This poster was sold at a  benefit for the Edible Schoolyards program held by Chez Panisse on "Cafe du Monde" day, August 27, 2006

Edition of 1297 of which 125 copies are signed;
1-125, 26 copies are signed A-Z as artist’s proofs;
1 is signed as a dedication copy, and four sets are signed as progressives.

August 24, 2006, 

16" x 24"

11 colors;

Paper: Mohawk Superfine 100# Cover

Model: Victoria Dunkak Heifner

Client: Chez Panisse Cafe & Restaurant, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley CA 94709. Telephone 510-548-5525. Web site: http://www.chezpanisse.com

Dedication copy: Victoria Dunkak Heifner

1-125: Saint Hieronymus Press, Inc.

A-Z: Artist’s own use

Progressives: One set to Victoria Dunkak Heifner; one set to Li Jiang; 2 sets to Saint Hieronymus Press

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Hot, sultry summer Sunday and the stink of the Bogalusa sulfite paper mill all over everything. After a while you got not to notice it anymore, like heavy traffic or a freight train going by every twenty minutes. Rain every day at two o’clock and nothing ever dried out. The kudzu vines grew so fast you closed your windows at night to keep them out of the house.

Boards up on sawhorses groaning under the weight of the church-picnic laid on by the good women of the Greater Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church. Pan-fried chicken with milk gravy, deep-fried catfish with black-eyed peas and greens, corn bread slathered with butter, cloud-light biscuits, cool buttermilk and ice tea. More food than you could shake a stick at. I ate till I was ready to burst. The next day the FBI grabbed us two Congress of Racial Equality white boys and hustled us off to New Orleans and put us on a plane home because they were pretty sure we were in line to get killed by the Klan.

The civil rights movement introduced me to Southern cooking. Ten years later I bought an ice cream suit and went back to The Big Easy for the Jazz Festival and more food. “Best red beans and rice in Louisiana,” said the hand-lettered screen door sign. Well if it wasn’t I don’t know where the best was. I ate sugary beignet with rich chicory coffee drowned in steamed milk, boudon blanc with ham hocks and greens, gumbos and jambalayas that would raise up a dead man. I parked myself at the Desire Oyster Bar where, watched attentively by the shucker over his deep-worn marble counter, I ate oysters plain, ate oysters with Tabasco sauce, ate oysters with lemon wedges. and ate oysters with sauce mignonett until I could eat no more oysters. I got up early and I retired late in order to eat as much of New Orleans’ food as I could eat.

That generation-gone New Orleans was washed clean away by Hurricane Katrina’s wind and water. But there’s another New Orleans coming. New Orleans is dead, long live New Orleans! Laissez les bons temps rouler!