pt at large

The Taco Sisters: A Smoking Success in Lafayette

The Taco Sisters
407 Johnston Street
Lafayette, Louisiana
March 3, 2011

“My pal Bernard Ussher told me not to miss a chance to come here for lunch and to say hello to Molly and Katy when I did,” says I to the girl at the tiny drive-up window.

The miniscule place called The Taco Sisters is about the size of a FEMA trailer. The original section was Jack’s Hot Dog Stand when the sisters opened for business in February 2009. They attached an addition, sort of like a tall caboose, when they got so popular they had to add space for coolers and smokers to keep up with the volume of business. Being able to turn around without bumping into one of the sous chefs was good too.

“Are you the guy who wrote about The Red Stick Ramblers at the Blue Moon? I loved it! I’m on my feet all day long and don’t have the energy to dance but I felt like I was there!”

The voice comes from someplace behind an unseen prep counter where Katy Richard, one of the Taco Sisters, is probably up to her elbows in fresh vegetables, shrimp, and taco shells.  The tiny place puts out such good food that her compliment, as edifying as it is, doesn’t color the rave review I’m about to write.

I order the special smoked shrimp in soft shell taco, locally made and delicately chewy, fresh as the soft Lafayette afternoon breeze. Heaped atop the taco is a plump mix of smoked gulf shrimp, sprinkled with the Taco Sisters famed “Pico del Gallo,” (finely chopped onion, tomato, cilantro, lime juice, and garlic – “ Anybody can make it,”Molly smiles)... yeah, right, I’m thinking… and spring greens, tiny cubes of crisp apple, chopped celery, julienned carrots, green onions. 

The smoky taste is for real. No “liquid smoke,” no chemicals or flavor enhancers, just what you would expect with slow burning real hardwood. The salads are made daily. Trans-fats and MSG are verboten. Fresh and local are the standard.

I eat my meal at one of the six bright mint green picnic tables. Cars have been streaming into the drive-through circle like seagulls following a fishing boat. Judging by the flow of traffic, orders are phoned in, picked up, and enjoyed somewhere else. There is barely enough room inside the eatery for Molly and Katy Richard and half a dozen helpers let alone customers.

Photo: Division of labor: Katy made the "art fences" and picked the colors for them and the picnic tables. Molly crunches the numbers on her spread sheet.

Being a friend of Bernard Ussher’s is a pretty good calling card around here. During a lull in the mid-afternoon business, Katy and Molly scrub their hands and come out to chat. The sisters are thoroughbred food lovers. “We don’t want a big carbon footprint,” Katy says. “We buy local fish, no farm fish.” They talk about food the way guys talk about the New Orleans Saints - with incandescent passion.

While describing their connections to local fishermen, Molly rhapsodizes over purchasing a loin of yellow fin tuna, cutting it into chunks, smoking it with a rub and a glaze with a brown sugar base, twice... then letting it cool and serving it chilled. To a bachelor whose knowledge of the art of cooking is limited to reading the directions to find out how long to microwave frozen food, this is like trying to understand a foreign language. It also makes me want to propose to Molly.

Running a small business, especially a food enterprise, could easily wear down a mortal with low tolerance for stress and unpredictability. The sisters' strategy: meld their talents the way they mix the salad dressings. 

“Katy made the art fences and picked the colors,” Molly says, “ and I’m a whiz with spread sheets.” What a recipe for success – one left brained and one right brained owner!

The license plates on a truck from Texas and scores of cars from Louisiana in the drive-in circle prove that people will go out of their way to find good food. And a good value.

My smoked shrimp taco cost $5.95. The menu tops out at $9.95 for “smothered brisket, plus a sliced avocado half, sliced tomatoes, black olives, and finely shredded Italian cheeses with your choice of our hand-crafted salad dressings: our house jalapeño ranch, blue cheese, vinaigrette or soy-ginger.”  The smoked chicken, shrimp of pork salads are about a dollar cheaper. Menu 

The burrito menu reads,  “A real favorite - comfort food our way! We start with delicious, rich beef brisket, slow-cooked in spicy adobo sauce until it falls apart - or now, your choice of our chicken or pork, smoked in-house. Then, it's wrapped in a flour tortilla with refried beans, chives and melting finely shredded cheese. Sublime - there's nothing else like it!”  The cost? $3.00 for a bean and cheese burrito up to $6.95 for a Smoked Fish or Shrimp Burrito. That’s comfort food for your wallet and your stomach.

