A Tale of Red Beans & Rice

At the start of the year, we shared why people in New Orleans east Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, 

Today we learn that.....

New Orleans is a Red Bean City

When a young Paul Prudhomme moved to New Orleans to take a sous chef position at the Le Pavillon Hotel in 1970, the city’s obsession with red kidney beans came as a shock. Though a native Louisianian, he grew up thinking red kidneys were, in his words, “just another dried bean, like pinto beans and lima beans.” But according to Susan Tucker’s New Orleans Cuisine, he soon discovered that red beans were “a cultural phenomenon, a tradition dating back for hundreds of years.”

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