The Couscous Chronicles

“After the storm, after the rain, after the harm and after the pain, after we laugh and after we cry after we live after we die, we need a healing”Strange Fruit Project “God is/After the Healing”  I finally built up the courage to watch the four hour Spike Lee directed HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke, a requiem in four acts” DVD set.Having lived in New Orleans in the early nineties I easily felt a part of myself died in the months following the impact of Katrina.In the last seventeen years that I have been since removed from the Big Easy, I have always seen “her” as my “mistress”.  Following my relocation from the Big Easy, she has never let me down in constantly beaconing me to return to enjoy and sample her culinary and festive pleasures.  When I relocated from New Orleans to Detroit, I somehow figured out a way to return on business and connected rerouted business trips on almost a monthly basis for the first two years I was gone.  Since this blog has a foundation build on food I could not help in the aftermath of Katrina to recall one of my favorite NOLA establishments, “We Never Close”.  I have no idea if this little “greasy spoon”- shadow of a once thriving convenience store – sandwich joint even exists any longer as New Orleans East was inundated with the deluge of flood waters and We Never Close was situated along the “ridge” on the venerable Chef Menteur Hwy. It would be unfortunate if We Never Close is now dare I say, closed?!  Sad enough my only brushes with the place were limited, but I can say at least my first visit was a watermark event.  My first encounter with We Never Close came on the heels of my first job offer.  Following two days of intensive interviewing in a reflective glass office tower overlooking Lake Ponchatrain in suburban Metairie I received a job offer from the consumer products conglomerate Procter & Gamble that eventually led to an eighteen year marketing career.  Upon leaving their offices with an offer in hand and joyously sharing the occasion with two of my LSU classmates who had received internship offers, we all decided we were thoroughly hungry and a celebration of food in the “City that Care Forgot” was at hand.  Fortunately, Sabrina who had graciously offered to drive had the idea of driving forty five minutes out of the way in rush hour traffic to a “dive” of a po’ boy sandwich shop called “We Never Close”.It was love at first bite and that is not to be confused with “sight” as We Never Close is truly visually arresting.  From the outside it looked  like at one time perhaps twenty years earlier it enjoyed an existence as a “Stop n Go” type convenience store that had been haphazardly planned into being built on the edge of the swampy light industrial nowhere that was Chef Menteur Hwy in eastern New Orleans.  It literally sat isolated from any signs of residential life and looked as though it had simply sprang up right out of the cypress stands that surrounded it.  It was totally out of place. So given its reputation was more of being a place for great sandwiches and less of a convenience store started to make sense.   Upon entering the establishment, I could see why.  The store consisted of two thirds convenience store and one third sandwich counter.  The convenience portion looked like an after thought, it was practically a museum of convenience America.  The place was a quissential “hole in the wall” and I recall my initial reaction as I saw several flies darting about the interior and the general unkemptness of the place almost scared me off.  There was literally a quarter inch layer of grease permeating the place.  Fortunately my senses returned as I recalled I was in the Big Easy and noted the long line of folks at the back of the store waiting to place an order for what Sabrina had spent forty minutes in the car describing across every salivating burst of breath as the best sandwiches we would ever lay our gums into.Fortunately the prognosis was good.  The po-boys arrived over the counter in aluminum foil wrappers and when you opened them your senses were met with a burst of steam and the scent of freshly fried seafood!  What made these po-boys exceptional was two things the freshness of the seafood (in my case shrimp) and the New Orleans style po-boy french bread.  I had never eaten anything like it.  Fifteen minutes later we were heading west over the I-10 “high rise” bridge with the only sound outside the incessant groaning of Sabrina’s car motor being that of lips smacking down on the best po-boys we had all ever had.  I recall the revelry in the car on the way home.  We all had fresh job offers and full stomachs to match.  Damn!  We though life could never be so good!