“The prices here are really affordable and we try to keep competitive. The serving portions are what people used to say was normal, not supersized. You leave with a full enough stomach and a happy palate.” Katy says as she heads back to the kitchen.

There aren’t that many places to find good food, prepared with fresh, local ingredients, and served with such pride. Katy and Molly Richard have the recipe down.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 
A view from the pickup window at the Taco Sisters place on the corner of Johnston and Vermillion in Lafayette.  Katy Richard made the art fence and picked the bright colors for that and the picnic tables. Their menu includes a kids's section with stuff they would actually enjoy eating.

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: A Streetcar Maestro

Meet Allen - one of the men who keep New Orleans' iconic streetcars on the rails

at Ray’s New Boom Boom Room
3301 Bienville Street
New Orleans, LA 70119
Friday afternoon, May 6, 2011

One of the last people you expect to meet at a neighborhood bar in New Orleans is a man who keeps New Orleans’ venerable streetcars in such pristine condition. Meeting Allen, whose last name I don’t know, at Ray’s New Boom Boom Room, was like meeting a living breathing part of New Orleans’ infrastructure. Allen is one of those unsung heroes who maintains all the stuff that gives a city its personality – streetcar lines, parks, zoos, aquariums and the like. To tourists like me, and quite possibly to residents, they are all but invisible. The work they do shines brightly.

“I’ve been working for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority for 30 years. The big car barn is a few blocks from here on Canal Street,” Allen said to my traveling companion and me as he extolled the virtues of the food owner Ray Holmes cooks up at his neighborhood bar every weekend.  I’d just spent twenty minutes talking to Ray, to whom Allen introduced me, and was drawn back to talk to this down to earth man with the gentle smile. Here we were, two strangers from Massachusetts, and Allen welcomes us as if we were visiting authorities from Zagat.

New Orleans was the first city west of the Alleghenies to build passenger rail service and they take pride in their three streetcar lines: St. Charles, Canal Street, and Riverfront. The rickety streetcars that run from Canal Street to Carrollton are up there in the top ten things to see and do when you visit New Orleans. It’s hard to ignore the fact that when you hop on for the 13.3 mile St. Charles Line, you’re sitting in relics from the past century on the oldest continuously operating streetcar in the world.

Many of the streetcars date back to 1923-24. Allen says that the city re-purchased several streetcars that were sold when the Canal Street Line was closed in 1964. The line has since been reopened.

“We looked all over the world to find the streetcars we sold when the Canal Street line closed in the 1960s. When we found them, we repaired or rebuilt the wooden seats and brass fittings in the cars, ” he says with pride. I’ve sat in those gorgeously maintained slatted mahogany seats. Now I know why they wear their age so well.

I’ve taken that old fashioned ride on the St. Charles line several times. Riders no longer dress in linen and carry parasols to ward off the midday sun, but their behavior is refreshingly retro. Lots of “Good afternoons” to and from the conductor and the riders in the seats, lots of eye contact, and easy smiles and easy banter as we witness some of New Orleans’ historic gems from the open wood framed windows…the canopy of huge Live Oaks that covers stretches of the line in the oldest section of Uptown, scores of ante-bellum mansions, Loyola and Tulane Universities, the sprawling emerald grounds of the Audubon Zoological Gardens, and loads of shopping areas, restaurants, and commercial buildings.

These streetcars are not to be confused with bullet trains. Like New Orleans, they’re in no hurry. Let the good times roll? Hell, yes, grooving softly on polished steel rails. Low hanging branches from Live Oaks brush the sides of the car as it glides by. The gentle swaying of the streetcar rocks riders in a sweet lullaby. You’re rolling along through the heart of The Big Easy.

One of the coolest things to witness is the ritual at the end of the line. The conductor marches through the empty car and flips the back of each seat to make it face the direction the car will run on the return trip.  The racket as he walks down the aisle, both arms extended, thwacking each seat left and right in unison, sounds like a military drill.

Before Katrina in 2005, there were 35 vintage electric rail vehicles plying the St. Charles line (now back in service), many of them built specifically for New Orleans by the Perly A. Thomas Company LINK in the early 1920s. When the first streetcar lines were laid out in 1835, they were powered by steam locomotives that were later replaced by mules and horses before going electric in 1893.

“When we needed more streetcars, we built new quieter cars that look just like the old ones right in the car barn. We machine new parts for the older ones when we need them,” Allen says. 

