Nathalie Jordi, in tandem with ASH NYC, developed the 71-room Hotel Peter & Paul in a former Catholic school, rectory, church and convent in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. Previously, she was a cofounder of people’s pops (an ice pop manufacturer and retailer in New York City), as well as a travel journalist, bicycle guide, and cheesemonger. She lives in the Marigny with her husband and two children.
Nathalie Jordi, in tandem with ASH NYC, developed the 71-room Hotel Peter & Paul in a former Catholic school, rectory, church and convent in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. Previously, she was a cofounder of people’s pops (an ice pop manufacturer and retailer in New York City), as well as a travel journalist, bicycle guide, and cheesemonger. She lives in the Marigny with her husband and two children.
A hotelier might seem like a deviation from the culinary focus of this podcast. But Nathalie Jordi's Hotel Peter and Paul feels like a postcard experience of one of the greatest culinary towns in America: New Orleans. Set inside a repurposed former church schoolhouse and convent built in 1860, the hotel feels like a living breathing movie set complete with hand-selected antique furniture, the friendliest staff, a beautiful well-stocked bar, an extreme attention to detail throughout every nook and cranny like that of a Wes Anderson film. Something about it feels like the most hyperbolic version of what your imagination conjures when you think of New Orleans' most daydreamy Parisian influences. Every city deserves a hotel like this to mirror its best characteristics to its visitors.
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[00:00:00] Nathalie: I still think there is something special about a hotel that's independently owned and imbued with local flavor and in a neighborhood and in a historic building, that's not replicable and that's not easy to copy paste. And that's in fact it's impossible actually to copy paste. And that's what I seek out when I travel and I think that that's a, that's who our customer is, is someone who appreciates that and knows that it's rare. And, and values it. And it's, it's so funny because we just had this [00:00:30] terrible hurricane in New Orleans in September, and it was rough, man. We had to close the hotel for 10 days. You know, we had no power. Our staff was displaced. We had 14 guests ride out the storm with us. And the silver lining of it. We were pretty thankfully pretty well untouched. Although the areas outside of New Orleans were not so lucky and are still very much struggling. But one thing it reminded me of was why we are in the hospitality business, because we really took care of [00:01:00] those guests who stayed and rode out the storm with us, even though it was terrible and miserable, I was like, "oh, I remember: I love this."
[00:01:13] Jordan: Welcome to the Prix Fixe Podcast, where the new voices in the culinary world share their stories in their own words. The show is produced and edited by me, Jordan Haro in Los Angeles, California. Ultimately, I will remove my side of the conversation to let the guests tell their story in their own words.[00:01:30]
Thanks for your patience in awaiting new episodes. With the holidays, our hiatus went longer than expected. It turns out rest is good, and I hope you're feeling rested as well. Also a quick update while we've had fun, cranking out an episode every week prior to the holidays was awesome and very fun, but hard to juggle sometimes as this is an independent production. So we're going to be releasing a new episode every two weeks. We hope it will ensure consistency and [00:02:00] quality as we keep it going. I hope your 2021 is finishing up strong and may it be filled with good friends, good food, family, however you choose to spend this end of year, I hope it's an awesome time.
A hotelier might seem like a deviation from the culinary focus of this podcast. But Nathalie Jordi's Hotel Peter and Paul feels like a postcard experience of one of the greatest culinary towns in America: New Orleans. Set inside a repurposed former church schoolhouse and convent [00:02:30] built in 1860, the hotel feels like a living breathing movie set complete with hand-selected antique furniture, the friendliest staff, a beautiful well-stocked bar, an extreme attention to detail throughout every nook and cranny like that of a Wes Anderson film. Something about it feels like the most hyperbolic version of what your imagination conjures when you think of New Orleans' most daydreamy Parisian influences. Every city deserves a hotel like this to mirror its best characteristics to its visitors. [00:03:00] It's the hotel I stay at whenever I visit New Orleans. It's the one I recommend to my friends who ask for a hotel recommendation and I see it as kind of like finding a new favorite movie or book. I want to share it with anyone and everyone because it's unlike anything else I've ever experienced. It's an honor to have Natalie on the podcast to talk about her inspiring journey and launching such a massive project along with being a thoughtful custodian of culture while acknowledging the ramifications of promoting change in a neighborhood with residents who are not looking to see their home [00:03:30] gentrified. There's something going on at the Peter and Paul, that feels as if someone cast a magic spell on an old abandoned building and brought new life to it by embracing parts of its past. And that's kind of what Natalie did. The combination of these ideas feels like a new standard for what hospitality could be. Let's listen in.
