By Julia Reed | Dec 08/Jan 09 | City Portrait

The Soul of New Orleans

The city has been through hell, but somehow the heart of this town is still beating

The Locals
Good Citizens
Five New Orleanians spek out about the place they love

Richard Smith
Galatorire's has been a temple of Creole cuisine since 1905. Since then, little has changed. The restaurant still refuses to take reservations downstairs, but the wait in the rowdy sidewalk line of old has moved to the slightly more civilized upstairs bar. The food, including such Creole classics as Trout Marguery and oysters Rockefeller, has its ups and downs, but the one constant is the familiar, and often valiant, care of your own personal waiter. New Orleans is the only city in the world where you do not book a table, you request a waiter. He knows you, anticipates your every need, and can tell by looking at you if you might require an extra finger of, say, Scotch. Or at least my waiter, Richard Smith, can (and so, too, can Imre, and Bryant, and John Fontenot, just to name a few). I have been waited on by excellent staff in great restaurants, and excellent, to me, generally means unobtrusive. But at Galatoire’s a touch of obtrusiveness is not just necessary, it is desired.

Karen Gadbois
New Orleans without its architecture would be like New Orleans without its food or music—like pretty much every other place in America. For more than thirty years, the Preservation Resource Center has fought to preserve and revitalize New Orleans’ historic neighborhoods, but after Katrina, its work got that much harder. Enter Karen Gadbois and her partners in squanderedheritage.com. Gadbois, a native of Boston who moved here in 2002, developed an uncommon love for the Creole cottages and shotgun houses of her adopted city. When so many of the damaged ones became slated for demolition by FEMA or city hall, Gadbois devoted a Web site to posting lists and photos of them. In some cases, the properties turned out to be on the National Register of Historic Places. Though the structures are not always saved, the site has served as a call to arms—and a visual love song to the sheer quirkiness and beauty of the city’s architectural landscape.

James Carville & Mary Matalin
When Louisiana native James Carville married Chicago-born Mary Matalin, the ceremony took place in New Orleans, Carville’s “favorite city.” Though the two political consultants and commentators were (and still are) from opposite sides of the political spectrum, there was always one area where they agreed: “James told me when we got married we’d end up in Louisiana,” says Matalin. “It’s like the Jews going back to Jerusalem…It’s the Holy Land.” Fifteen years later, they have come back—with their two daughters in tow. “The quality of life in Uptown New Orleans is as high as any place in the country,” Carville says. Matalin agrees: “This is an exciting thing for our family.” The girls attend local schools, and though their parents maintain hectic travel schedules, they are bona fide full-time residents and cheerleaders. Carville serves on the board of friendsofneworleans.org, an organization that lobbies for coastal restoration and other issues crucial to the city.

Donald Harrison
The Legacy of black New Orleanians dressing up like Native Americans on Mardi Gras Day goes back more than a century, but saxophonist Donald Harrison’s New Orleans roots are even deeper: His ancestors were drummers in Congo Square, the only place in the city where slaves were allowed to play their native drums. Now Harrison is a Mardi Gras Indian Chief, and he’s combined both family legacies by naming his “tribe” Congo Nation. “Mardi Gras Indian chants were really the first music that entered my consciousness,” he says. Now forty-seven, Harrison has earned another title, the King of Nouveau Swing, a style he originated that merges acoustic swing with everything from R&B to hip-hop. Earlier this year he debuted as an actor in Jonathan Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married. “I’ll continue to be a Mardi Gras Indian,” he told Demme in Right to Return, the filmmaker’s series of post-Katrina “home movies.” “If enough people do their part, everything will endure.”