Sweet Olive Bed and Breakfast’s Journal - New Orleans

One of our favorite mags—Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel—has a story this month about the best BBQ joints in America. It includes this item about one of our favorites in our next-door neighborhood, the Bywater.

LOUISIANA
New Orleans: The Joint

A year before Hurricane Katrina hit, husband-and-wife owners Pete and Jenny Breen outfitted an abandoned building in New Orleans’s Bywater neighborhood with wooden benches and a giant black smoker. After the storm, the duo reopened right away, trucking in meat to cook free meals for neighbors. Today, they’re still pleasing locals with spicy, Cajun-style sausages and rapidly gaining a reputation as one of America’s best stops for BBQ pork ribs, rubbed in spice and smoked for hours until they gain a crisp, caramelized coating and fall-off-the-bone texture. End the meal with a traditional Southern specialty, extra-creamy peanut butter pie. 801 Poland Ave., 504/949-3232, ribs plate $10.

This weekend I finally got around to perusing Gambit magazine’s list of top 50 bars in New Orleans. Right there in the #2 spot is Mimi’s in the Marigny, just a few blocks from us.The bar was praised for, among other things, its terrific tapas bar upstairs that serves late into the night. Coming in at #12 was the nearby Allways Lounge which Gambit notes “has blossomed as a destination and odd intersection for bohemian theatergoers, indie and alternative rock fans, and regulars for whom it’s always been a gay and lesbian friendly neighborhood bar.” Also nearby: D.B.A., the Blue Nile, HiHo Lounge, and everybody’s favorite dive the Saturn all get kudos as well.

This morning on the way to our nearby coffee shop, the Who Dat Coffee Cafe, I encountered another of those magical moments that help make our neighborhood unlike any other.

After reading our summer update Eileen Riordan was kind enough to share some great pix from their visit with us back in 2007. Here are a few of my favorites.