[00:03:53] Nathalie: My name is Nathalie Jordi and I'm the general manager and co owner of the Hotel Peter and Paul, which is a 71 room boutique hotel in the [00:04:00] Marigny neighborhood in New Orleans. So I grew up in Miami, Florida, my- I'm the daughter of a Belgian mother and a Swiss father. And so I spent a lot of time in Europe growing up, and I spent a lot of time in Europe after I graduated from college, doing all kinds of jobs. I worked as a cheesemonger. I worked as a bike guide. I worked on farms. I ghostwrote cookbooks, I, um, freelanced for food and travel magazines. And even though it didn't seem at the [00:04:30] time to me or anyone else that I was doing anything that like a path that would lead somewhere in hindsight, I recognize that I was picking up string the whole time. And putting together experiences from hotels, from restaurants, from architecture and all these references and touch points. That would very much inform what the Hotel Peter and Paul is today. I guess that's kind of an abbreviated, that's a little too fast. You want me to [00:05:00] fill in a little bit more detail? So I've always loved hotels. Um, I felt like new Orleans was a place with so much to say about itself, but I didn't feel like that was reflected in the hotels that were here. And also when I first came to New Orleans, the Marigny is the neighborhood that I became most intimately acquainted with because that's where my now husband was living. I came to New Orleans for a guy. Who's now my husband. [00:05:30] That was really. Transformative for me was having been to new Orleans before all the times before as a tourist and never having left the French Quarter, then realizing that actually what makes New Orleans special is not just the French Quarter, but all of the neighborhoods that surround it or, you know, just all the neighborhoods of the city, there's something special about all of them and feeling like if I was traveling to New Orleans, the Marigny is actually where I would want to be.
I feel like I'm kind of going out of order. So after college, I moved to Europe and had that experience [00:06:00] that I was telling you about. But then I, uh, a couple of friends of mine and I opened a popsicle business in New York City. Uh, and that grew really quickly. We were sort of not prepared for that. And in the meantime, I had started dating the guy who's now my husband who lived in New Orleans and Tulane offered me a full scholarship to do an MBA. Because the popsicle business is very seasonal, I decided to embrace that opportunity and I did my MBA [00:06:30] um, at Tulane and I had the popsicle business in mind, but I also started thinking about, um, you know, seeing the opportunity to do a hotel in my neighborhood and thinking about putting together a business plan and bringing together both those kind of hard skills with the, with all of my experiences, traveling around Europe and picking up knowledge and experiences along that way. And then I sold my business in New York to [00:07:00] my partners, to the guys that had started with it with, um, David and Joel, who were my prom date, my high school prom date and his roommate. And, um, my husband and I decided we wanted to live in New Orleans. Start a family here. I mean, he, he had already been here, but I came down here and started working on opening the hotel, which took a lot longer than I had originally imagined. The first year I worked at a hotel in the French Quarter while I was developing my business plan and I was [00:07:30] thinking 20 to 25 rooms is what I felt like I could manage, what I felt like I could afford. Looked around at a couple of different options in the neighborhood that were all falling through for one reason or another. And then I came upon the buildings that were the former Saints Peter and Paul Church and School. And at that time I had started speaking with Ari Heckman from Ash NYC, who was a friend of my sisters, and I really had admired what they had been doing with the Dean Hotel in Providence, which they had recently [00:08:00] opened, which was, I think, 52 keys and very rooted in place. A lot of the furniture, um, designed, you know, in collaboration with local artisans, it was very similar to what I wanted to do in New Orleans. And so when I spoke with him, he said, yeah, you know, we're ready for our next hotel project. And New Orleans is very high on our list, but we don't know anybody down there. We don't know the lay of the land. So I said, come down, let's look at some stuff. And we looked at a couple of things and the [00:08:30] Saints Peter and Paul buildings were one of the things we looked at. And it was by far the best thing we looked at, but it also seems like the most impossible of all the options, because it was zoned single family residential in a neighborhood that was, uh, very resistant to change, that I also lived in and did not want to be involved with anything controversial, but, uh, Ari to his credit was kind of, uh, you know, saw the vision and was like, we got to at least try. So we decided [00:09:00] to go into partnership together and try to see if we could get the neighborhood association on board with what we were looking to do. We thought very hard about what it w what, what it was that they, that that would be something that'd be appealing to them because that's what we wanted to do. Right. We want to do something that