English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in New Orleans, LA

Long-loved New Orleans food truck La Cocinita has finally made the leap to full-blown restaurant, bringing a sunny Venezuelan cafe with a vintage flair and arepas, empanadas, tacos, and churros to Uptown at 4920 Prytania Street.

The restaurant greatly expands on the 14-year-old food truck’s menu, with particular care put into the vegan and vegetarian options, Rachel Angulo tells Eater. She and her husband Benoit Angulo founded La Cocinita (“Little Kitchen”) food truck after meeting while working at Commander’s Palace, inspired by the late-night areperas in Benoit’s native Caracas, Venezuela — located primarily on Calle de Hambre, or “Hunger Street.”

There are more varieties of arepas, building on their bestseller El Pabellon, the arepa form of the Venezuelan national dish (brisket, sweet plantains, queso fresco, black beans, and crema). There’s one with grilled chicken, chihuahua cheese, roasted carrot, and cotija (La Sifrina); a fried arepa with carne asada, guasacaca, and grilled queso fresco (La Llanera); a pulled pork arepa (El Puerco); a classic Venezuelan avocado chicken salad arepa (La Reina Pepiada); and an arepa with shrimp sofrito. There are four vegetarian options, two of which are vegan (and the other two can be easily made vegan), featuring black beans and sweet plantains; portobello mushrooms marinated like the carne asada; roasted cauliflower and carrot sofrito; and seared tofu and avocado salad that Angulo says expertly mimics the Reina Pepiada.

As for empanadas, there are seven varieties, three of which are vegan. There’s a pataconcito, or mini fried plantain sandwich, on the sampler, and tacos that come three to an order. A build-your-own-bowl option offers a wealth of choices for the base, meat, sauces, and extras like roasted vegetables, maduros, yuca fries, and fried eggs.

Angulo says she’s “excited to be able to accommodate our gluten-free friends,” because the kitchen has two fryers. With the food truck, even though the masa used for the arepas and empanadas was gluten-free, the fryer oil was also used for the churros; here they can be made separate from the churros. The only menu items that aren’t gluten-free are the flour tortillas, dulce de leche bread pudding, and churros. Horchata ice cream is also on the dessert menu, made specially for La Cocinita by Creole Creamery next door. “I figured it might take a few tries to get where it needed to be, but they got it right on the first try,” says Angulo.

The space is a triumph for the Angulos, representing how far they’ve come since their first food truck. Cicada designed the space and Also Known As, which has handled branding for spots like Flour Moon Bagels and Birdy’s, created a custom wallpaper incorporating imagery of the masa La Cocinita uses (Harina P.A.N.), a photograph taken of a food truck customer back in 2013, Venezuelan soccer players, and more. “It was a little difficult for me to let go of what La Cocinita branding was at first, but they’ve given it a vintage vibe that is so fitting for where we are now,” says Angulo. “I’m so glad I let them figure out how it should evolve,” she says.

For now, La Cocinita is serving lunch and dinner daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. The liquor license just came through, which means tequila and rum drinks, South American wines, and Mexican beers are on their way. Brunch will soon follow.

Rachel and Benoit Angulo; the dining room; and Jarritos lined in the kitchen at La Cocinita.

For years, it was a well worn routine for New Orleans residents: Get a text that the city's water isn't safe to drink. Then boil your tap water until the Sewerage and Water Board issues the all clear.

While isolated boil-water orders still occur, they are far less common, thanks to one major upgrade.

In 2019, the S&WB built of a pair of 200-foot water towers, which together hold 4 million gallons of treated water. Now, when a pump goes down, water stored in the towers keeps the underground lines pressurized so dangerous bacteria doesn’t seep into the system.

There are still occasional boil-water advisories affecting smaller geographic areas when a water main breaks or a fire hydrant is knocked over.

But the city-wide shut downs are – for the most part – a thing of the past.

“There's a lot of things cities can have problems with, but if you can't get water, you don't have a city,” said Cedric Grant, the former head of the S&WB who oversaw the installation of the towers. “Safe drinking water, access to drinking water is number one with a bullet, in relation to what keeps cities alive.”

Pump failures, power losses and severe weather caused the east bank water system to fail on average once a year between 2010 and 2019, affecting around 300,000 residents. Since the towers were built, there’s been only one sweeping boil water advisory, according to water board data.

The tower project was funded with a $110 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The grant also paid to upgrade or replace all eight water pumps at the S&WB's Carrollton Avenue water treatment plant. Work on six of the pumps has been completed, and two more are scheduled to be done next year.