He smiles when my eyes widen.  “You made those streetcars?” I say. “And you actually make parts from scratch?” Now I see it.  His eyes beam. I’m talking to another kind of artist, the kind who works with his hands and his ingenuity and makes the rolling stock in New Orleans’ streetcar fleet the envy of cities across the USA.

“I’ve got five more years until I retire,” Allen says. Somehow I think those years will fly by for this man who so clearly enjoys what he does and is proud of how it contributes to the identity of the city he loves.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Long stretches of the St. Charles Line roll down what New Orleanians call "the neutral ground," the narrow grassy strip that divides the wide road. The 'neutral ground" is one of residents' favorite places to set up chairs, coolers, even couches, to watch Mardi Gras parades...but that's another story!

 

 

 
 

 

 

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: Ray's New Boom Boom Room

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.

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 tny kitchen in the back or from a food truck invariably parked outside the door, it’s always present, inexpensive, and good.

  PT, Ray, Allen

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.

Westport Quakers Awesome 50th Annual Used Book Fair

Westport Friends Meeting (Quaker)
938 Main Road at Adamsville Road


Westport, MA 02790
50th Annual Used Book Fair front page story
Saturday, July 9, 2011
11 am to dusk (and continuing through the week)

10:45 AM, Saturday, July 9
Bright sunshine reflects off the yellow and white striped tents in front of The Westport Friends Meeting House on Main Road. For hundreds of book lovers, this is the pot of gold at the base of the rainbow. In a quarter of an hour, they’ll be able to dig their hands into the treasure in front of them and take home as much as they can carry. The 50th edition of the Westport Friends Used Book Fair is about to be opened for business.

 

Ready...set...GO!

Shoppers crane their necks to read titles of books stacked on heavy duty folding tables a few tantalizing feet away. Twenty thousand used paperback and hardcover books are piled up on sturdy tables in a space the size of the fruits and vegetables section of your local supermarket. Anticipation hangs in the air like incense. You can almost feel the shoppers twitching with excitement.

At precisely 11 AM, the shrill blast of a whistle announces the 50th edition of the vaunted Westport Friends Used Book Fair is open. The yellow tape surrounding the two tents is lowered and scores of bargain shoppers wade into this bookish nirvana. By noon, customers with satisfied Cheshire cat grins begin to line up to pay for their haul. 

For some, the book fair is the official beginning of summer in Westport and a chance to restock bookshelves and night tables with enough booty to last until next July.

The crowd that dives into the tents is as varied as the book jackets on the tables. Young, old, and in between, they span three generations. The veterans have sacks slung over their shoulders that will soon bulge with books. The first timers always seem surprised to find themselves trying to balance a load of books up to their chins in the crook of their arms. That’s when they discover the reason dozens of empty cartons are stacked against the Macomber Meeting Hall. They stagger outside to drop their treasure into a brown cardboard box and jam themselves back into thick of it.

By 11:30 the space under the tent feels like a humidor, the thick musty scent of thousands of books that have been liberated from attics, garages, and bookshelves and transported to this depot fills the nostrils. Mountains of books have been donated, left in bags and cartons, all year long. Committees have sorted and priced them. Today, they’re on their next glide path.

Forget multi-tasking. This is fierce, concentrated mono-tasking. Amidst hushed voices reminiscent of a public library, people intently scan the spines of books packed chockablock on tables to find that elusive title or that favorite author. The entire mass of people moves as one slow deliberate task oriented organism.  Despite the earnestness of the search, decorum prevails.  No shoving, over-reaching, or squabbling – not to worry if a big one gets away. With 20,000 books piled up, an even better one might be just a few inches and a glance away.

Shoppers with specific lists shuffle side by side with consumers who rake the books in like fishing trawlers.

“If you think you’re even remotely interested, grab it,” says a college kid to his posse.
 
Delores and Edward Charette of Fall River are more particular. “My wife is sending me to the Romance Literature table to find Danielle Steele books she got from the computer,” Edward says. “I have a whole book case of her books. I’m sending him to find some of her older ones,” Delores says as she heads into the literary mosh pit.

Warren, RI resident Hannah discovered the book fair last year. “I’ve been insanely excited for three months and have been saving up my money to spend here. I’m going to have to make more book shelves this year,” she says. “The books I buy here are way cheaper and people here help each other out. If someone sees you pick up a book they say ‘If you like that one, you’ll like this one, too.’” Hannah shook out her piggy bank and shelled out $64. She will definitely need more room on her bookshelves.