was a win-win. So we said, okay, look, we're not going to demolish any existing historic buildings. We're not going to build any new buildings. We are, are not going to subdivide the church into smaller units. Because [00:09:30] prior proposals for the site had, um, been for residential, like condos, where you need more square footage, you need a kitchen living room. And so we said, no, we don't actually need that. We can put all the guestrooms in the other buildings and leave the churches and uninterrupted volume that's used for public events and private events, which, which the preservationists really appreciated. And then crucially, we had a lot of parking. We made the argument that a lot of people don't come to a hotel with a car, which is true. And [00:10:00] so we had a bunch of public meetings, sat down one-on-one with anybody who wanted to talk workshop the plan, tweaked it. And then, uh, finally got the neighborhood association on board. It helps that the site had been vacant for so long that it wasn't some kind of vibrant thing that was being taken away. I mean, it really was falling apart and they knew that something was going to happen there. So I think they, they, they were willing to, to try to work with somebody who clearly was invested in the neighborhood and wanted to do right by [00:10:30] them. And so they thought, okay, let's give it a chance. I think they, they kind of were waiting to see if we were going to deliver on all of our promises, because we did make a lot of promises, but that's something I really value actually, is those relationships that I feel like we are, you know, we try very hard to hold up our end of the bargain. And I, I am glad that the hotel has become like a very cherished part of the neighborhood. That's something that's very important to me. And I feel like we've been successful at that. Uh, there's so much history here. [00:11:00] So many layers of, um, personalities and, uh, patina and there's, I mean, so many places have to make up a backstory and we don't, I mean, it's here, it's it bubbles up all the time. Every day, we're constantly meeting people who were former parishioners, former students, people who, whose parents got married here or who buried their parents here, or who've lived across the street for 40 years. And. To me, that's something that's, that's, [00:11:30] there's you can't put a value on that. That's so rare and special. And, um, and that's my favorite thing about the place is that our job is to kind of make what's already here sing rather than just like, make it up out of whole cloth and pretend that it's old or something like that. I mean, obviously it's no longer a church, a school. It would be disingenuous of me to say that, that nothing has changed because of course it has, but I think that's [00:12:00] preservation isn't necessarily about keeping things exactly how they've always been. It's about ensuring that they can live on, even if that's in a different fashion. So, um, and also educating people about what was here before. I think it's really, uh, an attribute of the place and one of the things that makes it special, and we do try to highlight that and, and share it with people. Rather than just like, let it go without a mention. Yeah. I guess to me that the most, [00:12:30] the best thing about this place is how many layers of people and experiences came here before us. I think that's a really intangible, intangible thing that you can't put a value on it. But to me it's the most valuable thing about the place is that it has that history and that patina. But you don't really see that in the -. You don't you're right. That, that it is true, that new Orleans has so much of that history and those layers, [00:13:00] but you don't really see much of that in the hotels here. Most of the homes, I mean, you do see it in the French Quarter, but the French Quarter is the French Quarter. Not everybody wants that experience, but most of the hotels are actually in the central business district or in the warehouse district, which to me doesn't feel like the parts of new Orleans that I've fallen in love with. And so I think that's, what's unique about us is being in a neighborhood and in a historical building.[00:13:30]
Well, one of the reasons it was so easy for me to fall in love with New Orleans is because the guy that I was casual dating, who became my husband and the father of my children happened to be the restaurant critic at The Times-Picayune for 20 years. And so I fell in love with New Orleans through its restaurants, which is not how a typical tourists, well, actually a lot of tourists do to do [00:14:00] discover and fall in love with New Orleans through its restaurants that I felt like I got kind of an accelerated introduction to that because, um, he took me to all these places during our early courtship where I was like, wow, what is this place? What is this town? I couldn't really disentangle falling in love with him and falling in love with New Orleans. And I was just kind of charmed by it all and just euphoric and just thinking how, why, why, why, why didn't I know about this place? Why - I've been here many times and I've [00:14:30] never left the French Quarter, you know, like, do people know about this? And I think the answer is they don't actually, and so that's something I wanted to share with people in a respectful way, because you, you don't