Both Gris-Gris and Saint John have launched new seasonal menus. New items include:

• Saint John:
  • BEEF TARTARE | Capers, Black Truffle, Black Garlic, Cured Egg Yolk with Toasted Ciabatta.
  • PANÉED PORK CHOP | Double Cut Duroc Pork Chop, Italian Bread Crumbs, New Crop White Bean Cassoulet.
  • LOUISIANA CITRUS SALAD | Mixed Chicory Greens, Local Citrus Segments, Candied Pecans, Champagne Vinaigrette.
  • SHRIMP YASSA | Lemon, Garlic, Spicy Mustard, Stone Ground Grits with Toasted French Bread.
  • BOUDIN BENEDICT | Fried Green Tomatoes, Cochon de Lait Boudin, Fried Egg, Sauce Choron.
  • CHICKEN BONNE FEMME | Pan Roasted Chicken Breast, Pearl Onions, Mushrooms, Potatoes, Bacon Lardons with Chicken Jus.
  • BROWN BUTTER SEARED SCALLOPS | U-10 Diver Scallops, Confit Duck and Blackberry Crépinette, Sweet Potato Purée, Spiced Pecans with Chicory Green Salad.
  • BREAKFAST POBOY | Toasted French Bread Pistolette, Hot Sausage Patties, American Cheese, Scrambled Eggs, Crystal Aioli.
• Gris-Gris:
  • PECAN CRUSTED PORK CHOP | Chargrilled, Double Cut Pork Chop, Louisiana Oyster Dressing, Caramel Apple Gastrique.
  • CHEF’S SEASONAL HOUSE SALAD | Hand-Picked Selection of Local Ingredients with Creole Inspiration.
  • STEWED MISSISSIPPI RABBIT | Tender Carrots, Celery and Onions with White Wine, Creole Dirty Rice and Southern Cornbread.
  • THE CRAB CAKE | Jumbo Lump Crab, Sauce Ravigote, Meyer Lemon, Celery Root, Pickle Red Onion and Apple Slaw.
  • GRIS-GRIS SLAM (brunch) | 2 Eggs, Texas Toast, Brabant Potatoes, Grits with Choice of Applewood Smoked Bacon or Breakfast Sausage.

Chef Eric Introduces “Put the Gris-Gris on it!”

• Chef Eric is thrilled to introduce his new Creole seasoning blend, Put the Gris-Gris on it! Made with roasted garlic, black pepper, smoked paprika and a few secret spices and carefully crafted to add lots of flavor with less salt than other seasonings on the market. The new seasoning blend comes in regular and hot and is available for purchase at Gris-Gris, Saint John, Gris-Gris to Go Go and online!
  • ORDER HERE: Put The Gris-Gris On It

Upcoming Events:

• Gris-Gris Halloween Party (October 28): This Halloween, Gris-Gris will be transformed into an otherworldly space for an evening of hauntingly good vibes... It's the Gris-Gris Halloween Party on Saturday, October 28 (7-11 pm) featuring our friends at Jameson! Enjoy all-inclusive Halloween-themed fare, spooky snacks, drinks and wicked passed apps! Costumes are REQUIRED, so come dressed to scare. Best dressed will leave with a spooktacular prize from Gris-Gris and Jameson!
  • Tickets ($120) here.

• Saint John Krewe of Boo Pregame (October 21): Venturing to the French Quarter for Krewe of Boo? You have to pre-game for the parade at Saint John! Saturday, October 21st we’ll have a special "Spooky Happy Hour" with drinks and bites from 3-6 PM before the parade starts at 6:30 pm. Check out Saint John's new cocktail menu and show off your costumes. It’s sure to be a night you'll remember! Cocktails, costumes, parades, and Chef Daren making the playlist... Nothing could be better!

​Let The Right One In
review by Paul Oswell

If all you wanted was to not feel alone, what’s the highest price that you’d pay? This is a question that many of the characters ask themselves in ‘Let The Right One in’, now showing at Le Petit Theatre. Jack Thorne’s adaptation (of the 2008 Swedish movie of the same name) is restrained, and at many times bleak, but with hope buried deep in its dark heart. 

The Scandic noir ambience of the film is impressively recreated on stage. The production team uses basic props, but somehow manages to keep things astonishingly cinematic, especially given the demanding number of scene changes. By combining unfussy, practical sets and impeccably atmospheric video projections, we’re at once in a dark forest, a school locker room, or underwater. Even judged solely on a technical level, this production soars. 

We’re dropped into a small, rural and snowbound town. Oscar (Dalton Major) is an older teen, an only child with a caring but alcoholic mother (Wendy Miklovic). He is relentlessly bullied by his peers. Eli (Caylee Sanders) is a young girl around his age, who moves in next door with an adult man, Hakan (Mike Harkins), who we presume to be her father. She has strange mannerisms, and appears to live almost outside of time, like an intelligent alien. Oscar and Eli cautiously bond as outcasts. Meanwhile, blood-drained corpses start to appear as a series of grisly murders has the town understandably on edge. 

