I was twenty-two years old when I first moved to the city—young and not quite ready for the world. I knew nothing about New Orleans. Folks around the small town I grew up in, in California, wondered aloud, “Why would anyone move back there? Or live there in the first place?”
New Orleans was a world away from where I’d grown up—different in almost every sense—but the city welcomed me in a way I didn’t expect. New Orleanians are easy to fall in love with: among the many things they are, they are generous, above all. Within a matter of days at my new address I was given free food and drink by strangers in a second line, given furniture by my neighbor, and got invited to after-hours parties by the wash-and-fold a few doors down.
There’s a word for this in New Orleans: lagniappe (pronounced LAN-yap). It means “a little something extra”—something Mark Twain, in his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, “worth traveling to New Orleans to get.”
The Definition of Lagniappe
The word “lagniappe” is a Cajun-French word that can etymologically be traced back to New Orleans’ French and Spanish history. It relates to la ñapa—which, in American Spanish, means “something extra”—and the Quechua word yapa, meaning “something added.”
“Even if it never occurred to you to engage in our practice, learning that there’s a word to describe it makes it something that’s more real,” says Liz Williams, the founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans.
Liz says that the practice of giving lagniappe to somebody is akin to the thirteenth item in a baker’s dozen. And while lagniappe isn’t exclusive to food and drink, she says, it’s ever so prevalent in the food industry in New Orleans because of its tendency to generosity.
“You feed people because there’s some amount of love and nurturing that’s naturally involved in feeding people, even if it’s often not articulated, and so you give them a little bit extra,” Liz says, “It’s like a little reward. But it’s also a show of generosity.”
Practicing Lagniappe
Lagniappe can look like a number of things, Liz says. It may be an amuse-bouche, or a small and complementary first course that sets the tone for the meal. It could be an extra appetizer or dessert that you didn’t order. It could also be something as subtle as a chef adding extra ingredients to a dish—au gratis—so that it can be shared more seamlessly between more people.
“Lagniappe can be anywhere,” says Frank Brigtsen, “but at the restaurant, it’s a little love—a little hug and kiss to get you started on the right note.”
Frank and his wife, Marna, opened their restaurant, Brigtsen’s, in the Riverbend neighborhood of Uptown New Orleans in 1986.
The night before we spoke over the phone, Frank had some friends coming into the restaurant for a birthday—one of whom had never eaten at Brigtsen’s before. He wanted to wish them a warm welcome, so he sent the table some seared scallops with a touch of smoked corn sauce with a dab or two of mojo picante. It certainly wasn’t Frank’s first lagniappe, and it won’t be his last. He doesn’t get tired of it: it brings him as much joy as it does his guests.
“I think it really applies to life in general, you get what you give, and you give what you get,” he said. “I think that’s where we’re really fortunate as chefs, because we have that power in our hands, to make a difference in someone’s life. That’s kind of the lagniappe of being a chef.”
Of course, chefs can’t send out free food to every single table that walks through their doors. So who, exactly, gets lagniappe?
The short answer to that is, it really depends.
For Amarys and Jordan Herndon, chefs and owners of Palm&Pine in New Orleans’ Upper French Quarter, the concept of lagniappe is integral to their philosophy of hospitality.
“We don’t have that one thing that’s like, ‘Oh, everybody gets it.’ We really enjoy part of the hospitality of figuring someone out,” says Jordan. “It feels a little bit more special and more personal.”
Amarys and Jordan say that they like to customize the lagniappe they send out to their guests based on what they know about them, be it personally or what they order.
“It’s definitely curated. And it’s for the guests that are like we can see they’re ready to go deeper with us. And that can be identified,” Amarys said. “It happens a lot at the kitchen counter with us where we can just feel the engagement from a guest.”
That might mean, for a table they can tell is really into seafood, sending plate of Corner Store Crudo, a Viet-Southern dichotomy of raw yellowfin tuna, nựớc chấm made with pineapple-flavored Big Shot soda, puffy shrimp chips, and freshly picked herbs.
Amarys says one of her favorite lagniappes to send folks from out of town is gumbo.
“They’re a little different than what you see everywhere else,” she says of the inventive stews, like crab and hominy, or smoked turkey neck gumbo. “And maybe it’s the best gumbo they had on their whole trip.”
With food and labor costs on the rise and staff retention a perpetual challenge, the economics of keeping alive a tradition of giving out free food may not make sense to out-of-towners, but these New Orleanians say: that’s not really the point.
“Our accountant doesn’t want to hear that we’re giving away,” Jordan said. “One thing that is across the board—between tourists and people that live here—is the excess, the indulgence.”
The Hospitality Of New Orleans
But it wasn’t until I worked in hospitality in New Orleans that I understood that people here weren’t just being nice. They were being themselves; they were being kind. The New Orleanians I worked for and with taught me to greet everybody with abundance—an abundance and generosity that courses through the veins of the city. That abundance and generosity translate directly to hospitality practices, like lagniappe, that help invite people into the fabric of New Orleans.
“The one thing of all the things New Orleans does well is our hospitality—it’s one of the most important things along with the food,” Jordan says. “And part of that hospitality is making people feel welcome.”
And with great hospitality comes great responsibility, but also great opportunity. For Frank Brigtsen, that is, to make outsiders “love New Orleans the way we do.” He believes that doing so would be impossible were it not for the city’s people.
“We’re known for our food, of course, we’re known for our music, jazz, etc. Architecture. But I think our most precious asset is our people,” he said.
As new people are sewn into the quilt of New Orleans—like the immigrants from Latin America who have helped pull the city back together since 2006—the most generous and hospitable traditions of New Orleans are passed on to a new generation.
“And they stayed. And thank God they did. So the tapestry of Creole culture continues to evolve as well,” says Frank. “I think there’s a love that’s inherent in Creole culture.”
In turn, this new generation adds a little something extra—a little lagniappe—to a city full of abundance.