want living neighborhoods to turn into tourist destinations. In fact, that was one of the things that came up when we were trying to do this hotel project, was that a lot of people who moved to the Marigny in the seventies and eighties and renovated with beautiful housing stock here, were people who were, who left the French Quarter [00:15:00] because they didn't like what it had become. And they didn't want our turning this into a hotel to accelerate that happening to the Marigny, which is a completely reasonable and rational position and one that I completely agree with because that's not what I wanted either. And it was further complicated by the fact that Airbnb at the, at the time was also quote unquote, taking over the Marigny, or taking over New Orleans or taking over the world, I guess you could say. I mean, it just had a lot of growth in [00:15:30] Airbnb's. And that begged all of the important questions of gentrification or touristification and, um, and there's no question that, you know, that we're part of that conversation as well. One argument we made to the neighborhood, which was very anti-Airbnb was, you know, there isn't a place for people to stay in the Marigny. Clearly there's a desire for that and a demand for that, but we're taking this vacant building and turning it into a place where people can stay and [00:16:00] where, you know, it's where there's like staff, like seeing what's happening or taking care of people or whatever. And, um, I don't know, honestly, if our, if, if I don't think we did anything to stop the tide of Airbnb developing in the, in the neighborhoods, because that's just sort of like an unstoppable force that's going on everywhere. But, um, I think people saw value in, in what we were doing and preferred it to the [00:16:30] preponderance of Airbnbs that were next to them and around them. And that actually helped us in the end because people saw that that was happening and thought that we might actually be able to mitigate it somewhat, whether it did or not, I don't know, there's definitely still a lot of Airbnbs in the neighborhood.[00:17:00]
Um, that was very much a goal when we set out to you to work with local artisans and makers, not just because it stimulates the economy, which was one of our goals, but also because it, I think it makes the what you're delivering more, more special and more personalized more of the place. And I will say that my partners Ash NYC who have an amazing interior design division, they did [00:17:30] such a good job of reaching out to local artisans and, um, and sort of ferreting out who the experts were, who the, who the makers were. That was that we're going to make the most beautiful things for us. So that went, that was everything from like, you know, our beds were made in theUpper Ninth Ward. Our side tables and our, armoirs were made in the Marigny, our curtains were made in Metaire and in the Marigny. Uh, we bought a lot of the art, um, from estate sales, local auctions, [00:18:00] and then also the, the majority of the furniture we bought on an epic buying trip that a Will and Ari and I took to Europe in about six months before we opened. We bought four and a half shipping containers worth of furniture in a week. We went to a bunch of different European cities and we bought 16, 17th, 18th, 19th century setees, tables, lamps, chandelier's whatever. We put them all on a boat because I, even though I live here, I sort of sometimes forget that New [00:18:30] Orleans is a port city and it all got shipped over to the port of New Orleans and then trucked over to Chalmette, which is a neighboring suburb to get refinished, reupholstered, repaired, rewired, whatever. And, and, you know, we had to find people who could do that work as well. So not just making new things, but also taking care of and rehabbing old ones. And then of course, finding. Uh, construction people and architects who were used to and enjoyed and could do the [00:19:00] work of working with historical fabric. And we were lucky in that new Orleans is lucky in that there is so much historical fabric to work with and it is valued and that the state and federal historic tax credits provided incentive for people to reuse materials. And so we worked with, uh, architects called studio WTA and, uh, a contractor called Paul Massano contractors who were very adept at um, transforming these old spaces into functional new spaces. So for example, yeah, in [00:19:30] the school building, there were bathrooms and plumbing, even though it was like 50 years old, but it was girls bathrooms and boys bathrooms in the basement. Whereas we needed 59 bathrooms in all the different places, right. For the 59 guest rooms in that. So, but of course you want everything to be invisible and inside walls and you, you don't, you, you don't want to knock down any walls. You don't have to. I mean, I think we knocked down two walls in the entire school building. We did build some new walls, but we really did try to work with, with the, um, you [00:20:00] know, the, the, the footprint of what was there already. And, and everything that we could salvage from inside, whether it was plaster or molding or wood, so much wood, the flooring, um, so wainscoting windows, all that stuff. And it's a credit to New Orleans that there is so much expertise here that, um, that, that could bring these things back to life so beautifully.