A supernatural element unfolds gradually, and as both Oscar and Eli’s situations become increasingly fraught, they are drawn closer together, at the same time being forced to make some dramatically adult decisions. Salvatore Mannino’s direction has a satisfying, patient delicacy to it, allowing scenes to breathe when necessary, exploring the nuances of what it really means when you commit to loving a son, a friend, a partner, a soul mate. 

Major and Sanders skillfully and empathetically navigate an unusual coming-of-age romance with poignancy, while Harkins’ unconditional love is laid heart-wrenchingly bare. Andrew Hagen and Derek Boudreaux entertainingly deliver as Oscar’s tormentors (Johnny and Mickey) - both believably cruel, with Boudreaux showing rare glimmers of a conscience. Ryan Hayes, Nick Strauss and Kevin Wheatley are all wonderful as various townsfolk, from shopkeepers to police officers to Oscar’s semi-estranged father. It’s fine character work from them, and the multiple roles are never jarring. 

Occasional live camera feeds relayed on stage help to create a televised press conference, or put relationship dynamics under a probing visual microscope. There are particularly moving moments as Oscar bonds with his mother and later Eli in their small apartment. Once again, this blending of technology with a cold, analogue world helps move us seamlessly between locations. Scene changes can be tricky vortices, where the emotional resonance of a play can waver, but it’s maintained here with thoughtful imagination.

I loved the moments of stillness, the minimalist soundtrack and how evocative the whole experience was. Honors are split right down the middle between cast and crew, all of whom should feel very proud of the result. There’s an undeniable backdrop of unspeakable violence and horror, but Let The Right One In is an exploration of love. Love sometimes comes with a price tag that’s more than we can afford, and rationalizing a vast emotional cost can be terrifying in itself. 

Let The Right One In plays at Le Petit Theatre through October 22nd. You can buy tickets via this link. 

This October 14-23, 2022, participants are invited to join in the celebration at cocktail bar Cure, and toast to Elijah Craig Old Fashioned Week. As a commitment to partnering with the Southern Smoke Foundation, Elijah Craig pledges to: 

• Donate $5 for each photo of an Elijah Craig Old Fashioned that’s uploaded to Instagram using the hashtag #oldfashionedweek and tagging @elijahcraig. 
• Donate $1 for every online sweepstakes registration for the Elijah Craig Cocktail Courier Bar Kit, which features Elijah Craig Old Fashioned syrup and a premium stir set. The Old Fashioned Week Sweepstakes photo contest and online registration can be accessed via social media and www.old fashioned week.com. 

​Dracula
Review by Paul Oswell

It was a dark and stormy night, though other cocktails were also available at the bar. We’d been summoned to a strange venue by an eccentric host. The weather was, as it always is these days, unseasonably clement, and so I’d forgone my regular crucifix-emblazoned smoking jacket with garlic clove and wooden stake accessories. I brought with me, as per the invitation, a folding chair and a simple, everyday blood sample in an ornate drinking vessel. Yes, I thought that strange as well - bringing your own chair to a theatrical performance! (I'm just goofing about the blood sample)

Welcome, then, to the NOLA Project’s seasonally-astute production of Dracula, a comically romantic retelling of the classic Gothic vampire myth. The venue is a warehouse on the Lafitte Greenway, an industrially-dreary but atmospheric backdrop.  

There’s little in the way of set dressing, deft and daft sound design by Khiry Armstead, Joan Long’s subtly effective lighting and a cast of eight actors taking on dozens of roles. Props are mainly limited to costumes (notably excellent work by Bridget Ann Boyle and Grace Smith), and a few boxes on wheels. In terms of challenges, it’s something of a high-wire act to turn this into a triumphantly entertaining two hours, but as you’ll see, The Nola Project vamp their way to success with real aplomb.

Jonathan Harker (played with wide-eyed befuddlement by Keith Claverie), a young English lawyer, travels to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to assist a reclusive Count with a real estate transaction. He orates gag-heavy letters to his fiancée, Mina Murray (a delightfully petulant Alexandria Miles) as the story unfolds. 

There’s an unsettling carriage ride, Joe Signorelli and Natalie Boyd note-perfect as a knife-sharpening psychopath and his mother, the arrival at the castle (Signorelli and the excellent Wayland Cooper as overly-sensual acolytes), and an introduction to Count Dracula. Benjamin Dougherty sinks his teeth into the titular role, switching nimbly between vampiric menace and farcially flummoxed frustration. 

Thanks to a script that's tighter than a pinching pair of pumpkin-print panties, the textual, visual and even aural gags come at you from the start like bats from the rowdiest belfry in town. There are post-modern, Pthyonesque set pieces, fanciful physical flourishes and let me ask you this - when’s the last time that you laughed at a recurring sound effect? I’m not sure that I ever have, but it (you won’t miss it, believe me) landed every single time.

