A GARDEN GROWS IN MID-CITY

Every morning, before the sun is up, Joe Brock's hands are already caked with dirt. The year-oldMid-City Community Garden, where he grows vegetables, is the neighborhood's labor of love. It's also the freshest source of produce in an area where, most days of the week, it's easier to buy beer than vegetables.

"Our biggest challenge is getting people to come out to this.  Americans have gotten away from producing items somehow. This is a way to go back to it," says Brock, a web designer who started growing vegetables in his backyard and handing them out to neighbors back in 2008. "They were all so happy and said they were just headed to the store and I thought, maybe they won't have to go to the store.We could do this in the community."

Today, the Mid-City Community Garden occupies a formerly abandoned lot on South Salcedo Street. In its ten raised beds you can find mustard greens, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, herbs, and even red beans.With the aid of nonprofits like HandsOn New Orleans and the New Orleans Food & Farm Network, seeds and soil are kept in good supply, as are out-of-state and local volunteers who help maintain the garden, from picking up trash to building picnic tables.

In most community gardens, members are given a plot of land and the full responsibility of tending their garden. TheMid-City garden, by contrast, is managed by Brock. Members advise him on the vegetables they want planted, and Brock devises a system for growing those vegetables efficiently. Planting times are scheduled. Each vegetable is monitored. No plot goes to waste. "When you are dealing with veggies, you have to have a time model. You want to have that mapped out to the T, so it becomes a reliable way to get food." True to the term "urban farmer," Brock operates his garden with a flare of modern technology, alerting members about fresh vegetables via Twitter, Facebook and text message.When a head of lettuce is ripe for the pickin', Brock shoots out an update. Those who stop by that day are guaranteed a bountiful basket of same-day harvest.  The garden's website is continually updated; visitors can watch howto videos on planting tomatoes or listen to an explanation of how membership works.

Running the garden less like a hobby and more like a business has paid off. The garden currently has twenty-two members, with more signing up each week. Its success has allowed Brock to found Wise Words, a larger garden a half-mile away, on South Hennessey Street. Chefs from Huevos, Crescent Pie & Sausage Company and Olive Branch Cafe have agreed to teach cooking classes there in exchange for a supply of herbs and vegetables.

Brock says that, at their core, both projects aim to provide nutritious food at a fraction of its supermarket price. Members pay ten dollars a month and commit to two hours of weeding; those who can't afford to pay work in exchange for their share. "I had hardworking people come up to me and say, ‘Brock, I have fallen on hard times. I am willing to work for anything I get," says Brock. "They see the nice stuff they get and they are so amazed, and I say take it, it's all yours."

Get your hands dirty: Mid-City Community Garden, 516 S.  Salcedo St;WiseWords Community Garden, 724 S. Hennessey St. (504-251-9818)

CA PHE DU MONDE

Vietnamese iced coffee, or ca phe sua da in Vietnamese, is like a cafe au lait on steroids; thicker and sweeter, its mouth-coating texture and bitter edge make the perfect accompaniment to the pickled veggies and rich meats of our favorite Vietnamese dishes.

Ca phe sua da, literally "coffee ice milk," is made by dripping coffee through a Vietnamese filter (a metal contraption that looks like a miniature stock pot) over a cup of sweetened condensed milk.

The milk and hot coffee are then mixed together and poured over ice.

There are variations on the drink that omit the milk, the ice, or both: ca phe sua nong ("coffee milk hot"), ca phen den ("coffee black") and ca phe den da ("coffee black ice").

No matter the style you prefer, the taste of Vietnamese coffee may leave New Orleanians doing a culinary double take-doesn't that flavor taste familiar? That's because virtually any time you order a Vietnamese coffee in New Orleans -at Pho Tau Bay and Tan Dinh in Gretna, Cafe Minh and Doson Noodle House in Mid-City, AugustMoon in Uptown-you're, in fact, enjoying the distinctive coffee and chicory blend of our very own Cafe Du Monde.

And the Cafe Du Monde-Vietnamese connection extends well beyond the borders of the Delta region. Visit a Vietnamese restaurant or sandwich shop in New York City or Philadelphia and you'll likely find Cafe Du Monde's signature yellow canisters there as well.

The popularity of Cafe Du Monde coffee with Vietnamese restaurants is probably due, in large part, to the ingredient chicory.

According to author Andrea Nguyen, the Vietnamese likely developed a taste for coffee with chicory when French colonizers introduced the combination to Vietnam during the nineteenth century.

The strength of Cafe Du Monde may be another factor. "Vietnamese have a predilection for very bitter coffee," Nguyen says, "inky and deep. Here in the US, we don't have that kind of coffee." Phat Vu, the manager atTan Dinh, cites Cafe DuMonde coffee's "strongness," and "boldness of flavor," in comparison to lighter brands like Community Coffee or Folgers, as reasons for the brand's popularity in Vietnamese restaurants.

Cafe DuMonde's long history of working with the Vietnamese community in New Orleans may also play a role in the brand's popularity among Vietnamese establishments. "We started off by hiring one Vietnamese immigrant back in the 1970s, and they brought their friends," says Burton Benrud, Vice President of Cafe Du Monde. "We are now working with the third generation of Vietnamese families.We have grandmothers and they bring their grandchildren into work."

As for Cafe Du Monde's prevalence in Vietnamese restaurants in other cities, Benrud says it has happened by word of mouth. "The owners of Vietnamese restaurants here in New Orleans started to use it here and then recommended it to their friends," he explains.

