© 2024 WFAE
90.7 Charlotte 93.7 Southern Pines 90.3 Hickory 106.1 Laurinburg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
WFAEats
Welcome to WFAEats — a fun adventure where we explore all things tasty and interesting in the Charlotte food scene. We want to share stories, recipes and culinary escapades and hear about yours!

Finding Flammkuchen In New Orleans

The bar where we’d made our Sunday brunch reservation wouldn’t let us in. This was New Orleans, where people go to laissez les bons temps rouler. But two in our group weren’t quite 21, so we had to find another place to let our good times roll. 

The night before had been a blur of music, dancing, bowling, beer, and crawfish étouffée at the famed Rock ‘n’ Bowl. Nearly two dozen friends and family had gathered from across the country to celebrate a milestone birthday for our pal Barry. Now, roughly twelve hours later, our numbers had diminished somewhat. But the hearty souls who’d survived were hungry, and a few were getting kind of squirrelly. 

We wandered past a small café called Jagerhaus. “French - Toast - Ruben” their sign boasted. Was this a single dish, or two separate ones? It didn’t matter. The staff welcomed our sprawling group and once I saw the menu, it was all about the flammkuchen.

The dish belongs to Alsace, a region of France that borders Germany. The “flaming cake” consists of a flatbread topped with crèmefraîche, caramelized onions, matchsticks of bacon, and cheese – typically baked in wood-burning oven until the crust is crisp and the cheese is bubbly. In French it’s called a tarte flambée. Other adaptations may have sausage, eggs, or vegetables but it was hard to resist the traditional version, which arrived with slices of melted brie and a lovely pinched crust.

Before long we were feeling a whole lot better, because good food that we discover serendipitously does just exactly that. It smoothes the rough edges of our moods. It makes memories.

And then it disappears.

The sated diners wandered off to shop and sightsee for the rest of the afternoon. Since some of the visitors would be ending their trip in just a few hours, a couple of us did the only thing that made sense: We started planning where we’d gather that evening for our next meal, the last we’d share together, and the one that would send the travelers on their way home.

Amy Rogers is the author of Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas and Red Pepper Fudge and Blue Ribbon Biscuits. Her writing has also been featured in Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, the Oxford American, and the Charlotte Observer. She is founding publisher of the award-winning Novello Festival Press. She received a Creative Artist Fellowship from the Arts and Science Council, and was the first person to receive the award for non-fiction writing. Her reporting has also won multiple awards from the N.C. Working Press Association. She has been Writer in Residence at the Wildacres Center, and a program presenter at dozens of events, festivals, arts centers, schools, and other venues. Amy Rogers considers herself “Southern by choice,” and is a food and culture commentator for NPR station WFAE.