Boom Boom Room
3301 Bienville Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
Friday afternoon, May 6, 2011
New Orleans is one of the only places I know where you can have a good time even when you go someplace by mistake. Friday morning in the middle of Jazz and Heritage Festival week, there it was, in black and white, the listing that Kermit Ruffins would be playing at a neighborhood bar at 5 PM. My traveling companion and I were going to spend the next two days listening to a ton of music at Jazz Fest at the sprawling 145-acre Fairgrounds Race Track. This would be a fabulous chance to see New Orleans’ best-known trumpeter on a small stage.
When we arrive at Ray’s New Boom Boom Room at 3301 Bienville at the corner of North Rendon, there are a sprinkling of people sitting at tables spread outside in the shade next to a huge chalkboard sign proclaiming “Ray’s Famous Fish Fry $4.00” ... and no musicians in sight.
“I’m not sure about Kermit but I’ll tell you this is a great place to come for food. Today at 5 pm there’s a fish fry for $4 and you won't find a better one around here. On Saturday from 3:30 to 4:30 there’s free char broiled oysters on the half shell and on Sunday at 5 pm there’s a free crawfish boil. Get here around 4 pm and watch them do the boil,” a friendly man with a warm smile tells us. “Let’s ask the owner,” he says.
No, we learn, Kermit isn’t playing his customary 5 pm gig here because he is probably getting off a Jazz Fest stage at about the time we arrive. Is that a problem? No … It is the beginning of one of those beautiful serendipitous moments in time that happen with astonishing regularity from New Orleans to Lafayette.
There are hundreds of neighborhood bars in New Orleans. There will be someone at every one of these watering holes who will talk you up and tell you stuff, even though you’re a Yankee and mangle the names of their streets and their food like crazy. They’re friendly, they’re curious, they like to talk, and god love’em, they know how to listen.
For the next hour, instead of listening to Kermit Ruffins, I shoot the breeze with owner Ray Holmes, Allen, the man who greeted us so cordially and who works at the nearby New Orleans Regional Transit Authority depot, and a few of the patrons sitting outside.
pt, Ray Holmes, Allen
Listening to Kermit play trumpet is divinely reactive. Hanging out with Ray, Allen, and the others is genuinely interactive. No better way to get the pulse of the people who make this city special than to hang out on a late afternoon at a neighborhood bar in New Orleans.
There’s a well-known “holy trinity” that defines Creole cooking in New Orleans - onions, celery, and bell peppers. There’s another holy trinity when it comes to neighborhood bars: music, food, and drink. People hang out to relax. You can’t even go to a wake, much less a bar, in New Orleans without music being played. And whether the bar’s food comes from a tiny kitchen in the back or from a food truck invariably parked outside the door, it’s always present, inexpensive, and good.
Ray’s New Boom Boom Room has it all going on. So does Ray.
“I’m Kermit’s manager when he’s on the road,” he says while showing me photos of him at his former restaurant at 508 Frenchman Street in the Marigny district.
There’s Aaron and Justin Neville at Ray’s original Boom Boom Room in 2008, there’s Ray on stage at the House of Blues at Kermit’s annual Christmas party, there’s a photo of Ray BBQ ing up a storm.
Ray’s an entrepreneur. His first restaurant in New Orleans East was ruined by Katrina. Ray and Kermit opened his second, The Boom Boom Room, in November 2006 at 508 Frenchman Street. Its demise is unclear to me but here he is in a place a fraction of the size but with every bit the same energy of his former establishment.
It seems everybody in New Orleans has a Katrina story. “After Katrina, I kept my place going,” Ray says. “When owners of other businesses left New Orleans to dodge Katrina, rather than have their food spoil, many trucked their food to me or other places they knew were still open. I got my BBQ going and fed first responders.”
Six degrees of separation is alive and well in New Orleans. “What’s your name?” or “What’s your daddy/momma’s last name?” is a frequently asked question. Until Katrina, chances are everyone in your neighborhood knew you, your cousins, and your in-laws. Heck, they may have been your in-laws.
Ray is friends with Wendell Pierce (HBO “The Wire,” “Treme”) whose family’s home is in Ponchartrain Park, the same mainly black neighborhood as Ray’s father’s house. Both of those homes were severely damaged by Katrina. Ray is helping his dad rebuild there. He remembers being raised in a “cracker box of a wood frame house” in a black neighborhood not far from there. And Ray, like hundreds of New Orleanians, has had bit parts in the HBO series “Treme” and can tell you what he was wearing and where he was standing in every episode he's been in.
Walking through New Orleans is like smelling the aroma of food being cooked in an unseen kitchen. You’re certain you’ve inhaled those scents before but can’t identify them. I’m always asking why New Orleans is special. Ray’s response is in the form of a chef’s metaphor.
“Our food, history, culture, and families are thrown together like the chicken, sausage, seafood, and pork, in our gumbo. We love our city. The city makes us who we are. The people who come here to visit are the seasonings and it takes all kinds of people to season the gumbo pot. “
“The Mississippi River starts way up north in Minnesota and ends up coming through New Orleans. We may not get you personally but we get the water that was shared up there by Germans, Irish, Japanese, Italians, and other immigrants and that’s the water that goes into our gumbo pot. We know how to put it all together and make a good time of it. Really, we provide the world with the relief it needs.”
Amen.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
PT,
Thank you for showing me anothe place to visit when I return to NOLA....
G
Posted by: Gerard M. McMahon | July 22, 2011 at 06:28 AM
With the friendly people who like to tell and listen to stories...this would be your kind of place!
Posted by: Paul aka pt at large | July 22, 2011 at 07:18 AM
A great love letter to New Orleans and you perfectly captured the experience. Remember your spontaneous dance with those two women on the sidewalk?
Posted by: Rebecca Wilson | July 22, 2011 at 09:05 AM
Yes, I do! They got up to do some kind of line dance after they finished their basket of crawfish. The spirit of New Orleans just floated me right over to the sidewalk and I joined right in - they laughed and started counting out the steps, how cool was that!
Posted by: Paul aka pt at large | July 22, 2011 at 01:23 PM
Loved this piece on Ray's New Boom Boom Room. I went to college in New Orleans and then lived there a number of years after I got married.........probably 13 or 14 years in all. New Orleans will always be one of my favorite cities. I never tire of hearing anecdotes and stories or just about anything about New Orleans....and anything you write is always special.
Think it is about time for you to be making another trip to Acadiana. The CFMA (Cajun French Music Association, but then, you probably already know this) Festival will be held in Cade in August. Festival Acadiana and the Blackpot Festival will be in the fall. But, as you also know, there are always good dance events going on here any time.
Posted by: May Louise White | July 22, 2011 at 05:11 PM
Well, May Louise, New Orleans is certainly one of the most unique cities in the world, we agree on that. And this gives us even more to talk about next time I visit Lafayette, which cannot come too soon. Thanks for your comments.
The son of my former student, journalist Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, is headed for Tulane this year. I can't wait to hear how their son Aidan takes to New Orleans and how Jeff and his wife Dunreith get to know the city when they visit him.
http://kellylowenstein.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/dunreith-comes-home/
Posted by: Paul aka pt at large | July 23, 2011 at 04:52 PM