It's [00:20:30] one thing to build something beautiful, but the spaces here are very exquisite, as you know, and, and I think there's a model of service that could match that, uh, that could be less than hospitable or off putting. And actually what we try to do is balance the exquisiteness of the spacing with the hospitality that is super warm, super welcoming. Um, and that's very much [00:21:00] of the place. I mean, that, that's one of the other things I loved about New Orleans was the fact that when people cross each other in the street, they say "hello" to each other, "how you doing" to strangers. And, um, and I think you feel that when you're at the hotel, people do the sense of hospitality here is so deep. And I feel so lucky that's that, that, that we have the staff we have, because they are. They are really what people remember. Honestly, they really are. I mean, as you just said yourself, the spaces are [00:21:30] beautiful but what people remember is how they were treated when they were here. And that to me is the essence of hospitality. It's so ironic because COVID hit us so hard. I mean, we closed the hotel for four months. It really broke us and it's been such a struggle to get back on our feet. And, you know, with the time that goes by and the things that happen during COVID, you know, we probably have half, half of our staff, I would say is people who were here before COVID and the other half is new people who are also wonderful. And we're sort of finding, figuring out how to, you know, knit together as a [00:22:00] family again. Um, but one of the things that was so hard about COVID was how, how much it was anti hospitable, the things that we had to do. You put the plexiglass up, you put, you know, the first thing you do when someone walked in and you shoot a temperature gun at their forehead. You know, your, you got a mask on, you can't see their face, they can't see your face. And your, I mean, of course I understand why it was done for reasons of public health. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been that way, but it made us, it, it was, it was often hard to remember [00:22:30] the parts of hospitality that we got into it for in the first place. And it's, it's so funny because we just had this terrible hurricane in New Orleans in September. And it was rough, man. We had to close the hotel for 10 days. You know, we had no power. Our staff was displaced. We had 14 guests ride out the storm with us and the silver lining of it. We were pretty thankfully pretty well untouched. Although the areas outside of New Orleans were not so lucky and are still very much struggling. But one [00:23:00] thing it reminded me of was why we are in the hospitality business, because we really took care of those guests. Who stayed and rode out the storm with us. And even though it was terrible and miserable, I was like, oh, I remember I love this. And I had kind of forgotten to be honest. So the busier we get and the more things come back to normal and we've got our weddings happening again, and the restaurant's full and the staff is full [00:23:30] and we have, you know, managers are managing instead of cleaning rooms, you know, we have a little bit more breathing room and it feels so good to be like, okay, right. This is, this is why we do what we do. This is why we love what we do,
Because we were kind of new at the hotel business. Now, now my partners are opening hotels where they're controlling the food and beverage. [00:24:00] But we felt like the better fit for us at that time was to partner with a local restaurant. And we thought hard about who that should be. And of course, I had a lot of opinions having been married to the restaurant critic, and I felt like Bacchanal all was, was a perfect match because, if you're not familiar with the space, it's a wine bar with a big outdoor courtyard with live music and you go to the bottle shop, you pick out a bottle, you carry your wine glasses to the table. [00:24:30] And then there's a short menu of very delicious things. I mean, the atmosphere is so sublime that they could be serving like theater class and hot dogs, and everybody would still be having a really good time, but they very much punch above their weight. Food is terrific, but it's still casual and it's still low key. And really you're just focused on the good time you're having your friends and the sound of the music, the warm air, the fairy lights, the toot of the boats on the Mississippi river. And it's just kind of like perfect New Orleans night. And so again, as, as you say, our, [00:25:00] our spaces, particularly the rectory spaces are, are, are very, uh, are decorated in a way that's, that's very memorable and very lush and opulent. And I think if we'd had some kind of white glove service in there, it