Spencer Selvidge

Jambalaya, red beans and rice, gumbo, Étouffée, dirty rice, meuniere, bread pudding, king cake, beignets.

All are hallmarks of New Orleans cooking; Creole at its most complex and finest.

“Creole” can only be described as the convergence of French, Spanish, Carribean, Mediterranean, Southern American, Indian and African cooking. With tinges of British, Irish, Italian, German, and Greek mixed in for good measure.

On most any of the winding streets in New Orleans you can find Creole cooking. From a hole-in-the-wall Po’boy shop in Slidell to the fine dining of Emmeril’s and Brennan’s in the French Quarter, the city is a Creole-gourmand’s center of the universe.

In fact, New Orleans and the surrounding geography is where the world that is Creole came into existence.

Mother’s, located at 401 Poydras St. in the Central Business District, is a local institution and tourist magnet. According to owner-manager Gerard C. Amato, “fifteen to two-thousand people a day” come through the doors during the week.

And many more on a busy weekend.

The line really picks up around 10:30 a.m. or so on a normal day and doesn’t slow down till 4:00 p.m. Then the dinner rush starts.

Patrons, who range from everyday regulars, business travelers and international tourists, must first wait in line outside. They are held there because inside there’s simply too many people to successfully move around the crowded interior. Once in the door, Gerard Amato and Joe Balderas greet them, saying “Take a menu out of the box, stand in line, order at the counter and take a seat.”

If a visitor doesn’t catch on fast, any one of a plethora of employees will notice and come to the rescue.

After successfully ordering, they wait. They wait for a table and for their food but they don’t wait to see, hear and smell.

Stacie Robinson, a veteran waitress of 8 years, gleefully asks “How you doin’, baby?!” with a welcoming smile to everyone she passes. All the while the smells of the jambalaya, red beans, and pounds and pounds of fried seafood assault the senses. The clamoring of dishes, cooking, conversation and people shuffling in and out never ends for 15 hours a day.

If you don’t come hungry, you get there fast. And if you don’t leave happy, you are a most uncommon visitor to Mother’s.