The author of Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food: More than 225 of the City's Best Recipes to Cook at Home, Tom Fitzmorris, was actually born on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which certainly gets him brownie points in terms of heritage and, although that birth date didn't come with any guarantees, Fitzmorris certainly knows his stuff with it comes to NOLA foods. He is one of the leading food writers (if not the leading one) and restaurant critics in the area and runs the New Orleans Menu website that keeps tabs on the reopenings of restaurants in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Getting back to the book, it has a great collection of food favorites from Crescent City. Most have been updated to suit modern tastes and to cater to some more modern food trends (small plates, for example), the dishes are basically staples of the area, the types of food that residents already know and love. Drago's Charbroiled Oysters and Cajun Smothered Duck are two of the more regionally-familiar recipes, while everyone will recognize Bananas Foster and Beignets. Whether you're interested in trying New Orleans' cuisine for the first time or are already a fan, you probably can't go too far wrong with this volume.

In this month's issue of GQ magazine, food guru Alan Richman took a glossy, 8-page look at the food of New Orleans post-Katrina. The idea sounds like a good one, so why is the article so controversial? The problem is that the piece was not gushing, not exactly sentimental and, in parts, not accurate about the city and its food.

To date, the vast majority of the pieces about New Orleans have been stories of survival and of working to restore the city to its former state. People rebuild their homes and lives. Restaurants struggle to clean up, reopen and attract customers. Richman writes some about the touching, uplifting parts and the grassroots movements of people to get their lives back in order, but does not write exclusively about the uplifting parts, in fact stating that "New Orleans shouldn't exist," referring to it below-sea level elevation right on a vulnerable coastline. In another controversial assertion, he says that Cajuns originated in Canada, which is true, contrary to what some of his critics have said. However, Richman also states that he doesn't think Creoles ever really existed, but the term applied to a definite and large group of people in the city. He explains his position in the GQ podcast, by the way.