Sunday Gumbo at Our Table — Creole Home Cooking in Tremé

My grandmother's gumbo starts with a roux cooked for 45 minutes over medium heat, stirring continuously, until it turns the colour of dark chocolate. Most restaurants don't have the patience for that roux. Hers does. I invite a maximum of 6 guests to our family home on Sundays, when gumbo is already on the stove from the morning. You arrive at 12pm, the roux story begins, and we eat together at the family table with potato salad, French bread from the Leidenheimer Bakery on Simon Bolivar, and a cold Abita. My mother is usually there. My cousin, who plays trumpet in a brass band, occasionally stops by before his afternoon rehearsal. The meal is the event but the table is the real thing — three generations of a Tremé family and the food that has kept this neighbourhood together for 300 years.