The towers are designed to give S&WB personnel 40 minutes to fix pump failures or other malfunctions that cause system-wide pressure drops. That's usually plenty of time, but its not foolproof. In August, a mylar balloon caused a power outage at the Carrollton plant, and one of the pump operator's who was trying to restart the system suffered a severe injury when a hatch cover popped open and hit him in the face.

The employee's co-workers tended to his injuries, delaying the fix. A two-day boil water advisory followed, the first system-wide order in more than five years. S&WB officials described it as a freak accident and say they have taken measures to prevent it from happening again. The incident prompted the City Council to ban mylar balloon releases.

“That was a very, very unique situation,” said S&WB Executive Director Ghassan Korban. “If everything worked as normal, we would have avoided the boil water advisory with ease.”

The reduction in boil water advisories has been a relief for restauranteurs like Larry Miller, who, along with his wife, chef Nina Compton, own Compere Lapin and Bywater American Bistro. Both restaurants opened on the east bank before the water towers went up, when “it felt like every other week there was a boil water advisory,” Miller said.

Employees had to buy bottled water for the restaurant’s customers, and they had to do it early, because other businesses were doing the same. The restaurant bought an additional heater for its dishwasher. Staff would continuously boil water in the largest pots they could find, then use it to wash and wipe down surfaces.

“It looked like the Beverly Hillbillies on the stove, boiling water with all different sizes of pots,” Miller said. “You're just trying to get all the water you can find to make it through that night.”

Miller became so fed up that he installed a sign at Bywater American Bistro with an electronic counter noting the days since the last boil water.

When the sign hit 365 days in February 2020, the restaurant's Instagram account marked the occasion with a tongue-in-cheek celebration. Then it hit 942 days in September 2021, and an Instagram user observed that there was “no way those numbers ever got that high before.” The tally was at 1,875 days before March 30 this year, when a water main broke in the Upper 9th Ward and caused a localized boil-water advisory in the Bywater.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how long that streak lasted,” Miller said.

Boil-water advisories are necessary when pressure in underground water mains dips below 20 pounds per square inch, a threshold set by the Louisiana Department of Health. Pressure drops can happen in a number of ways, including when cars crash into fire hydrants or contractors working on street repairs damage the system.

Pump failures and water main breaks are the most common causes of pressure drops.

The system-wide advisories typically happen when pump failures or heavier-than normal usage – during a deep freeze, for example – lead to end-to-end pressure drops from the Carrollton Water Plant to Venetian Isles.

When water mains burst, the S&WB is usually able to isolate where pressure has dropped and issue a localized water advisory. The localized advisories have not only continued since the water towers went up, they have nearly tripled to an average of about six per year, according to S&WB data.

That's in part because the state health department adopted a stricter standard for acceptable pressure levels in 2018, from 15 pounds per square inch to 20. There were nine localized advisories that year; there hadn’t been more than two in the eight years prior.

The S&WB has also gotten better at detecting localized pressure drops, with 80 new water gauges installed in 2018, more than quadrupling those already in place. Thousands more are coming with the water board's “smart meter” project, which will replace analog water meters with automated meters that can read usage in real time.

The project, set to be finished by the end of 2025, includes the replacement of all 144,000 meters in the city. Six thousand of those will include pressure-reading sensor, whic could result in even more localized advisories, Korban said. But they will become increasingly hyperlocal, sometimes isolated to just a block or two.

“This allows us to know where our vulnerabilities are, and I think that's the way to improve our response time,” Korban said.

To curb the risk of water main breaks, the S&WB would need to replace hundreds of miles of pipes, half of which are more than 80 years old. Though the utility recently replaced 100 miles with one-time federal funds, Korban said replacing more would cost anywhere from $50 million to $100 million annually.

"The way to reduce boil water advisories is to have a newer water main system that is less fragile," he said.

Email Ben Myers at bmyers@theadvocate.com.

METAIRIE, La – A group of New Orleans-based real estate investors, led by senior care industry leader David Schonberg, announced the acquisition of the 110 Veterans Building, a prominent commercial property located at the foot of Veterans Memorial Boulevard along the 17th Street Canal. The purchase, finalized on Nov. 20, was made by 110 Veterans Partners, LLC, and marks the latest move in a dynamic reshaping of the East Bank business landscape.

