The Best Kept Secret in the French Quarter

Let me take this oppurtunity to tell you all about Verti Marte.

Verti-Marte is a small grocery/deli/carryout that exists on 1201 Royal Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  If you're ever in the neighborhood, I would highly suggest a visit.  Particularly later in the evening, so you can socialize with the crazies and the drunks who are standing in line to get their mac and cheese or their jambalaya.

As silly a reason as it sounds, my reason for wanting to go to Verti-Marte during my trip to New Orleans had to do with Greg Dulli.  There's a song on the first Twilight Singers record entitled "Verti-Marte" and as soon as I found out about the deli, I wondered if maybe the song had been named after it.  The song is an odd, moody, lush, mostly instrumental  piece with random bits of dialogue repeated throughout.  Does not conjure up the image of a place you'd go get a sandwich at 1 AM. 

Verti-Marte, like all the best food places, is pretty inconspicuous.  You walk in, standing in line and wait to order.



You can peruse the large menu up front, advertising "Real Food for Real People at Real Prices".



Finally, you get your chance to order.  The food is worth the wait.



Anna and emerged with a muffuletta sandwich about the size of my face.  It was seriously large...and delicious.  Late at night sometimes, I dream about the sandwich.  It was so big though that Anna and I, together, could barely eat half of it.  I wish I had taken a picture of that sandwich now.

As we exited Verti-Marte, we were accosted by a drunk and/or crazy man eating mac and cheese who loudly exclaimed to us that it was the best mac and cheese he'd ever had.  A few blocks later, we run into this man on Bourbon Street walking a miniature horse outside of a gay bar (where another very nice, hairy man complimented my Twilight Singers t-shirt).


A few blocks after that, another very drunk and/or crazy man yelled at Anna and me that we needed to "love each other more!  There's not enough love in this world!"

Then we all had to meet up with our professor (who was taking a bunch of us college kids on this trip) who made us go to a bar to pick up his very drunk ladyfriend and drive her home. 

Overall, it was a pretty legendary night.