Don't Kill the Birthday Girl

by Sandra Beasley

  “Go get a burger at Snug Harbor and listen to jazz,” my friend Josh told me. “Best burger in New Orleans.”

  “See if Messina’s is still there,” advised Greg, “and if so, get a muffuletta.”

  Perhaps noting that I was going to New Orleans for a conference on food allergies would have been enough to remind them that none of these foods is an option for me. Some cities are meant to be explored one signature meal at a time, whether it be boeuf bourguignon in Paris or spaghetti carbonara in Rome. What if you can’t do that?

  Walking through New Orleans on a chilly night, I wondered just how much I was missing. The night before, I had gone to Bourbon House and ordered the oysters, on the recommendation of a local poet who swore they were the best in town, sourced locally from P & J Select. I’d sat at the bar, sipping an Abita Turbodog as I watched them shuck open shell after shell, my anticipation mounting.

  What they brought me were a half dozen fleshy, bland blobs—notable only for their size, as big as my palm. This was what I’d been waiting for? I looked at the diners around me and noticed that what they were devouring were Oysters Rockefeller (baked and topped with parsley, cheese, and bread crumbs) and Fonseca (heavy cream, peppers, and ham). No wonder. These oysters weren’t prized for their liquor or their delicacy. I was trying to judge a dish by the taste of the plate.

  So here I was, back on Bourbon Street, considering whether I should skip the meal and head straight to a hot toddy at Preservation Hall. The French Quarter seemed an apropos place to drink one’s dinner. Stopping to let a train of Mardi Gras–bedazzled twenty-one-year-olds pass, I looked up at the sign above the restaurant to my left.

  Galatoire’s, it said in black curlicue script.

  Galatoire’s. I’d heard of it. Jean Galatoire, a French immigrant, founded the restaurant in 1897 and opened its doors at 209 Bourbon Street in 1905. Tennessee Williams had a regular corner table, and made it the setting of Blanche and Stella’s meal early on in A Streetcar Named Desire. I tried to recall the type of food that made Galatoire’s famous. Ah, yes. Creole cuisine: an amalgam of French, Portuguese, Spanish, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian, and African ingredients, with Native American cooks throwing corn and bay leaves into the pot for good measure. In other words, exactly the kind of menu my mother would warn me away from.

  But I was here. I was hungry, and I was dying to have one good authentic New Orleans meal. I headed inside.

  “Walk-in for one?” the hostess inquired brightly. I confirmed, not realizing my answer secured a spot in the bustling downstairs room, which is always seated first come, first served. She directed me to the bar until they freed up a table. I perched on a stool and ordered a martini. As the bartender skewered an olive, then two, I worried I’d just made my first mistake.

  “Are those olives stuffed with blue cheese?” I asked.

  “Oh, no.” He shot me a slightly offended look. “They are stuffed with anchovies.”

  When in Rome. Besides, I didn’t have an anchovy allergy. I took a sip and found the brininess of any good dirty martini, without the cloud of olive-jar slop-water used by so many bartenders in lieu of actual juice. Interesting. I’d heard of chicken hearts in tequila before, but never fish in gin.

  Soon I was summoned to the downstairs dining room, where they had made a nook for me by pushing a table up against one of the support beams, catty-corner to a group of fourteen. Everywhere, brass glinted and mirrors gleamed. The walls vibrated with the contrast created between emerald green, gilded with fleur-de-lis, and the crisp white of wainscoting and trim. Conversations interwove with the clinking of forks against china, which filled the air being churned by rows of ceiling fans overhead.

  I cracked open the leather-bound menu to find dish after dish, each with an elegant name and unelaborated ingredients. I bit my lip. For every type of seafood I recognized, there was an unfamiliar treatment. Meunière Amandine? What the heck was “Yvonne garnish”? The sauces I knew, I knew to be butter based. Hollandaise. Béarnaise. Even the poultry had been rendered unrecognizable: Chicken Bonne-Femme, Chicken Clemenceau, Chicken Créole, Chicken Financière, Chicken Saint-Pierre, Chicken Comet, Chicken Cupid, Chicken Donner, Chicken Blitzen, and so on.