The property, which was previously owned by Rault Resources Group, a local real estate management firm, has a long history of housing notable businesses, including Renaissance Publishing. The five-story, 127,000-square-foot office building, formerly known as the Stewart Enterprises Building, offers a range of amenities, including 24-hour access, reserved parking, a first-floor cafe, on-site management and proximity to restaurants and shopping. Its location provides convenient access to downtown New Orleans, the airport and the Northshore.

“Good things happen when commitment extends beyond financial investment,” said David Schonberg, managing member of 110 Veterans Partners, LLC. “With the enthusiasm and complementary synergy among our investor group and our new building manager, I’m confident our tenants and the Jefferson Parish East Bank business community will benefit from this acquisition.”

The investor group is composed of several local real estate leaders, including Ryan Gootee, CEO of Ryan Gootee General Contractors; Michael DeGruy, president of Ryan Gootee General Contractors; Michael Henican, managing partner of Henican Properties; Shaun McCarthy, principal of McCarthy Group Realtors; and Richard Roth, managing member of Roth Law Firm and tax credit attorney.

To ensure smooth operations and an enhanced tenant experience, the group has tapped Stirling Properties, a full-service commercial real estate company with nearly 50 years of experience in the Gulf South region, to manage and lease the building. Stirling Properties oversees a portfolio of 24 million square feet of commercial real estate and will provide comprehensive management services, including leasing, maintenance and operations.

“We’ve tapped Stirling Properties to provide full management and leasing services,” said investor and current tenant Shaun McCarthy. “With 24 million square feet of managed commercial real estate, Stirling has the resources and expertise to ensure a well-managed and thriving office environment.”

Stirling Properties is known for its expertise in commercial advisory services, asset and property management, development, and investment sales across a wide array of property types, including retail, office, industrial, healthcare, multifamily and hospitality.

In a letter sent to tenants, the new ownership group assured that the transition would be seamless. Current management and operational procedures will remain in place for the time being, and tenants will be informed of any changes to reporting procedures, including maintenance concerns, as the transition plan is gradually implemented.

“We’re focused on establishing a strong foundation for maintenance and daily operations, and Stirling Properties has already hit the ground running,” said Michael Henican, a local real estate investor and managing member of 110 Veterans Partners. “As for future building enhancements, this group has no shortage of ideas. However, we want to ensure that any improvements align with what existing and future tenants truly need and value—and that’s exactly what we plan to do.”

Rault Resources Group, the building’s seller has been a part of New Orleans’ real estate landscape for nearly 60 years. “David and his partners are well-suited to carry on the legacy of 110 Veterans Building,” said Miles Clements, attorney and spokesperson for Rault Resources Group. “We’re confident they have the vision and resources to support the building and its tenants into the future.”

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Hopefully, home chefs have their dinner menus picked out and will be ready for a marathon day or two of cooking.

If the holiday prep work has gotten too stressful, some restaurants in the New Orleans area are willing to do most of the job for you, offering pre-cooked meals for pick-up. A few days remain before the ordering deadline at most spots.

Restaurants might sell out of their pre-ordered foods, like the Popeyes pre-made turkeys, so deciding to throw in the towel sooner rather than waiting until the deadline would be beneficial.

For Thanksgiving, Cochon Butcher is offering meats and sides. Customers can choose between a boudin stuffed turkey, a regular turkey or a cooked suckling pig, among other options. Some side options include satsuma cranberry sauce, smothered greens and mac and cheese.

Link to order: toasttab.com

Order by: Sunday

If baking isn't your thing, La Boulangerie wants to help out for the holiday. The Uptown French bakery is accepting orders for pies, rolls and more. Plus, it's offering a few appetizer options like butternut squash soup and pimento cheese dip.

Link to order: toasttab.com

Order by: Friday, November 21

Commander's Palace chef Meg Bickford is providing instructions on reheating all holiday items from this classic New Orleans restaurant. The holiday menu includes smoked herb butter-injected turkey, molasses and sea salt whipped sweet potatoes, smoked tasso and andouille stuffing and more.

Link to order: toasttab.com

Order by: Monday

Over in the Marigny, Ayu Bakehouse has put together a few treats to choose from. Whether a pumpkin pie, citrus pecan pie or apple crumble pie fits your mood, Ayu offers several pre-order items. The Challahgator, a large, ornate alligator-shaped challah, is also available for pre-orders.

Link to order: ayu-holidays.square.site

Order by: Wednesday

A newcomer to the Mid-City food scene is offering fully prepared dishes for your Thanksgiving meal. The complete dinner option includes a fried or roasted turkey, potatoes (sweet or mashed), dressing or cornbread, a selection of vegetables, turkey gravy, dinner rolls and a choice of pumpkin or apple pie.

