Simone Tureaud

I was born in the Tremé, the oldest Black neighbourhood in America, and I grew up eating red beans and rice on Monday like every family in this city does. My grandmother made gumbo from scratch every Sunday. New Orleans has the most distinctive food culture in America — not Cajun, not Creole, those are two different things and I will explain exactly how — and it lives in the neighbourhood po'boy shops and second-line Sunday spots, not in the tourist restaurants on Bourbon Street.