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Letter from the Editor
Letter from the Editor
By Marcy Nathan
In addition to celebrating 100 years of City Produce, we are celebrating our Rouses Magazine; I’m personally celebrating 10 years as Editor in Chief of the publication. We’ve spent a lot of time, as we worked on this landmark issue, remembering where we’ve been.
We’d seen other grocery store publications, and wanted to start our own. The majority of these publications are recipe-focused, which is great. But the Gulf Coast gives us so much more material to work with — the culture here is like nowhere else. It was important to us that, along with recipes, we also feature the people, places, restaurants, bars, music and everything else that make our region so unique. Those are the things that I love about living here.
From our very first issue, which had Creole tomatoes on the cover — and quite a few typos — we quickly gained a loyal following.
FOOD & DRINK
In our early issues, we featured so much about red beans and rice, white beans and catfish, jambalaya, and an inordinate amount of spaghetti — spaghetti and meatballs, spaghetti mac and cheese, even weenie spaghetti with hot dogs or Vienna sausages — that at one point, I worried we might’ve run the same story twice. So, we expanded our menu. New Orleans was home for me, but like most New Orleanians, I was well-acquainted with and cherished all of the Gulf Coast, from the beaches of coastal Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, to the inland towns and rural areas where so much of the country’s produce is grown and harvested each year.
With so many great stories to tell, we also started theming our issues. We began dedicating entire editions to Bourbon, Barbecue, Pizza, Pasta, Hamburgers, Garlic, Seafood, Steaks and comforting Southern Food. (One of the stranger things I learned while researching that Garlic issue is that you can taste garlic with your feet. Really!)
We argued endlessly about gumbo and whether or not it should have tomatoes, as
well as what color jambalaya should be. We unwittingly left the rice out of Tommy Rouse’s jambalaya recipe and got hundreds of calls and letters and emails telling us just that — it was ricemaggedon. We did a word search in our 60th anniversary issue and accidentally cut off the last line.
We blackened absolutely everything for our Cajun issue…including the table that we were shooting on.
We’ve created multiple Italian issues because, let’s be real here, one helping of Italian food is never enough. And two Mardi Gras issues. To be perfectly honest, we might not be done covering these themes; we are truly spoiled with a wealth of subject matter.
We drank so much tequila for our Cocktail issue that I can barely remember writing any of the stories — or my letter. I freaked out a colleague in Thibodaux when I told him that I cracked a very expensive bottle as I was moving it to New Orleans for a photoshoot for our Bourbon issue — that is still one of my favorite pranks. I tried to prank our chef Marc, but he spotted someone filming and quickly stepped out of the way; I got pie in the face instead of him.
In every issue, we’ve shared tips from our experts on choosing steak and fish, and on baking, including sharing popular recipes like our Gentilly cake and Cajun tarte à la bouille pie.
Now, we intentionally repeat ourselves every once in a while, rerunning your favorite stories and recipes; we run our Holiday 101s every year. Thankfully, we have avoided repeating the same holiday recipes and stories every year — do you really need a recipe for a sandwich made with leftover turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce?
One year we fried turkeys with Chef Nathan Richard, a 20-year veteran of the volunteer fire department in his hometown of Thibodaux. Last year we featured an
authentic Cuban flan recipe, porchetta (which almost none of us could pronounce), and the Chinese Zodiac for the Lunar New Year. We also baked so many pans of schnecken, to perfect a recipe that was sticky and gooey enough for Christmas morning, that schnecken became a curse word in our office.
LOCAL CULTURE
When our first issue hit stores, we were already a few years into our “Where the Chefs Shop” campaign (later renamed “Best Chefs and Cooks Shop at Rouses”), a marketing effort I came up with that included chefs like world-renowned Paul Prudhomme, Cajun cooking authority John Folse and many more. It celebrates our region’s chefs, cooks and food makers. We’re about to relaunch it with some great new faces. I’m super-excited!
