Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (22 page)

I swallowed, to make sure my airway was clear enough. It was. I swallowed again. The reaction was on the wane, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a Roman ER for half the night, in formal wear, so they could tell me what I already knew.

“I'll be okay,” I said. “Is the party over?”

The next day, we discovered the bigger problem. What pills I'd taken, plus a maintenance dose every four hours for the next day, exhausted the supply of Benadryl I had in my purse.
That was the only Benadryl I had packed. We would have to find more.

“You didn't pack any extra?” my mother asked. “Not one sheet?”

My mother tried her best to contain her irritation. At the age of twenty-one, I was only beginning to ease out of the hammock of my parents' care. I'd just assumed she'd packed a box, like always.

“Let's try Naples,” my father suggested. “There's a military base there.”

Though it was more than an hour out of our way, this seemed a sure bet. An American base would mean an American pharmacy. We made our way to Naples, my dad squinting over the steering wheel, trying to recall the way from his time spent posted in Italy thirty-some years before. My boyfriend rode shotgun, creasing and recreasing the map in hopes that somehow, the right fold would clarify our route.

What my dad did not know was that in the wake of the attacks in America on September 11, any references to the base had been scrubbed from public view, lest it become a target. We circled Naples over and over, each time veering into a seedier neighborhood.

“Can't we just ask someone?” I said, reaching to roll the window down. There was a group of young men sitting along the seawall, having a smoke. They looked like they could be sailors of some sort; maybe they would know where the base was.

“Do you have any idea where we are?” my father barked. “We are not stopping.”

We came and left Naples without ever stepping outside the car. Instead, back in Rome, we found one of the kelly-green crosses that signified a
farmacia
, where we were directed to the shelf for sleep aids. Though it wasn't what we needed, at least those pills contained the active ingredient of diphenhydramine. I had no other option.

I would manage the rest of that trip without needing to take another Benadryl. My reaction didn't keep us from ringing in the New Year on Rome's Spanish Steps, fireworks overhead, confetti and champagne corks raining down on us in the crowd. We still made it to Pompeii, Florence, and Venice. But could I have done it on my own? What would it have been like if I hadn't had someone to come find me on that couch at the Majestic?

Sometimes, a friend mentions a semester abroad he did in college, or the summer he backpacked through Amsterdam.

“I wish I'd done that,” I'll say absentmindedly. “Why didn't I do that?”

Once home, I'll remember that those options were never on the table when the topic of travel came up. As far as my parents were concerned, a semester abroad was a risk I couldn't afford to take. I'd learned my lesson about packing my own Benadryl. But no matter how many boxes I crammed into my suitcase, and how explicit or strategic I was in my allergy disclosure, there would always be a chef's mistake, the skeptical waiter, a housemate's drunken slipup. It wasn't that they didn't believe in me; I took care of myself to the best of my ability. It was the rest of the world they didn't trust.

•  •  •

February of last year, when I'd announced I was headed to New Orleans for five days, everyone had a suggestion of what to try. Crepes, they said. Pralines. Beignets at Café du Monde.

“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 form 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.