2009 Program

Click here for our 2009 Schedule of Events!
 

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen is the 2009 community-wide reading selection!

Gumbo Tales is a colorful, loving portrayal of New Orleans’ food culture, the rich history behind it, and its relationship to people, as discovered by Roahen as she turned from Wisconsin native to New Orleanian at heart.  Sara Roahen is now proud to call New Orleans home.

The 2009 reading period is September 1st through October 29th.

 

Some praise for Gumbo Tales 

“If you’re sad not to be in New Orleans, Gumbo Tales is a fine book to soothe your cravings. If you’re happy to be in New Orleans, this is the book to lead you, rejoicing, to your favorite restaurant, or fire up that kitchen stove to make a batch of gumbo for your mama ‘n’ dem.  This book is a joy to read, a pleasure to pass along, a book to treasure.” 
- Susan Larson, Times-Picayune

“Sara Roahen’s Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, makes you want to spend a week — immediately — in New Orleans.”
- Jeffrey Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal

“Informative, engaging and amusing . . . Gumbo Tales has the not-surprising effect of leaving the reader’s mouth watering.”
—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

“With the recent surplus of food-related literature, the chorus of narratives about culinary heritages or moments of enlightenment gleaned from a bowl of pasta have become muddled. Which is why, when one food writer’s clarion voice cuts through the silt, the rest of us hired mouths want to celebrate, if not become a teensy bit jealous. Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, by Sara Roahen, achieves that coveted quality.”
- Bill Addison, The Dallas Morning News

“Several years ago, when I heard that both the daily paper and the alternative newsweekly in the city of New Orleans had hired transplanted Midwesterners to write about restaurants there, I’ll have to admit they struck me as odd choices for the job. But when I received this delightful volume by former Gambit Weekly restaurant reviewer/food writer Sara Roahen last fall, the genius of her hiring became apparent.”
- Virginia Wood, the Austin Chronicle

Publisher’s Description 

Celebrating New Orleans’ food culture, one specialty at a time. A cocktail is more than a segue to dinner when it’s a Sazerac, an anise-laced drink of rye whiskey and bitters indigenous to New Orleans. For Wisconsin native Sara Roahen, a Sazerac is also a fine accompaniment to raw oysters, a looking glass into the cocktail culture of her own family—and one more way to gain a foothold in her beloved adopted city. Roahen’s stories of personal discovery introduce readers to New Orleans’ well-known signatures—gumbo, po-boys, red beans and rice—and its lesser-known gems: the pho of its Vietnamese immigrants, the braciolone of its Sicilians, and the ya-ka-mein of its street culture. By eating and cooking her way through a place as unique and unexpected as its infamous turducken, Roahen finds a home. And then Katrina. With humor, poignancy, and hope, she conjures up a city that reveled in its food traditions before the storm—and in many ways has been saved by them since.

About Sara Roahen  

Sara Roahen is a writer and oral historian whose work usually involves food, cooking, memory, and/or place. Not necessarily in that order. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Chile Pepper, Food & Wine, Wine & Spirits, Gourmet, and Oxford American magazines, as well as Best Food Writing 2003, Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue, and Food and Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast.

Sara was born in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. She spent a year abroad as a foreign exchange student in The Netherlands before earning a BA in the History of Science and Philosophy from St. John’s College (attending both campuses, in Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM). She did time in several other cities and states, working her way from waitress to barista to line cook, before finally moving to New Orleans for the love of a man. Sara married Mathieu de Schutter in 2000, in no small part because he had brought her to New Orleans.

The hurricanes of 2005 shook loose Sara and Matt’s corporeal ties to the city. They resided for a time in Philadelphia, where Matt pursued a medical career and Sara ate tomato pie. On April 20, 2008, they moved back to New Orleans. Just in time for crawfish season and Jazz Fest.

Sara serves on the Board of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and on the Ark-Presidia Committee of Slow Food USA.