  A tuxedo-clad man appeared before me. He had pale skin, cropped brown hair, and a warm smile. He looked like the kind of guy you’d want taking your sister to prom.

  “My name is Preston,” he said. “I’ll be your server this evening. I see you’ve got a drink there. Can I get you started with anything else?”

  “Don’t get scared,” I said. “But just so you know, I’ve got to stay away from dairy and egg. I’ve got food allergies.”

  Though I’d just wiped out over half the menu, he did not blink. Without the pretense of whatever given fancy name, he recommended the fish of the day, drum, sautéed with artichokes, mushrooms, and crab.

  “You’ll love it,” he said. He asked about appetizers.

  “Is there anything on the ‘green salad with garlic’?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Just lots of garlic.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got other allergies—croutons, cucumbers—but I find it’s best to mention only what’s relevant to the kitchen. Otherwise it overwhelms them.”

  He nodded. “We’ll take care of you,” he promised, sweeping up my menu and sidling past a waiter en route with a tray of oysters.

  I wanted to believe him. I lifted my glass for a long sip and—oooh—already, something I’d forgotten to ask. I called him back. Did the dressing have mustard? Of course it did. Dressing diverted. Oil requested. A waiter attempted to deliver a basket of puffy loaves of French bread, each the girth of a small football. I waved him away.

  Ten minutes later, Preston returned with my salad, which sans dressing turned out to also be sans garlic. One slick and fragrant leaf, clinging to the far rim of the plate, was the only evidence of the intended preparation. He looked down at me.

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. I moved my hand defensively to my book: just another girl reading to distract herself from a dinner alone. Then I realized he was commenting on my empty martini glass. “What would you like to drink next?”

  I asked him to pair a wine with the fish, and he suggested a Spanish white. My mind flashing back to the range of prices on the menu, I hesitated.

  “It’s not going to break a poet’s budget, is it?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said. “It’s one of the least expensive—seven dollars, I think—but if you like, I—”

  “Never mind,” I cut him off, blushing. “I trust you.”

  The greens were plain but crisp and sweet, and as I munched them I took in the choreography of service around me. The room was ringed in hooks, in part reflecting the dress code, which required jackets for men, and in part to clear whatever space possible between the densely grouped tables. If anyone had dared lay a coat over the back of a chair, it would have been swept to the floor by one of the ten waiters perpetually hustling over the black-and-white-patterned tiling. Every time the water level of my glass (helpfully labeled Galatoire’s) threatened to sink below the halfway point, someone stopped what he was doing to dash over and fill it. Sometimes, as they edged past each other, one placed a protective hand on the small of another’s back to guide him clear of a diner’s jutting elbow. Other times they’d clasp and squeeze palms as they passed.

  Preston returned, and with an elaborate twist of his wrist he swung a plate down.

  “Here we have it,” he said. “Drum, in a brown butter sauce.”

  I looked up at him. “Brown butter. Um. Dairy?”

  “I will be right back,” he said, whisking the plate away.

  I was glad to have more time for people-watching. If ever one needed to argue that eating is as much a social ritual as a survival imperative, the proof is at Galatoire’s. I could see why the line for their Friday lunch seating, which apparently winds down Bourbon Street, begins to f
orm as early as 8 a.m. (Though regular patrons have the right to call in a proxy placeholder, no one gets to cut. Part of the house lore concerns the time Louisiana senator J. Bennett Johnston stepped out of line and into the restaurant in order to take a call inside from then president Ronald Reagan. When their conversation was over, he left the restaurant to get right back in line.)

  All around me people were hopping tables, kissing cheeks, raising glasses. I tried to fill in the gaps to their stories. Surely the slight, happy blonde at the biggest table was celebrating her sixteenth birthday; surely that was her mother, the hair dyed a more silvery blond, her fingers twisting the pearls at her throat over and over. Surely the gray-haired foursome behind me, who had just erupted in applause as their waiter set fire to their bowl of Café Brulot, were seeing one another for the first time in twenty years. This was a fun game. Surely the gentleman in the seersucker suit, who had just slugged through his third Manhattan, was one of New Orleans’s most prominent judges. Surely that was his longtime mistress in the pink cocktail dress and lacy shawl.

