Mardi Gras is different this year. Parades have been canceled, and large gatherings are dangerous because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, the Mardi Gras spirit lives on, today and with our memories of Mardi Gras past.
James Beard award winning chef Frank Brigtsen joined Scoot to share some of his fondest Carnival memories. Brigtsen, a native New Orleanian, worked under renowned chef Paul Prudhomme before opening his own restaurant, Brigsten's, in the Riverbend in 1986.
“I have the sweetest memories of all,” Brigtsen said, chuckling. “When I was a young boy in grade school, all through those years, my father would rent a suite at the Monteleone Hotel on Royal Street for the whole Mardi Gras weekend. He had a second floor suite at the corner of Royal Street and Iberville reserved every year.
“This was, of course, in the days in the 60s when the parades came right down Royal Street,” Brigtsen continued. “And, of course, Rex would be on Canal Street. It was a wonderland of Mardi Gras. It truly was, and we would get taken out of school on Fridays and go check in and spend five days there. It was the absolute best of Mardi Gras.
With a vantage point so close, he could almost touch the floats.
“From that second floor suite, when Comus went by, the floats were right there,” Brigtsen said. “It was just magical, just magical. Those were the sweetest Mardi Gras memories of all.”
The floats won't be parading this year, but you can see some house floats all around the area. And, obviously, there's still the food.
“Every year, a journalist from another city would call and say, 'what's your Mardi Gras menu,'” Brigtsen said. “Of course, the answer is fried chicken and king cake. I think king cake is the thing, and it's just gotten bigger and bigger and better and so diverse over the past 10 years.
“In the past, I've done what I call a carneval menu leading up to Mardi Gras because carnival means goodbye to meat,” Brigsten went on. “So I would have sort of a meat-centric menu. And then, of course, starting the next Wednesday would go into more of a Lenten menu with more seafood.”
Things are different this year, unfortunately; but that hasn't changed everything.
“What we're doing now and what we do every year in the weeks leading up to Mardi Gras is king cake bread pudding,” Brigtsen said. “This is a collaborative project between my talented sous chef, Emily Pfeifer, and myself.
“This is not bread pudding made with king cake,” Brigtsen explained. “This is a French bread bread pudding. It's flavored with cinnamon, of course, and some butter to give it a kind of brioche style. And she makes a cream cheese sauce to go with it. And my contribution is I make what's called an Italian meringue, which is a cooked meringue.”
Despite the disruptions to this Mardi Gras season, Brigtsen ended on a hopeful note.
“I think this year, more than ever, it's important to support all of our Mardi Gras artists,” he said. “The king cake makers, what people are doing with house floats and giving some work to these artists that would normally be very busy this time of year.
“New Orleans rises above whenever we're faced with anything negative,” Brigtsen said. “The spirit is alive, and we have to do everything we can to promote that.”