The culinary result of this coffee connection is one of the more irresistible beverages around. And, while you may not find beignets at your average ca phe sua da establishment, you might find Vietnamese pastries that are equally French, and equally delicious. -Vincent Rossmeier

SATSUMA’S QUEST FOR FRESH

Last year, Cassi and Peter Dymond took a trip to Seattle and observed the farm-to-table cooking culture in full swing-restaurants with nothing but chalkboards for menus, serving up an ever-changing roster of local, in-season ingredients.

Since opening Satsuma Cafe in August, the Dymonds have been working hard to bring the West-Coast cooking philosophy to Southern Louisiana. Located in the Marigny in the space previously occupied by Coffea, Satsuma has several chalkboards and a seasonal menu of salads, sandwiches and juices. Their chef and "partner-in-crime," Melissa Martin, is as obsessed with sourcing local ingredients as they are. From their impossibly tiny kitchen, they cure gravlax, brew homemade chai, make jam, and bake homemade muffins. One look at their raw kale salad and you can see that the freshness factor at Satsuma is unusually high.

But creating a truly local and seasonal restaurant menu in New Orleans is not easy, especially for a tiny operation like Satsuma.  One key figure for the Satsuma team is Jim Bremer, a food purveyor who delivers local produce to restaurants around town. Satsuma started out buying lettuce from the food distributor Louisiana Fresh; now, Jim brings whatever he has. "Whatever comes in," Melissa says, "that's gonna be the lettuce, and if people can accept that and be like ‘What's this? It's a little bit spicier than the last one,' then that's wonderful."

For Satsuma, Jim is a crucial link between growers-farmers, urban gardeners, Hollygrove Market-and restaurant chefs who want local produce but don't have the time to procure it themselves.  "We need more people like that," says Peter. "We need somebody that's gonna drive out to these farms twice a week or three times a week and then sell it to our restaurants."

When they're not ordering from Jim or picking up at the market, Cassi, Peter and Melissa have other food procuring tricks up their sleeves. Their employee, Stella, goes out on her bike to cut basil from local community gardens, or from Melissa's home garden. Last summer, Peter, an experienced mushroom forager, collected chanterelles for Satsuma's quiches and omelets. The eggs for those dishes? Right now Melissa buys organic ones from California, but she has several leads on affordable yard eggs, including a cafe owner in "an undisclosed location" in Violet, Louisiana. If her leads fall through, Melissa herself might become Satsuma's next egg supplier-she has plans to start raising hens in her own backyard.

Raising chickens, foraging mushrooms, searching for fresh eggs, and biking for basil take time and effort far beyond what it takes to have a Sysco truck deliver vegetables from California. "We are working around the clock to source these items," says Cassi. Something's gotta change, she adds, before they'll be able to offer the truly ingredient-driven menu they envision. "In a perfect world, we could adjust our menu every day," says Melissa.

In the meantime, the harder they work to build relationships with growers in the area, the more they push New Orleans towards developing the local food infrastructure they need. "It's happening," says Cassi, "It's definitely happening."

ALL THAT JAZZ

By noon on a Saturday, Verti Marte Deli and Grocery has filled orders for twenty of its All That Jazz po-boys. By dinnertime, that number has inched up to forty. By one in the morning, once groups of friends have stopped in searching for something to soak up their party, the count has peaked at a hundred. And that's just any old Saturday night.

The All That Jazz po-boy is half-sandwich, half-monster. To conquer it you'll need both hands and plenty of napkins. The sandwich begins with a sautéed mass of shrimp, tomatoes and mushrooms smothered in Verti Marte's special Wow sauce. A blanket of grilled turkey and ham keeps the mass warm, while a thick layer of melted Swiss and American cheese glues two pieces of hot buttered French bread together. Finishing Verti Marte's original creation aint easy on the belly; leave behind nothing but a pile of soggy napkins, and you've earned your place among the deli's most loyal devotees.

Verti Marte is a New Orleans institution with a reputation that looms as large as the All That Jazz. Its French Quarter location on Royal Street housed an Italian grocery store for over a century. In 1968, the store was bought by a woman fresh from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. That woman is current owner Shelba Hatfield's sister. Shelba worked with her sister from the beginning; a few years later, she took over the store and began serving the classic New Orleans dishes she had eaten in restaurants around town.  With no formal cooking experience and only basic knowledge of Creole cuisine, Shelba prepared a long menu of entrees and specialty sandwiches, named by her daughter with monikers like The Awesome Stuffed Potato and The Mighty Muffaletta. In 1990, Shelba's son, Sam, moved to New Orleans to help with the business. Two years later, Mississippi-native Sam Barnes began working as a cook.  He hasn't ever left. "Everyone here is just so nice. I had no reason to go anywhere else," he says.

Together, Shelba and Sam keep the food stocked and the griddle hot under the hum of the shop's fluorescent lights, turning out New Orleans dishes like Chicken Creole, Catfish Bienville, jambalaya, gumbo, and red beans and rice, and Italian classics like chicken parmesan, spaghetti and meatballs, and lasagna. Piled high behind the glass display case are stacks of country fried steak, heaps of stuffed baked potatoes, and mounds of mac and cheese. The generous portions and decent prices-$8.50 will buy you an entrée with two heaping sides-make Verti Marte a prime filling hole with a band of loyal followers.

From his place behind the counter, Sam Hatfield has had to defend Verti Marte to tourists who don't understand. "I had a lady come in here and she was concerned about nutrition and she said.  ‘Sir, do you guys put MSG in your food?' and I said, ‘Sweetie I wouldn't even know how to spell MSG. There is nothing fake here.  It's real fat, real grease and real cream.'"

Such skepticism from Verti Marte newcomers is, perhaps, understandable.  Afterall, how often do you encounter a convenience store with your grandma's kitchen hidden in the back?