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| Dining Incognito |
Arnaud's
Jessica Taylor
02/02/2004
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With its period chandeliers, rouge-red wallpaper and intricately carved fireplaces, Arnaud’s in New Orleans harkens back the glorious Antebellum parlors of the South. But its 12 private dining rooms, each cleverly concealed along secret mosaic-tiled passageways that ramble through 13 historic buildings, tell a different tale entirely—one strange even by the voodoo-influenced standards of its French Quarter environs.
The story of this landmark restaurant, where tuxedoed waiters serve haute Creole specialties on linen-clad tables, began at the height of la belle époque, when Léon Bertrand Arnaud Casenave abandoned a medical career in his native France to sell champagne in New York City. But only when a sales trip brought him to New Orleans in 1902 did the young bon vivant finally feel at home in his new country. The French Quarter, with its lax social mores, opium dens and gambling houses, infused a nightlife not unlike that of Casenave’s Paris, with a tangy mix of French, African and West Indian cultures and cuisines. Here Casenave designated himself "the Count," a title to which he had no claim, but one that aristocrat-loving New Orleans was happy to embrace. He would first lease the Old Absinthe House (where Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte are rumored to have met), eventually raising enough capital to open a restaurant of his own, calling it after his Christian name, rather than his spurious title.
That Prohibition went into effect a year after Arnaud’s opened in 1918 only fueled Casenave’s imagination. By acquiring neighboring buildings and poking holes through the walls, the Count increased the size of Arnaud’s, while creating a cover for the wine and spirits he continued to serve his guests. Just before Congress repealed the 18th Amendment, however, federal agents discovered the hidden rooms where alcohol flowed freely. The Count was acquitted of all charges by a jury sympathetic to his belief that "pursuing pleasures of the table is as worthy as anything else one can do in life."
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