New Orleans is known the wide world over for its exotic cuisine. Not surprisingly, a number of linguistic idiosyncracies crop up on local menus. To wit: andouille (ahn-doo-ee) and boudin (boo-dan) are both spicy Cajun sausages.

A beignet (bin-yay) is a delicious square doughnut liberally sprinkled with powdered sugar, but the word is also used for fried tidbits of fish served as an appetizer.
Chicory (chik-o-ree) is an herb, the roots of which are dried, ground, roasted, and used to flavor the potent coffee we favor.
Cafe' au lait is half hot milk and half chicory coffee, delicious with sweet, sugary beignets.

Crawfish - enormously popular in these parts -is a tiny critter that resembles a miniature lobster. Locals often called them "mudbugs" because they live in the mud of freshwater streams.
Crawfish and shrimp turn up in a wide variety of local dishes, including the ubiquitous etouffee. In French, etouffee (ay-too-fay) means "smothered"; in these parts it means a succulent, tomato-based sauce in which crawfish and shrimp are, well, smothered.
Jambalaya (jum-boh-lie-ya), a culinary cousin of Spanish paella, is a many-splendored dish involving rice, tomatoes, ham, shrimp, andouille, chicken, celery, onions and spices.


You run across an array of gumbos here. Gumbo is a thick, robust soup with many variations (all of which include rice), such as chicken and andouille, okra gumbo, shrimp gumbo and file' (feelay) gumbo. (Incidentally, file' is ground sassafras.)
A mirliton is a hard-shelled vegetable pear that's cooked like squash and stuffed with spicy ground beef, ham, or shrimp; and plantain, a member of the banana family, is a sweetish vegetable sidedish. Pain perdu (French for "lost bread") is French toast made with thick slices of French bread.
Red beans and rice (a creamy mixture of kidney beans, rice, sausages and seasonings) is traditionally served on Mondays in South Louisiana, the reason being that after a weekend of rich brunches and dinners, locals like to start the week off with simple but hearty "stick-to-your-ribs" fare. If you're accustomed to Southern BBQ, a serving of New Orleans barbeque shrimp will take you by surprise; it isn't "barbecued" at all, but whole "peel-and-eat" shrimp simmered in a zingy garlic-butter sauce. Pralines (praw-leens), which can be found in souvenir, candy, and gift shops all over town, are sweet-sweet patties made with sugar, butter, and pecans; there are lots of variations, including a chocolaty concoction.

Oysters - tons of which are consumed by New Orleanians - are the raison d'etre of Oysters Bienville and Oysters Rockefeller, both of which originated here. For the Bienville-style dish, oysters are baked in their shells in a creamy sauce flavored with shrimp, mushrooms, and sometimes garlic or mustard. Named for the fellow who sauce is made with pureed greens flavored with anise liqueur.

Bananas Foster, an enormously popular dessert, involves bananas sauteed in butter, sugar, and cinnamon, then flamed with cognac and served over vanilla ice cream. The city's two sandwich extravaganzas are po-boys and muffulettas. The former (similar to submarines and heros) are served on thick slabs of French bread and include a dizzying variety of stuffings: roast beef and gravy, ham, fried oysters, fried shrimp, softshell crab and so on.

Muffulettas are served on platter-sized seeded Italian loaves slathered with olive relish and heaped with Italian meats and cheeses.

Oh, and incidentally "dressed" here has nothing to do with attire: it means a sandwich served "with the works". Lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap) is a pleasant little something extra. A bonus. Say, 13 doughnuts for the price of a dozen. And last, but by no means least, "Laissez les bons temps rouler!" That's a Cajun phrase you'll hear often in this part of the world. It means, "Let the good times roll!" You bet, cher. You betcha!