One may think that most New Orleanian food comes from French influence, and it does, but that myopia very much ignores those who shaped everything in the lakeside city, from its food to its street names: the Haitian people.
“Think about the three places that red beans and rice are emblematic,” Lolis Eric Elie, writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, food historian and author of “Treme: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans,” tells TODAY.com, referencing Haiti, New Orleans and Cuba, where the dish is simmered with ham. “During the Haitian Revolution, Haitians of all colors and social designations fled to two places, they went to eastern Cuba and New Orleans.”
After the Haitian people gained independence from the French on Jan. 1, 1804, free Blacks, whites and formerly enslaved folk fled the country for the first time. Initially, nearly 10,000 Haitians arrived on American shores, making New Orleans their new home and nearly doubling the city’s population at the time. Between 1791 and 1810, that number grew to more than 25,000 refugees, and they had a big influence on the music, food, architecture of New Orleans.
“It seems to me — and I emphasize the words ‘seems to me’ — that that is the Haitian influence,” Elie says, adding that there are still people in the part of Cuba where Haitians settled who speak Creole. “People talk about New Orleans and they always try to define our food by French and to a lesser extent, its Spanish influences, but they conveniently forget that the most recent large influx of francophone people came from Haiti, not from France.”
There is a Haitian recipe for red beans and rice (also known as diri kole ak pwa wouj) that has been made by Haitian people and their descendants for decades, utilizing epis, Haiti’s emblematic seasoning base. When the dish is made in New Orleans, however, it is made with what city dwellers call the “holy trinity”: celery, bell pepper and onion, though many New Orleanians also add cayenne pepper, smoked andouille sausage and more.