The vicissitudes of the plot have the Count eventually traveling to London to pursue Mina, jockeying for position among a rogue’s gallery of suitors. The wonderfully versatile Signorelli is a clueless toff, Natalie Boyd is riotously great as a dope fiend in the asylum business, and Cooper fully commits to a brilliantly incongruous, rootin’ tootin’ cowboy. All of them are hilarious, and change costumes at impressively breakneck speeds.

Meghan Whittle nails Lucy, Mina’s hedonistic best friend, and has the crowd howling as Renfield in a scene parodying The Silence of the Lambs. Alex Martinez Wallace positively revels in his roles as Mina’s mother and the vampire hunter Van Helsing, approaching both with a joyous oozing of camp swagger. Dougherty and Miles both expertly distill comedy from the emotional heart of the novel, and Claverie’s coterie of brash supporting characters feels like an extra level of comic relief, even within a relentlessly funny play. 

Writer Pete McElligott has penned a wonderful silly script, tonally edging toward Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Directors Khiry Armstead and Leslie Claverie allow for just the right levels of fourth wall breaking, and conduct things at a satisfying, comically-intensifying pace. Just in case it’s not clear, I loved this play like Dracula loves enticingly-exposed necks.

I can’t believe it’s much fun living as a vampire. You’d have to forgo any reflective surfaces for one, and I really couldn’t see myself living in a house without mirrors. I SAID I REALLY COULDN’T SEE MYSELF…fine, suit yourself. Catch this production before the sun comes up on it permanently - like me, you’ll be truly fangful (sorry, we had to get one in) for the memories.

Dracula plays at The Greenway Station through Oct 15th. Tickets available via this link.

Starting October 16, Cane & Table will expand their hours to be open on Mondays. In addition, they'll be offering a Happy Hour (Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 5-7PM). The menu will have 5 cocktails (no food) on there that are mostly rum-based and tropical-inspired. 

Cane & Table website

Throughout the month of October, these three local restaurants will each feature specialty cocktails to benefit Krewe de Pink - the non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness for breast cancer research and funding innovative research on breast cancer therapies at Tulane Cancer Center. 

For each pink cocktail sold in October, $1 will be donated to Krewe de Pink. Featured cocktails at each location include: 
Tujague's - Classic Paloma ($12): tequila, grapefruit, lime, and soda
The Bower - Leo Cocktail ($15): vodka, hibiscus, orgeat, lime, and mole bitters
Birdy's - Rosé Grapefruit cocktail ($11): grapefruit vodka, rosé wine, simple syrup and soda

Cassandro

This sporting underdog tale has all the elements that scream ‘Oscar buzz’. Based on a real person, Saúl Armendáriz (Gael García Bernal) is an openly gay wrestler in a run-down Mexican border town when we meet him. Known as El Topo (The Mole), his slight frame and effeminate nature mean that he is routinely cast as a pipsqueak, thrown around by his giant opponents. 

He has dreams, though, to become ‘the Liberace of Luchador’ and to do this, he must take on the persona of an “exotico”. These are wrestlers who don make-up and a feminine look, but who are traditionally doomed to be punching bags and on-stage sponges for the crowd’s homophobia. Emerging as ‘Cassandro’ (named after a camp Mexican soap opera), Armendáriz wants to flip the script and be an exotico who wins. 

We’ve had movies exploring the inner lives of wrestlers before - most famously Aaranofsky’s The Wrestler - and this movie shares the grit and grime of their reality. Cassandro is mainly supported by women: his hard-working single mother, and his trainer Sabrina (the excellent Roberta Colindrez), a local lucha success who spots his potential. 

As Cassandro starts to move up the ranks, he attracts a possibly scummy promoter and his pseudo-gangster son (Bad Bunny), as well as scorn and admiration in equal measure from the crowds. There are unavoidably cliched training and sporting montages as the process takes on momentum, but Bernal’s showy magnetism easily carries them in an engagingly joyous way. 

Conflict comes in the shape of his relationship with his closeted wrestler lover (Raúl Castillo), who has a family that holds his main affections, and another man - the estranged father who first introduced him to lucha libre. Bernal channels his anxieties about these relationships into hard work on his craft, and increasingly risky behavior as his lot in life improves. 

There’s a lot to love in the flamboyance of Bernal’s character and his determined challenges to well-established macho norms. Bernal does great work combining camp showmanship, sporting grit and extreme vulnerability, and some of the wrestling sequences are genuinely impressive. 

For me, though, what must have been some very testing real life stakes are kind of rushed through. Cassdandro wins over hostile crowds in an instant and seemingly cruises to a nationally-televised glamor match. There’s a shift in tone over the last 20 minutes that glosses over a lot of character development and the climax doesn’t feel quite earned in some way. 

There’s some touching scenes, especially between Cassandro and his mother, a tough but loving woman, wonderfully portrayed by Perla De La Rosa. Bernal, too, is warmly charismatic and real, and you’re on his side from the off. Personally, I felt that director Roger Ross Williams didn’t quite stick the knockout, but the bout as a whole is still an enjoyable ride. (PO)
​
Cassandro is currently showing at The Broad Theater.