this corner of Bywater

(Or Bacchanal on the rainy day)

Here is a pencil drawing I did this evening of the wine store/bar in Bywater that Ben and I fell in love with. The place was at the ass-end of Chartres Street, in an Industrial/residential milieu that definitely grabbed our Brooklyn-based minds (Think Gowanus area). This  patchwork-quilt of a building, in particular, looked like a gracefully crumbling chateau frozen in time between shotgun homes and the military base/aged-industrial bend in the wide river.

Here’s the story: during our visit to New Orleans, we walked out to Bywater Saturday afternoon, in the rain, and there met the lovely owner of said wine bar during our brief stay (we all met by way of a cat– naturally). He told us if the weather had cleared up by next afternoon, the dinner and music would be ON! We really wanted to go back. At the same time, knowing how limited was our time in NO, we wanted to explore further. We opted to head out to Riverbend the next night, despite the clearing, the fine weather.  I will say–  by the time we’d finished our dinner that next night we sorely wished we’d gone back to  Bacchanal instead– to experience the yard-cooking and live music, and to’ve taken up a new friend on an invitation to something more special than the restaurant we went to in Riverbend (bit of a wash, to say the least).

Next time, Chris. Definitely.