New Orleans bakes BP a thank-you cake

Why NOLA is the wittiest city in the world

Published May 21, 2010 1:15PM (EDT)

A cake for BP's oil leak
A cake for BP's oil leak

Let's say that you live in a city. Let's say that your city is still trying to pull itself out of the rubble of a disaster that nearly literally wiped it off the face of the earth. Let's say that your city's economy and culture depend in large part on a large body of water nearby. Let's say that BP has an epic fail just around the way and springs an oil leak so big you can see it from space. What would you and your neighbors do?

Probably whatever you would do, unless you live in New Orleans, would not be nearly as awesome as what someone at a neighborhood grocery store called the Breaux Mart did: make a cake for the BP oil leak.

People wag their fingers at Louisianans for their cliché of laissez les bons temps rouler -- letting the good times roll. "Those people are never serious," they say. And hey, I'd be pissed off too if I were in a car on a street that suddenly just got blocked for 20 minutes while a second line showed up and a dance party suddenly broke out. I'd be pissed, that is, if I wasn't in the dance party, which I was.

So those people are missing the point. It's a place where the culture matters as much as the facts. It's a place where food matters so much that a grocery bakery can be a place of protest. It's a place where wit triumphs over invective. But whatever. My point now isn't to yap about the culture of New Orleans -- it's to share a slice of this genius cake, courtesy of Flickr user Skooksie


By Francis Lam

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam.

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Food Food Art Gulf Oil Spill New Orleans