| Notes |
- Take a monumental tour
Posted by <http://blog.nola.com/judywalker/about.html>Keith I. Marszalek <http://blog.nola.com/judywalker/about.html> July 26, 2007 11:32PM
For a short course in names that figure prominently in the city's culinary history, take a drive through Metairie Cemetery
By Judy Walker Food editor
She wears a crown with a star, and a pair of wings. One hand holds a corner of her overskirt, which is filled with flowers. Her other hand gracefully holds out a small blossom.
She is frozen in time, an angelic statue atop the Grunewald tomb in Metairie Cemetery. Imagine her skirt filled with fruit -- or maybe bananas and coffee and sugar cane -- and she could well stand as an emblem for a new cemetery tour organized to educate the local culinary and hospitality community.
A century ago, Louis Grunewald's hotel in downtown New Orleans had a basement "cave," complete with stalactites on the ceiling, which is thought to be the city's first nightclub. His Grunewald Hotel became the Roosevelt Hotel, then the Fairmont. Grunewald was interred in his beautiful tomb in 1915.
The Grunewald tomb is one of about 30 stops on the Culinary History Tour, which on Aug. 5 will take hospitality industry workers past tombs and monuments chiseled with well-known local food-related names -- Arnaud, Brennan, Broussard, Brocato, Copeland, Fertel, Schwegmann, Zuppardo -- as well as earlier names less known now, but of people who helped put New Orleans on the culinary world map.
Right now, the tour of Metairie Cemetery is scheduled one time only, and only for those in the culinary and hospitality industry, but it might be offered to the public later, depending on the response, said Louise Saenz, executive director of Save Our Cemeteries, which developed the tour.
"We don't want to build (the tour) and just put it in a file," Saenz said.
The tour came about when Saenz met Ann Rogers, founder of Tales of the Cocktail, the annual shindig centered on cocktail culture that is produced by the nonprofit New Orleans Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society, which raises funds to benefit hospitality industry members.
"We thought, 'What can we do together?' " Saenz said. Rogers' idea was the culinary tour, which is being sponsored by the Culinary and Cultural Preservation Society. "What better way to educate the culinary and hospitality industry about their history?" Saenz asked.
The tour was researched and put together by Joyce Cole, a fifth generation New Orleanian and Save Our Cemeteries tour guide since 2003. Cole, who spent hours driving up and down each of the cemetery's streets, is still tracking down details. She invites anyone with information about relatives interred in Metairie Cemetery who were in the food business to call Save Our Cemeteries.
The tour may be the first of its kind for the local cemetery.
"We do tours, and are known for historical tours, but I don't know if anybody has really thought about the food connection or the restaurant-entertainment type connection," said Denise Westerfield, media relations manager for Stewart Enterprises, the company that owns Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home and Cemeteries, which includes Metairie Cemetery.
"I think it's a great idea. How important is food in New Orleans?" she added. "It's an interesting tie."
Some of the discoveries made as the culinary tour was researched might be included this fall in the guided walking tour of the cemetery S.O.C. offers after its annual fundraising 5-K race around the cemetery, a former racetrack. This year's race is scheduled for Nov. 4, and attendees pay $5 for the tour.
In the meantime, here's a sampling of stops on the culinary history tour, which you can use to create your own tour:
Grunewald's tomb is next to the miniature Gothic chapel marked A. Monteleone, for Anthony Monteleone, who started with a shoe store on the corner of Royal and Bienville streets. Monteleone's other memorial is, of course, the hotel that still bears his name.
Equally elaborate is the Pizzati tomb. Capt. Salvatore Pizzati became a leading importer of tropical fruit and the principal benefactor of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. According to Henri A. Gandolfo's "Metairie Cemetery: An Historical Memoir," Pizzati's favorite rocking chair is said to be in the receptacle below the crypt containing his casket.
Other tombs commemorate other kinds of culinary enterprises. Pascal Almerico, for example, owned Old Reliable Distributing Co. and Almerico Wine into the 1930s. Isaac Delgado, whose name lives on via the college that bears it, was a sugar factor, or sugar broker.
Margaret Porpora and her husband, Charlie, owned the Gumbo Shop from 1948 to 1977. Anthony LaFranca acquired Delmonico's in 1911, and the restaurant was in the family until 1997. Diamond Jim Moran (whose tomb is behind Louis Prima's) owned Moran's restaurant and Absinthe House.
Restaurateurs are widely represented. The Broussard family tomb is near the tomb of colorful "Count" Arnaud Cazenave, who founded Arnaud's and drank Champagne for breakfast every day. He rests in peace with his daughter, Germaine Leontine Cazenave Wells, who ran Arnaud's for 30 years after he died, and whose Carnival costumes remain at the restaurant.
The tour is also a study in diversity. The tomb of husband and wife Lee Bing and Yip Shee, founders of the fondly remembered House of Lee on Veterans Boulevard (and parents of, yes, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee), is one of several memorials in Metairie Cemetery engraved with Chinese characters as well as English names and dates.
Other tombs illustrate the entwining of brewing history and German heritage. Fritz Jahncke was on the initial board of directors for Jax Brewery. Valentine Merz, who died in 1929, ran a popular boardinghouse, similar to a bed and breakfast, and sold his place to Conrad Kolb, who built Kolb's restaurant at the location. Merz was also in the brewery business.
One of the most beautiful tombs on the tour is that of restaurateur and Jackson Brewing Co. president Lawrence Fabacher, who was buried in 1923 in the uniform of the Knights of St. Gregory, an honor conferred on him by Pope Pius X. He made his money in the restaurant business and lived in a showplace on St. Charles Avenue. Fabacher's obituary noted that his restaurant at Royal and Iberville streets "meant New Orleans wherever gourmets and epicures gathered."
One of the newer culinary tombs is near the fountain entrance and is marked "Copeland," a name familiar to contemporary restaurant-goers. Another large tomb built in modern times is the Fertel-Duke tomb, which is surrounded by immaculate landscaping and is the resting place of Ruth Fertel of Ruth's Chris Steak House fame.
"It's beautifully kept," Saenz said. "I remember when this was built. They put up a big white tent and invited their friends and the priests and had a party."
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1863 - 1923 (60 years)
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