Thanks in part to that campaign, we’ve been able to run exclusive interviews with chefs and cooks from all over. I feel like they all talked about learning to cook at their mother or father or grandparent’s side. Like you, roots mean everything to them. To me, too.
For those among us who are cookbook enthusiasts, we’ve covered a range, from chef-driven to community-based, including cherished regional cookbooks that are passed down between generations. Even if you’re not a cook, they make for great reads. I have my own tattered copies of Talk About Good!, River Road Recipes, Pirate’s Pantry and Recipe Jubilee!
We’ve run endless lists, often with contributions from our customers: Best Dressed (po-boys), Pit Stops (barbecue), Pearls
(oysters bars), iconic dishes of the Gulf Coast, essential ingredients of the Gulf Coast, our favorite Asian restaurants for our fabulous Asian Food issue…. Right now, we’re working on the Best Saints Bars for our upcoming Saints issue.
We’ve covered festivals that celebrate food, wine, music, boudin and beer, and anything else recognized with a celebration. Let’s be honest: Down here, we will throw a party for just about anything. Music journalists have delved into the unique soundtracks of New Orleans, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, Festival International, and other events from around the region. Folklorists have provided insights into local traditions, including Cajun humor. We even drew our own comic strip with the Cajun duo Boudreaux and Thibodeaux.
We’ve shared local traditions of every hometown we serve.
In 2017, we recorded the definitive interview with the Cajun Cannon, Bobby Hebert himself, and then-LSU Head Coach Ed Orgeron, for our Tailgating issue. It took
me four hours to transcribe it, and I’m still not sure I got it completely right because of the accents. Together, the pair brought home the state title for the South Lafourche High School Tarpons in 1977.
OUR WRITERS
Storytelling is so important to a magazine, especially this one, and I’ve heard every excuse for writers missing deadlines.
One writer who lived on the edge and, let’s just say, had a relationship of convenience with the truth, claimed cracked ribs, twice — different ribs, by the way — and two bouts of food poisoning, all within the same year.
There have been a lot of dead relatives and sick friends, excuses I chose to believe, even when the same person died twice. And while no one has ever claimed that their dog ate their story, one writer did miss a deadline because of a goat.
One writer began channeling the poet ee cummings and turned in a story without punctuation. Our copy editor threatened to quit if I hired that writer again.
But, overall, the quality of writing from our contributors has been exceptional.
Sarah Baird is a prolific writer and our most frequent contributor. Baird’s work has appeared in prestigious publications such as The Washington Post, Saveur, and Food & Wine, and she has authored three books on cocktails. She has never missed a deadline. She has also never owned a goat (to the best of our knowledge). Baird also pens our original horoscopes, which we feature once or twice a year.
David W. Brown is a longtime contributor to our magazine. His impressive command of language has earned him recognition in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic, but his mother in Gonzales only reads our Rouses Magazine. Brown has a new book that documents his two Antarctic expeditions, and he asked us to feature an excerpt in our magazine to ensure his mom doesn’t miss it.
I assign any stories on potted meat, pickled pig’s feet, pineapple on pizza or anything unappetizing to him.
Our team of contributors includes “Louisiana Eats!” host Poppy Tooker, cookbook author and Cajun food expert Marcelle Bienvenu, and Southern Food & Beverage Museum founder Liz Williams. Additional food contributors include Toni Tipton Martin, Michael Twitty, Justin Nystrom, Sara Roahen, food editor Judy Walker, and cookbook authors Lolis Eric Elie and Kit Wohl. Our cheese writer, Liz Thorpe, authored her definitive The Book of Cheese. Don Dubuc, aka the Outdoors Guy, covers outdoor topics for us.
Food writer and photographer Pableaux Johnson has been our authority on red beans. I've been fortunate enough to get a seat at his Monday Night red bean dinner.
