Pecan bread pudding at Antoine's. Photo / Frank Rodriguez
Don't ask me how, but we ended up at Antoine's for lunch in the French Quarter before our tour of the Lower Ninth Ward. Once sticker shock wore off, really delicious pompano and beef tenderloin were the order of the day, followed by the extraordinarily rummy pecan bread pudding pictured above. Yum.
Then, as if we couldn't pack enough socio-economic contrast into one day, we went to Palace Cafe for dinner upon our return. As we chowed down on roast duck and Cotes du Rhone, we contented ourselves with the thought that we'd done exactly as Prospect.1 founder Dan Cameron intended by dropping into the city and dropping a wad of cash, all in the name of contemporary art.
Anyway, that's our story, and we're sticking to it.
Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and The Art Institute of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.
This article appears in Jan 14-20, 2009.