This Hotel Offers A Crawfish Concierge

Spring’s arrival at The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans affords your probability to attend a New Orleans time-honored culinary custom, a crawfish boil.

In fact, The Ritz-Carlton takes the common-or-garden seafood-and-spice yard boil and elevates it to one thing much more particular. The lodge hosts an annual Mudbugs and Bubbles sequence of soirées in its swank hidden courtyard, a white-brick-lined sanctum with a columned gazebo topped with a wrought-iron curlicue dome, a trickling fountain guarded by a pair of lion sculptures and bountiful greenery, like palms, ferns and topiaries. And the property makes it a totally New Orleans affair — the festive April 24 occasion featured dwell Louisiana bluegrass music from native band Bogue Chitto and an look by the champagne-loving Merry Antoinettes krewe, whose members confirmed up of their 18th-century most interesting with bodices, hoop skirts and massive curls.

However the primary occasion is the meals: all-you-can-eat succulent crawfish made by the Forbes Travel Guide 4-Star lodge’s knowledgeable cooks paired with free-flowing Veuve Clicquot in orange goblets. Presiding over the meal is a crawfish concierge, who rolls a cart from desk to desk scooping a heaving portion of the aromatic seafood, andouille sausage, potatoes, mushrooms, onions and corn on the cob onto a silver jelly roll pan for every partygoer. The mountain of crustaceans appears to be like intimidating to the uninitiated, however the crawfish concierge, chef Jason “Rosie” Flato, demonstrates the right way to correctly peel and eat it. The Louisiana native shares that whereas deshelling one, locals suck the discarded head, which holds in flavorful juices.

Whereas crawfish seem like miniature lobsters, their candy chicken tastes like a cross between shrimp and crab. The Ritz-Carlton’s citrus-heavy model packs warmth and taste that comes from soaking the crawfish in granulated garlic, mustard seed, Chinese language pink pepper, cayenne, clove, salt, tangerine, lemon and pineapple, Flato mentioned. However the recipe wants one thing extra. “Timing and temperature are the secrets and techniques,” he mentioned. “After quarter-hour, hold tasting.”

First harvested in south-central Louisiana’s Atchafalaya swamp, crawfish reside in freshwater streams, ponds and rivers below rocks and alongside the sandy ground, which is how they bought the nickname mudbugs. However the spiny lobster goes by many names. Louisianans name it crawfish. Northerners check with it as crayfish. And people in Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma use the time period crawdad.

In Louisiana, peak crawfish season runs from March to Could, and that’s once you see the seafood popping up at New Orleans markets, eating places and neighborhood boils. Locals wait all yr to benefit from the widespread Cajun staple. That is the fifth yr that The Ritz-Carlton, New Orleans has held Mudbugs and Bubbles, and the following version is ready for Could 14.