An email making the rounds lately entitled “Ten things that will disappear in our lifetime,” cites “physical books that you hold in your hands” as number 4.

If today is any indication, there will be people who still want to touch, sniff, and finger the pages of books for years to come whether they’re card carrying AARP members or college kids like Hannah who read the fifth Harry Potter book in 17 hours straight or grade schoolers who relished finding their own books that filled tables in the Macomber Community House.

   
Greg Marcello, Book Fair Steering Committee Clerk, wasn’t shy about making the most of the occasion. “We hope you spend 50 times more money today, the 50th anniversary of this fair!” he said as the opening whistle pierced the air.

By dusk, a few hundred men, women, and children did their best to comply.

MORE PHOTOS, CAPTIONS

 

Books for 25 cents in the Meeting House...what a deal! Next week, a committee will begin sorting and pricing books for next year in the Book Shed behind the Meeting House.

 
Kids and parents had terrific choices in the Macomber Community House.

Mono-tasking under the tents...a book lovers paradise...categories of mystery, history, religion, philosophy, travel, gardening, cooking, photography, science, science fiction, humor, romance, art, and more.

Any books that remain at the fair's conclusion will be shipped to other booksellers who may send them overseas or recyle them. Encyclopedias and text books don't sell well and are  shipped to other booksellers or recycled, as are thousands of donated books that are so tattered they are not marketable.
 

 

Greg Marcello (top Left), Book Fair Steering Committee Clerk, had lots of help, instantly visible in bright blue T shirts. "You'd be interested to know that this year we've upgraded from tape on the backs of key people to printed t shirts! It only took us 50 years to make that decision!", Meeting member Kevin Lee says.

Kathleen (L) and Jim Shannon (baseball cap)...three generations of Dartmouth book lovers. "We’ve been coming here since before our kids were born,” Kathleen says.

 

Dr. Stewart Kirkaldy (with pt), the family physician who practiced for more than 45 years in Westport, blew the whistle to open the fair. Dr. Kirkaldy, who now resides in Middlebury, VT, has been present at opening day of every book fair since 1961 and until he retired was present in the Westport Friends Meeting House every Sunday.

“Seeing people I know working together to make this community event happen and the huge crowd here almost brought tears to my eyes. People come up and remind me of advice I gave to them during my 45 years of practicing family medicine.”

 

By the way, you're welcome to attend the Meeting Service any Sunday.

50th Annual Westport Quaker Meeting Used Book Fair: A Mighty Sale

Book Lover Alert!

The Mother of All Book Fairs, the Westport Friends (Quaker) Meeting Used Book Fair, will be held on Saturday, July 9, 2011, 11 AM to dusk and will continue for about 2 weeks thereafter.
938 Main Road, Westport, MA

This will be big. Last year, over 20,000 books in dozens of categories were laid out on tables under two huge tents and in two buildings on the grounds of the 190-year-old meeting house in the middle of Westport, MA. The added bonus about shopping on Saturday is that light snacks, home-made goodies and beverages will be sold.  The stuff will be good and, like the books, will be cheap!

This will be historic. It will mark the 50th anniversary of the book fair. Used paperbacks range from 6 for a dollar to a few bucks. A “Better Books” section has hardbound books that are ridiculously inexpensive. The event is the main source of income for the Westport Society of Friends (Quakers). No one leaves without buying something. This book fair is a reader’s answer to The Dollar Store. Scrape up the loose change on your bureau for a week and you can bring home a large paper bag of books.

The event will go on rain or shine. One year it was held while Hurricane Beulah was bearing down on Westport.

The book fair will go on for about two weeks. After Sunday, there’s a good chance you can find a page-turner. Just drop the dough you owe in the coffee can in the middle of one of the tables.

For more information: 
Greg Marsello, Book Fair Steering Committee Clerk 401-624-9840 
[email protected]
Dave and Emily Sutton, Friends In Residence 
508-636-4963 [email protected] 
emilyhsutton

For the story of last year's super book fair, http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/07/49th-annual-westport-friends-used-book-fair-big-bang-for-your-buck.html#comments

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Hardcover and paperback used books at ridiculously reasonable prices bring buyers back year after year.

 
Part of the fun is comparing your "finds" and having lunch in the shade next to the historic meeting house or right on its front steps (the 6 for a buck books go on sale in the meeting house at 10 AM).