Thank God the French got here first.Can you imagine what New Orleans might have been had the Pilgrims gotten off at Pilottown instead of Plymouth?

It’s frightening… We might have been burning witches instead of café brûlot; or preaching to the quadroon beauties instead of dancing with them; or spending eons eating boiled beef and potatoes, instead of Écrevisse Cardinal, or pompano en papillote, or gumbo.

But the French, ah the French! They came here full blown with life and love, not refugees. God-centered and narrow; but adventurers, gamblers, fat with a culture that made living a love affair of the senses, and secure in the knowledge that while sin was the work of the devil, its nearest occasions were the particular art of the French.

— Phil Johnson
News director, editorial writer
WWL-TV, New Orleans