MARDI GRAS: Laissez les bons temps rouler, Hoboken

You’re still hungover from the Super Bowl? Waaaaaah…

It’s Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), which means you have 40 days after today to lick your wounds. So step up—consider it a spiritual journey.

Oddfellows Rest… In Peace

Of course this time of year reminds us just how much we miss Hoboken’s Oddfellows Rest (80 River Street), who used to throw one of the biggest Mardi Gras festivals in the entire NY Metro Area. It was Hoboken St. Patrick’s Day packed into one tight room—complete with beads, bands, gumbo… and Hurricanes, of course (LIMIT: TWO).

Alas, they turned out the Hurricane Lamps in Oddfellows back in 2013, but there is still plenty to be found around town…

-Hit Biggie’s Clam Bar (36-42 Newark Street) for their Po’ Boy, plus plenty of seafood options.

Homemade Muffaletta!

A photo posted by Vitos Deli (@the_vitos_deli) on Jan 16, 2016 at 8:18am PST

-Stop by Vito’s Deli for their Muffaletta—a New Orleans specialty with ham, salami, provolone and olive salad

–The Stewed Cow has a Louisiana Crab Boil, with potatoes and corn on the cob… not to mention a ridiculous whiskey selection.

–Texas, Louisiana’s neighbor, also does some mighty fine cooking. Stop by House of ‘Que to fatten up this Tuesday before fasting on Ash Wednesday.

–Carpe Diem Pub & Restaurant (1405 Grand) is always a good time, but more so tonight with Hurricanes in the forecast.

“There is a New Orleans city accent…that is hard to distinguish from the accent of Hoboken, Jersey City and Astoria, where the Al Smith inflection, extinct in Manhattan, has taken refuge. The reason, as you might expect, is that the same stocks that brought the accent to Manhattan imposed it on New Orleans.”

Taken from the preface to A Confederacy of Dunces, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that has been embraced as an emblematic tale of New Orleans’ character and distinctiveness, author John Kennedy Toole later refers to Mrs. Reilly’s manner of speech as “that accent that occurs south of New Jersey only in New Orleans, that Hoboken near the Gulf of Mexico.”

Add in the fact that both Hoboken and New Orleans were dockworker towns at or below sea level—neither of which do too well in a hurricane—and we have a lot in common.

So laissez les bons temps rouler, Hoboken. If we missed anything, be sure to let us know and we’ll add it on to the list.

See ya’ll in church tomorrow…