would have just given off a vibe that, that didn't really fit the neighborhood, didn't really fit New Orleans. And I'm so grateful that we ended up partnering with Bacchanal because even though they can kind of hang with the best of them in terms of wine quality, cocktail quality and [00:25:30] food quality, they do so in a way that is unaffected and just unselfconscious I think. And, um, and again, you know, just very warm and hospitable. So I think they've been, um, I'm grateful for that partnership. And not faking it, right? Like not whitewashing, not kind of pretending to be some kind of boutique, uh, [00:26:00] grassroots thing when you're not, there's a lot of that. I think it comes from knowing what I like in a hotel and trying to create that and share it with other people. And although I will say that the corporate hotel space, I think, has been very much improved by the influence of the boutique sphere, because there are the ho th the corporate [00:26:30] hotels are, are like, are really getting better and better. I mean, they have a lot of them have personality or there, they try to bring in a local element. They're they're clean. They're they're um, their beds are super comfortable. Um, there they've definitely upped their game in a way that I think like a rising tide lifts all ships, right? I still think there is something special about a hotel that's independently owned and imbued with local flavor and in a neighborhood and in a historic building. That's not replicable [00:27:00] and that's not easy to copy paste. And that's in fact, that's impossible actually to copy paste. And that's what I seek out when I travel. And I think that that's, uh, that's who our customer is as someone who appreciates that and knows that it's rare and, and values it. And that's who keeps us in business. right? Because otherwise there's, there is an easier, cheaper, simpler option somewhere else. And sometimes that's appropriate. I mean, I don't, I don't stay in boutique hotels all the time, so I always look for them. I wish I stayed in boutique hotels all the time, but sometimes that's not [00:27:30] possible. But there's a kind of a melding in both directions, right? Because now that's one of the things that Ash is doing is, is looking for cities that haven't had special hotels in them before and being like, well, here's an opportunity and they're not the only hotel company who's doing that. And I think that's really cool.
The reason we ended up with this property is because, some, it was [00:28:00] owned by the archdiocese until 2012. And then they sold it to a group of three local investors. And one of them is a neighbor of mine. I lived four blocks from the hotel. One of the guys who bought this place lives five blocks from the hotel. And I know him and he, he knew about my idea and he thought he wanted to, he thought it was a good idea. And he offered me, he was like, you know, we just bought this place. Are you interested? And I was like, oh, it's amazing. But like, I could never, it just seems out of reach. Too expensive, too tied up in, in zoning that I never thought I could get changed. I [00:28:30] just sort of like assumed it wasn't going to be possible. He believed in the idea. He encouraged me to, he encouraged me and Ari, our group to, um, to at least explore it and talk to the neighborhood association and see what could be possible. And miraculously, it seemed, you know, we were able to develop something that people could get on board with and all of a sudden the train was on the tracks. And, you know, we were able to get this done and it seems like a possibility. And then we really ran into a brick wall when we went out, looking for funding, because it was so hard to get [00:29:00] banks, local bankers to, um, see the vision and to believe that this was going to be something that people would want. They thought it was too small. They didn't like the neighborhood. They, um, they didn't like the fact that it was independently owned rather than flat. Cause that's just kind of what they were used to. And so we sent it out. We spent about a year and a half,just like biding our time, trying to reformulate a plan to go out to the banks again. And, um, I had a baby during that time and I remember, and so during that time, the site sat empty and all these neighbors who [00:29:30] had, um, you know, come around to supporting the idea and write letters to the, to the city council saying, you know, we approve, we, we want you to give these guys a chance. They just could see us going nowhere. And, um, and I felt like I had failed. Where I was like, you know, talked a big game and like couldn't deliver, right. And I was afraid that we were weren't gonna deliver and that we were going to fail because it was taking so long. But the site