New Orleans – It’s one of the sentences I never thought I’d say. It’s along the lines of: “I can’t do lunch tomorrow because I’m flying to Neptune.” “My new Ph.D. will come in handy.” “Those Rockies World Series tickets sure are expensive.” Seriously, I found myself saying the following last week:
I can’t find a place to eat in New Orleans.
It was 9:30 on a Monday night, and nearly every street but Bourbon was as dark as a vampire’s tomb. I wandered up Royal Street, and restaurant doors were locked. The sidewalks were empty. Windows were black.
Fewer than half of New Orleans’ 3,000 restaurants reopened after Hurricane Katrina, a disaster that bore deeper into my soul after one devastating tour of the city. But just as a ravaged evacuee digs through his rubble and finds a valued memento, I dug through the rubble of the city and found a valiant story. It’s a story of perseverance, sweat and civic pride. Not surprisingly I found it in New Orleans’ wonderful world of restaurants, a world that has touched every one of us who’ve visited this still magical city. I’ve never had a bad meal in New Orleans. I doubt you have, either.
Mike LaBorde’s and Eric Krasnoff’s story isn’t as harrowing as some I heard. People told me of men getting sucked into manholes, mothers watching their children drown, of alligators feeding on the dead. But what the two 40-year-olds lost was still heartbreaking to them.
What’s even bigger, to all those who lost hope, is they got it back.
The pair owned a thriving burger joint across the street from the Louisiana Superdome called Tucker’s. It wasn’t just any burger bar. It was home to the stuffed deep-fried hamburger, which, if you’ve seen the deep-fried diets of this populace, was pretty popular.
Three weeks after a $150,000 renovation that jumped Tucker’s to 6,700 square feet, Katrina totaled the restaurant. What it didn’t sweep away, looters took. Yet four weeks ago, after the pair worked 18 hours a day for seven months, Tucker’s reopened. Business at the new location in the upscale Warehouse District is going well. The burger is clogging more arteries than ever.
And LaBorde and Krasnoff never have been so tired. Krasnoff knows tired. He spent 18 months in Iraq as a Marine in Desert Storm.
“There were days when we were building it that we said, ‘This ain’t even worth it,”‘ said LaBorde, who bought the place in 2001 with Krasnoff buying in last year.
LaBorde and Krasnoff sat in the elevated seating area where I looked at their sprawling restaurant and long wooden bar, overlooked by a string of TVs showing sports. LaBorde is a New Orleans native, and when the evacuation order came, he did what nearly everyone else did. He packed for two or three days.
This was routine to New Orleanians. Turns out, Katrina was not.
He eventually evacuated to Longview, Texas. He called the neighboring police on Aug. 30, the day the levees broke. He asked about the restaurant and the man on the phone said, “Mike, the water just keeps coming up.”
He showed me pictures. One, taken at 7:52 a.m., Aug. 28, 2005, almost exactly 24 hours before Katrina hit, showed a fun, airy restaurant with red chairs nearly as bright as the neon signs.
The next picture was after the flood when he arrived three weeks later. The chairs were torn up and upside down. Their office had collapsed. The floor was covered in what appeared to be 2 feet of wasted food, filthy floodwater and who knows what else?
“I spent the last six years of my life building that business up,” LaBorde said. “And in one day it was just gone. The money can be replaced. But just the time and energy.”
If it’s possible, it got worse. Evacuees had moved in and slept between the beer bins. Needless to say, unlike many of the lost citizenry, the bar’s new residents weren’t short of things to drink.
LaBorde and Krasnoff then faced a choice. Drastically underinsured, they could find a new line of work, rebuild or join the exodus. Tucker’s wasn’t their flesh and blood, but it was their blood and sweat. They stayed. They decided to start over.
“Do you want to help rebuild New Orleans or do you want to go someplace else and call New Orleans quits?” LaBorde said. “I wanted to be part of the rebuilding.”
The pair spent $300,000 of their money to rebuild in a decrepit building that once housed a Polynesian restaurant. They and six core employees did all their own carpentry, painting and electrical wiring.
What stands today is a near-replica of the old Tucker’s, except they have a sand volleyball court out back where an outdoor bar will soon be, along with an adjacent back bar. When finished, soon it will be more than 10,000 square feet.
So in the end, a restaurant survived. And so did another New Orleans culinary original. If you love hamburgers, you’ll love the stuffed deep-fried burger. If you lean more toward spinach salad, you’ll take one look at this hamburger and flee faster than any evacuee ever did.
LaBorde came up with the idea three years ago when he was in the bar, “hungry and drunk at 3 a.m.” He stuffed a hamburger and then, thinking, “They fry everything else in New Orleans. Why not this?” he put it in a deep fryer. It was great. (Then again, what doesn’t when you’re drunk at 3 a.m?)
I ordered The Big Tuck, stuffed with pepperjack cheese, American cheese and bacon and covered with barbecue sauce and cheddar cheese shavings for $8.50. My massive patty had an odd golden crust, but biting into it I sunk deep into a luscious, piping hot melting pot of tangy cheese and bacon with the BBQ sauce dripping down my hand.
Although I didn’t feel like eating for two days, I kept my streak alive. I still haven’t had a bad meal in New Orleans. And as I walked out of Tucker’s onto Magazine Street, one week before the one-year anniversary of the biggest natural disaster in American history, I noticed something about New Orleans.
It was raining. Hard.
Staff writer John Henderson covers sports and writes about the food he eats on the road. He can be reached at 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