Once when Pableaux and I were having coffee at a local donut shop, a woman delivered a baby in the bathroom. It was straight out of TLC’s I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.
We’ve also featured excerpts from renowned writers such as Rick Bragg and Ken Wells, who hails from Bayou Blue and began his career at The Houma Courier. Wells went on to become a longtime writer for The Wall Street Journal and has authored five novels centered around the Cajun bayous.
Upcoming issues include our Fall Saints edition, with stories by Mary Beth Romig. The Romig family has a strong connection to the New Orleans Saints, for whom we are the official supermarket. Mary Beth’s brother, Mark Romig, serves as the Saints’ PA announcer; their late father, Jerry, was the original PA announcer for the team.
Our holiday theme is Cocktails, and hopefully Wayne Curtis and Robert Simonson will once again be lending their libation expertise. Curtis has contributed to publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Garden & Gun, and is the author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails, while Simonson writes extensively on cocktails, spirits, bars and bartenders for The New York Times. Writers, if I left your name out, you were probably late turning in your story….
OUR TEAM
I have been surrounded by very talented people from the very first issue. But if you’ve been a regular reader of this magazine, you’ve surely noticed changes over the years. When our art director, Eliza Schulze, joined our team four-plus years ago, her talents and creativity really took our design to a whole new level. She gives each magazine a distinct feel to match the distinct theme.
Kacie Galtier caught my eye as a chalk artist who created signs for our stores. I was so excited when we brought the Chalk department into our Marketing department! You’ve seen Kacie’s original illustrations throughout this magazine in the past five years, and on our reusable bags. Kacie also designed our 100 Years of City Produce logo.
Mary Ann Florey was practically raised in Regina’s Kitchen, the legendary lunch spot in Mobile, Alabama. She uses her expertise — and friends and family — to help research, develop and cook recipes to go with our stories. Harley Breaux, our marketing coordinator, keeps us in line and on track. She and the rest of our amazing marketing team also contribute ideas for stories and recipes and photos.
Romney Caruso is our go-to food photographer. He has been a professional photographer for more than 25 years. You may not know that we prepare and photograph most of the food in this magazine at our Downtown New Orleans store. The photo studio is really our office. We don’t use any clever tricks to make the food look delicious, like subbing mashed potatoes for ice cream. And we eat almost everything we make on shoot days — everyone brings Tupperware; the rest we deliver to the Community Refrigerators around town.
Patti Stallard is our copy editor, proofreader and copywriter. She has decades of editorial experience in marketing and publishing, and her copyediting comments are so insightful and witty that we could easily dedicate an entire magazine to them one day — and probably will. We take turns reading them out loud to each other.
ROUSES FAMOUS
I am honored every time you tell me you read an issue. I am tickled pink when you’ve recognized me in one of our stores. I know someone who plays in a second line band who describes himself as “city famous.” Me? I am Rouses famous, and proud of it.
I have shared a lot of myself on these pages. And you have shared a lot with me in return. I love hearing your family stories and reading your family recipes. I wish I had more of my own to share, but I’m better at appreciating food than preparing it.
It’s not just me, either. People tell our Marketing and Advertising Director, Tim Acosta, they feel like they know him from his magazine column, “Cooking on Hwy. 1.” It happened this week on an introductory Zoom call! I’ve been with Tim in stores when customers have come up to ask him, “Whatcha cookin’?” He needs an hour to answer.
I spent most of my career on the advertising agency side helping a variety of local brands, as well as major national brands like Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses, define their personalities, before I crossed over to Rouses Markets full-time. None of it was as fun — or as fattening — as this.
In my Editor position, and in my role as Creative Director for Rouses Markets, I’m lucky enough to work with some pretty amazing people, and to share my ideas and much of my world with you.
This magazine really has been a passion project for our entire Marketing department for 10 years. The magazine is lagniappe — a little something extra — but we wouldn’t give up the extra work for anything. We do it because we love to do it. And we hope you love it, too.