was ours by that point. And I was like the custodian and I was in charge of making sure that [00:30:00] people weren't like breaking in and, you know, causing a ruckus or whatever. And so I would go every day and then every once in a while, you know, like there would be a new piece of graffiti or something and I'd be like up there cleaning it up. And I remember it was my, my, my son, my second son was born in October, which is like, September is super hot in new Orleans. It was in September. I was like nine months. Waiting. Nothing's happening and I'm on, you know, I'm at the school, like literally cleaning, graffiti off break, which is very hard to clean graffiti off brick. [00:30:30] And this neighbor came up and was like, "what are you doing?" Like, you know, "go put your feet up," your, I mean, I was like four days away from having a baby. And she helped me. She helped me. She was like, "I'm gonna help you." She was like, "I haven't seen you in awhile. What's going on? I thought this was, was, you know, I assumed you guys had gone away." I was like, no, "I'm still here. I'm still. You know, trying to make this happen still here, cleaning up the graffiti." And she was like, "all right, well, I believe in you," she helped me. It was really nice of her. And then, you know, two years later I [00:31:00] saw her sitting at the drink having a bar, I mean, sitting at the bar, having a drink, excuse me.. And, um, that moment was so gratifying to see, like, that was the moment when I was like, "yes, we did this," because she had kind of lost faith. I had kind of lost faith. But she supported me at a time when I kind of needed it. And then there she was, or both of us were on the other end, like enjoying the fruits of the labor.[00:31:30]
So my fantasy day in New Orleans, obviously the weather is perfect, right? 70 degrees and sunny and it's spring time, so the Jasmine is out and smells amazing. And I'm with my friend who's visiting from out of town. And so we pick up some bikes. Um, new Orleans just started, uh, electric bike program, which it's a very flat city, but it's also a hot city. So it's very, [00:32:00] these bikes are super zippy. And, um, you know, you just pick one up with your, with your iPhone app. And we bike to, um, Leo's bread off Esplanade Avenue, which is, uh, an avenue with very beautiful historic mansions and live oak trees. And we get some croissants and we take them, we keep biking, we go to City Park. There's a, an amazing big live oak tree in the middle of City Parkthat has these gigantic wind chimes underneath them, which is you hear them [00:32:30] in the distance and you don't realize they're hanging from the tree. You're like, what is that? Does that sound? And we have our croissants under the wind shines. And then, um, where are we going to next? so then we go, this is all just going to be food. So we're going to just pretend there's an unlimited appetite. Then we go have gumbo at Liuzza's by the Track nearby. Then we bike to the river and spend a couple of hours watching the boats. Um, and the barges go by. There's [00:33:00] a, there's a cool linear park, um, called Crescent Park. That is on the other side of the railroad tracks so it's sort of hidden, but you go over the railroad tracks and then there's like a mile and a half of natural landscaping. And you can see the rivers because there's this big levy by the river, it's easy to forget that New Orleans is by the Mississippi River. Although that's such a crucial part of its history and its economy and its culture. It's just kind of something that's easy to forget about. Spend some time by the river. Uh, maybe go to Bacchanal for dinner [00:33:30] and then after dinner, go to the Country Club and have a dip in the pool and, uh, listen to music and watch the stars.
[00:33:38] Jordan: Thank you for listening everyone for links and resources about everything discussed today, please visit the show notes in the episode, if you want to support the podcast, the most effective way to do so would be to hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platform that you're listening in from. [00:34:00] Sharing the show with your friends on social media is always appreciated.
Shout out to Shawn Myers for creating the original music. And to Jason Cryer for creating the graphics. The show is produced by me, Jordan Haro with help from Homecourt Pictures, you can always reach out to me at Jordan H-A-R-0 on Instagram and Twitter. Follow the show at PrixFixePod on Instagram. [00:34:30] Or email us at prixfixepodcast@gmail.com. Visit www.prixfixepodcast.com for show notes and more detailed descriptions for this and every previous episode in our archives. I appreciate every second of your attention and support and don't take it for granted. See you on the next one.