No.300 SIM音読用英文

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New Orleans is Back in One Tasty Regard
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The historic southern seaport of New Orleans, Louisiana,

is far from healed

from the cataclysm of Hurricane Katrina,

whose winds and floods wiped out

whole sections of town four years ago.


More than 1,800 people died there

and in neighboring Mississippi,

and tens of thousands of others left the region and never returned.


But there's one good sign

that things are creeping back to normal

in the old Crescent City,

which gets its name

from a big bend in the Mississippi River

that runs right through town.


Most of the legendary restaurants are back and packed,

and the smells

of New Orleans' famous Creole cooking

are wafting out the doors and windows

of the old French Quarter,

fancy uptown neighborhoods on the riverbend-

indeed, every part of town.


There's an old New Orleans saying:

When you go to breakfast, you talk about lunch

and think about dinner!


Food - especially the abundant seafood, fresh vegetables and
myriad spices

that make New Orleans creations memorable -

is a preoccupation

in poor and wealthy homes alike.


Cooking is an art form,

and eating is the city's favorite hobby.


As one of New Orleans' best-known chefs, Joe Cahn, puts it,

"We eat

because it is joyous.


It is part,

not only of our history, but of our being."


He jokes that,

surprisingly, there are not that many obese people

in south Louisiana

because folks get plenty of exercise

walking from restaurant to restaurant!


There is one development, however,

that's troubling New Orleans purists.


Franchise fast-food restaurants and their greasy, bland fare

are getting a foothold

now that so many old-time New Orleanians have left

and been replaced by newcomers from elsewhere.


Still, there are plenty of places

to splurge on spicy food

splashed with even spicier pepper sauce.


And Creole and Louisiana-Cajun cookbooks and spices -

and coffee laced with tart, ground-up chicory root -

are still sold around the world.


But no one has yet figured a way

to package the m?lange of piquant smells

that fill the air once again in Old New Orleans.


I'm Ted Landphair.