We’ve had some thunderstorms this week in New Orleans. Thankfully I was inside during the worst one Monday evening. Incredibly powerful thunder and lightning, and very low in the sky…seemingly right overhead!

I took this photo as I left the convention center yesterday. I was struck by how white those poles were against the dark gray of the storm clouds above the city. Note the palm tree in the lower left of the picture. I had lunch with my co-author, Cindy, at the restaurant you can just make out at the bottom of the photo, Mulate’s.

Mulate’s bills itself as the original Cajun restaurant; it opened in its original location in 1980. I asked our server how to pronounce the name, by the way, after hearing many different-sounding versions from semi-authoritative sources.

He told us it is “myoo LAHTS.”

So not “myoo LAYTS,” which was one of the many possibilities I’d been presented with. Nor “myoo LAH tayz,” nor “muh LAH teez,” nor “moo LAH tuz,” nor “moo LAYDZ,” which were a few of the others.

The food at Mulate’s is terrific, and there seems to be a line out the door every night. It was really hot at the noon hour and I had a long afternoon of conference sessions ahead of me, so I ordered just a cup of crawfish étouffée and a gigantic pink lemonade to drink.

I also liked the Mulate’s building itself, with its veranda-like roof over the wide sidewalk (very handy protection from rain or the hot sun, both of which we had plenty of experience with this week);

its huge, heavy shutters meant to close over its French doors;

and its lovely ornamental security bars on the doors/windows of the adjoining section of the restaurant, actually an adjacent building, that lacks shutters.