  Preston returned and set down my plate once more. This time it was bare of any sauce, revealing instead the plate’s concentric rings of green that set off a flourished proclamation: Galatoire’s. Centered on the plate was a whole filet of drum, tucked beneath a tower of silky mushrooms, slabs of artichoke heart that had never seen the inside of a jar, and lumps of fresh crabmeat.

  “Oh my,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You enjoy,” Preston said, bowing his head slightly as he stepped away.

  Each bite began with the moist drum, then yielded to the meatier artichoke and savory mushroom, before finishing with a top note of pure crab. Later, in consultation with the official Galatoire’s cookbook, I’d figure out this was the menu’s “Yvonne garnish” that I’d wondered about—in my case, minus the butter. The dish honored Yvonne Galatoire Wynne, daughter of Justin Galatoire, nephew of Jean himself. Preston hadn’t just accommodated; he’d figured out a way to treat me to a house specialty.

  As my tongue teased at the feathery bits of crab, I knew this was the kind of meal that could never be reduced to a series of recipes. It was the culmination of the room, the history, the service, and the cheerful din. The pleasure of each bite was intensified by the risk of trusting an unfamiliar city to take care of me, even when I was traveling alone. The taste was New Orleans.

  When Preston brought my coffee, it took all my restraint to not slip the spoon into my purse as a trophy. Galatoire’s, it said on the stem, in that now familiar script.

  CHAPTER NINE

  What Doctors Really Think

  On the cusp of my thirtieth birthday, I had traveled to New Orleans to attend the annual conference of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI). I know about food allergies from the ground up, based on firsthand experience. I wanted to hear what was being said from the top down. I wanted to know what doctors say about future treatments for allergies when their patients aren’t around.

  Though I know it’s a licensed job, I’ve always thought of doctors in terms of personal relationships. My grandfather, my uncle, the allergist who has handled my case since I was one—all have cared for me with a mix of professional acuity and protective affection. My first serious boyfriend knew, even in high school, that he would become a doctor. I used to periodically check on the price of monogramming a stethoscope, thinking I would get him one as a graduation gift someday.

  Though we broke up before he headed off to medical school, years later we’d still get together for the occasional awkward drink. One night he surprised me by mentioning that he might go into ear, nose, and throat medicine. I’d always imagined him as one of those superstars who finds a cure for cancer. He had assisted at a local university’s oncology lab our senior year of high school. Who trades that in for hay fever and swimmer’s ear?

  “There’s a lot of research to be done,” he’d said, sipping his pint of Harp.

  I kind of hated that he was now someone who drank beer. I kind of hated that I was now someone who drank beer. Our high school dates had consisted of walking down to the Wendy’s two blocks from campus, where I’d order a Barq’s root beer and French fries. We’d sit down at one of those tables that wobbled no matter how many yellow napkins you stuffed under the base, and I’d play the soda’s squeaky-straw trombone as we talked. He’d take the first bite of his mayo chicken sandwich, and I’d remind him that there was no kissing from there on out. He’d stab the air with a fry for emphasis as he predicted a treatment for food allergies that worked, really worked. It’s a matter of time.

  Sitting in a downtown bar years later, on that awkward not-date, I was reminded of what had changed between us—and what had stayed exactly the same. “Ear, nose, and throat” is the umbrella for studies of asthma and allergy. Maybe there was a small part of him that still dreamed of fixing me. Maybe there was a small part of me that still dreamed of proving fixable.

  But ROTC would take my ex on a detour through Japan, where he was assigned several years of service as a naval flight surgeon. All of my other doctor friends had gone into pediatrics. I arrived at the AAAAI conference with a schedule, an orange-ribboned press pass, and no tour guide. I’d have to make my way on my own.

