How can food-loving visitors to New Orleans find "real deal" cuisine in a city that offers them the choice of several thousand restaurants? Before becoming a full-time "local" in 2014, food critic and novelist Steven Wells Hicks spent forty years as an increasingly frequent visitor in search of the stories, people and dishes that make New Orleans one of America's legendary culinary playgrounds. Here he tells you about twenty-five of the more memorable places he's uncovered, from white tablecloth temples of cuisine to a lunchroom where boiled crawfish are served on yesterday's newspaper from a paper bag. You'll discover an old Mafia roadhouse in the boondocks, a fried chicken joint in an iffy part of town and even a greasy spoon where the main course is attitude. And that's just for starters. Plus, because Man cannot live by French bread alone, Hicks point you toward a dozen of the city's both famous and infamous watering holes. Unlike most conventional guidebooks featuring single-paragraph hype pieces singing the praises of every restaurant in the city, Hicks takes a novelist's approach to reviewing restaurants, opting instead for write leisurely pieces that not only tell you what's on a restaurant's plate, but also in a city's culinary heartbeat. Says Hicks in the book's preface, "Ultimately this book is a valentine, sometimes left-handed but hopefully right-minded, to a city and the people of an industry that have simultaneously provided me with a lifetime of sensuous fulfillment while wreaking untold havoc with my waistline and the balance on my American Express card." Pulling no punches and pouring on the literary hot sauce when called for, Hicks has written a book that has become required reading for serious food fanciers planning their first or fifty-first pilgrimage to the undisputed "Food Mecca on the Mighty Mississippi."
Novelist and recovering ad man Steven Wells Hicks spent forty years driving 192 miles up and down Interstate 55 between Mississippi and New Orleans, loving every minute coming south and loathing every second going back north. Buoyed by the success of his 2014 novel, Destiny's Anvil, he and his wife, Lil McKinnon-Hicks (The Sensible One), pulled up stakes and now make their permanent home in New Orleans' Algiers Point Historic District. Hicks wrote his first restaurant review in 1977 for "Jackson" magazine and has also written "Jackson PORTICO." In addition to his five previous guidebooks about dining in New Orleans, he is the author of four novels: The Gleaner, The Fall of Adam, Horizontal Adjustment, and Destiny's Anvil.
