Close your eyes and picture this... it's a warm rainy day in New Orleans. You're recovering from a night of drinking far too many saccharine hurricanes and sazeracs, and you want nothing more than a strong bitter cup of coffee and something so comforting and simple it'll make you forget your woes and excite you for another fun fueled day of exploring the bayou.
Enter pastry chef Kelly Fields, her restaurant Willa Jean, and perhaps one of the best presentations of milk and cookies I've ever seen. You sit down at one of the many bright and sunny tables scattered around the restaurant and enjoy the scent of freshly baked pastries wafting through the air. You pause for a moment to admire the fun pendant lamps made from industrial sized stand-up mixer whisk attachments and order a french press and a plate of cookies.
Chef Fields spent more than seven years of R&D perfecting these babies, and once you set eyes on them you know it's already perfection. There's giant melty chunks of three to five different kinds of Valrhona chocolate, delicate crystals of fleur de sel, a tin of ice cold milk infused with Tahitian vanilla bean, and a whisk packed with that precious cookie dough you always wanted to sneak when baking up a batch, but salmonella scares always prevented you from eating. In case you were worried - the eggs in this dish are pasteurized, so eat as much as you want.
You pick up the cookie and it's crisp on the outside - that nice bit of caramelization letting you know that this cookie will stand up well to being dunked in milk. But then you bite into the center and it's warm, soft, and tender. It wraps you in a blanket of Santa comfort and tells you that everything's going to be alright. Even for this non-sweets loving person - I can admire when I've met something truly spectacular and this plate of milk & cookies is just that. Something that I'm sure I'll continue to dream about for years to come... and perhaps one of few things that will get me back to NOLA sooner rather than later.
Willa Jean
611 O'Keefe Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70113
(504) 509-7334
www.willajean.com