Link to order: form.jotform.com

Order by: Saturday

A Cajun fried turkey, Louisiana oyster dressing, cranberry compote and more are available for pre-orders from various Copeland's around New Orleans. People can get a complete Thanksgiving feast or pick out items to buy a la carte.

Link to order: copelandsofneworleans.com

Order by: Tuesday

Love New Orleans food? Pull up a seat at the table. Join Where NOLA Eats, the hub for food and dining coverage in New Orleans.

Follow Where NOLA Eats on Instagram at @wherenolaeats, join the Where NOLA Eats Facebook group and subscribe to the free Where NOLA Eats biweekly newsletter here.

Email Chelsea Shannon at cshannon@theadvocate.com.

Thanksgiving is a time for giving and sharing — but maybe just not with the pets. While you may be tempted to let them indulge in the Thanksgi…

Preparing for the holiday season can be chaotic, and it's easy to forget an ingredient or two when preparing for a full Thanksgiving meal.

With the holidays near, local groups are hosting events to spread joy and help families celebrate with a special Thanksgiving meal.

NEW ORLEANS — Editor's Note: If you have a turkey giveaway or holiday event please email WWL-TV with the information.

With the holidays near, local groups are hosting events to spread joy and help families celebrate with a special Thanksgiving meal.

Friday, Nov. 22, 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Over 80 turkeys will be distributed to support families ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. This event is only for Einstein families and is not open to the public.

Location: Sarah T. Reed Campus, 5316 Michoud Blvd., New Orleans East

Friday, Nov. 22 10:30 a.m. until 12:15 p.m.

Peoples Health and Second Harvest Food Bank provide Thanksgiving meals to food-insecure older adults and host community meals for the St. John, Terrebonne and Lafayette councils on aging.

Location: Scott Event Center 110 Lions Club Road, Scott, LA 70583

Saturday, Nov. 23, noon until 3 p.m.

Young Audiences Charter School will host a free turkey giveaway to provide for families this holiday season. Supplies are on a first come, first serve basis limited to one turkey per family. All families are encouraged to attend with their children.

Location: 1000 Burmaster Street Gretna, LA 70053

Pre-register here.

Saturday, Nov. 23, 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

The community giveaway is to support local residents by providing food and holiday essentials. All items are first come, first served.

Location: Greater St. Stephen (Morton Hall), 5600 Read Blvd., New Orleans, La. 70127.

Saturday, Nov. 23, 9 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Walter L. Cohen High School and Second Harvest Food Bank is hosting the giveaway handing out food boxes with turkeys. All reciepients must drive up in a car. Tickets will be given to cars in line and only cars with tickets will receive food (max 2 per car). Food will be distributed while supplies last.

Location: Walter L. Cohen High School, 3575 Baronne St, New Orleans, LA 70115

Saturday, Nov. 23, noon until 2 p.m.

The community-wide event will distribute 500 turkeys to the first 500 families. There will be free food, music, and activities for kids to enjoy.

Location: City Church New Orleans 13123 I-10 service Road, New Orleans, Louisiana 70128 (Just off the Bullard exit in the East)

Learn more here.

Monday, Nov. 25 starting at 3 p.m.

The City of New Orleans announced its fourth annual turkey giveaway to help Orleans Parish families prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday. One turkey will be provided per household until supplies last. Turkeys and fixings available on a first come, first served basis.

Location: Central City Senior Center, 2101 Philip Street, New Orleans, La 70113

Monday, Nov. 25 8:30 a.m. until 11:15 a.m.

Peoples Health and Second Harvest Food Bank provide Thanksgiving meals to food-insecure older adults and host community meals for the St. John, Terrebonne and Lafayette councils on aging.

Location: Second Harvest Food Bank Reily Foods Kitchen, 700 Edwards Ave., New Orleans, LA 70123

Tuesday, Nov. 26

The annual giveaway will provide free turkeys and hams to families in need across the city. One turkey and one perishable food package per vehicle, and limited gas cards will be given out while supplies last.

Locations:

Learn more here.

Thursday, Nov. 28 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Sheriff Susan Hutson is inviting the entire City of New Orleans to the annual celebration. The Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office employees and volunteers will serve more than 2,500 holiday meals. Those living at senior centers, assisted living facilities, local shelters and more are welcomed.

Location: Morial Convention Center in Hall I

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