  Early on the first morning, I headed down to the Poster Session, where mobile “walls” had been built out of upholstered panels, creating aisles where abstracts presented throughout the conference were printed out and pushpinned up. Each poster measured as large as three feet eight inches high and seven feet six inches wide—eighth-grade science fair posters on steroids—and each row had a different theme, from “Asthma, Education, and the Underserved” to “Cytokines and Chemokines” to “IgE and Allergy.” Some studies took an intuitive hypothesis—e.g., kids in the inner city are more susceptible to asthma—and saddled the sociological observation with data, percentages, and charts. Some studies were pure jargon unless you knew the relevant compounds by heart.

  I made my way to the row marked FOOD ALLERGY 1. The crowd surged in unpredictable waves, as people tried to talk to the exhibitors standing in front of their posters. Exhibitors periodically broke away and zigzagged down the row to talk to one another. It was as if I’d walked into a reunion for a college I had never attended. I didn’t have the icebreaker of an institutional affiliation or the wingman of a colleague. I didn’t recognize a single face.

  Yet, in some ways, I felt completely at home. Maybe not with the allergists, but certainly with the allergies themselves. It was as if the posters in this row had been curated by the director of that old documentary series This Is Your Life. Every five feet, I found an answer to a question that had nagged at me. One poster outlined the difference in “restrictive” versus “permissive” diagnostic criteria for anaphylaxis. One poster documented reactions to soy among those with birch allergies. A quartet of posters discussed the allergenicity of baked milk versus raw. Pending publication in a peer-reviewed journal, all these abstracts were considered “preliminary findings.” Still, if you wanted a portrait of where the science was heading, this was it.

  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I am the only person in the room thinking about food allergies. In this place, I was surrounded by people who not only thought about food allergies but also dedicated substantive portions of their careers to the topic. From Arkansas to the Netherlands, from Tokyo to Cork, from Mount Sinai to Manitoba, center after center had sponsored these studies. It was both thrilling and deeply intimidating. I’d gone from being the default expert to the de facto rube.

  I walked up the row, then back, then up again, until I realized it looked like I was pacing. I stopped in front of a University of Michigan poster on “the administration of influenza vaccine to egg-allergic children under thirty-six months.” To this day, I’ve never taken a flu shot, based on the principle that it carries proteins from the egg in which the vaccine’s ingredients are incubated. In flat, unemotional language, the abstract made clear that this was prob
ably an outdated precaution.

  As I struggled to reconcile ten seconds of reading with almost thirty years of my mother’s prevailing wisdom on flu shots, a tall man with dark brown hair and a thin nose approached the poster’s presenter. Though his suit was unremarkable, he had a sharp bearing; the woman from the University of Michigan straightened up as she answered his quick questions about their methodology and sample size. As he turned to go, I impulsively reached out and touched his shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to ask if—” If what? I had no plan. I tried to scan his name tag and hit a traffic jam of initials: F, A, A, A, A, I.

  “—to ask if you were with the … Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network?”

  That was the only organization that I could think to name, but as soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong. The acronym had not enough As, no Ns. His mouth pursed slightly.

  “No,” he said. “No, I’m with Duke.”

  Mistaking a university-sponsored allergy researcher for a FAAN staffer, in a setting like this, is akin to being on the Hill and mistaking a South Carolina Senator for a lobbyist. Not inconceivable but not really forgivable, either. He walked away and, fifteen feet down from where I stood, took up residence with his team. They were presenting not one but a whole constellation of posters, each bearing the logo of a shield, each toned in that distinctive Devil-blue palette. I watched as passerby after passerby stopped to give him a respectful nod and handshake.

  Well. That was an auspicious start.

  • • •

  Outside the medical community, the question everyone wants answered is, Why is the incidence of food allergy growing at such an alarming rate?

  There are a handful of popular ideas, the most prominent of which is the Hygiene Hypothesis. The Hygiene Hypothesis suggests that in cultures where people are no longer routinely exposed to as many parasites, bacteria, and viruses as their ancestors, restless immune systems have turned their attention to harmless food proteins. Usually, this hypothesis surfaces as part of a larger nostalgic position that kids today are overprotected and missing out by not “playing in the dirt” more often.