A hangover cure, a relationship saver and a Chiefs delicacy, all in one NOLA spot
You don’t have to believe me, but I wasn’t hungover when I ordered the hangover bowl at Willa Jean.
Hangry, maybe. It was 2 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten all day.
Really, though, the dish’s description just appealed to my trashcan culinary sensibilities: A bunch of stuff I like, served in a big bowl.
“I’ll have that one,” I told the server, dumbly.
Out it came: a couple of overeasy eggs surrounded by chunky, roasted potatoes. Underneath, a swamp of flavors: pork debris (the meat that falls off the roast and settles at the bottom of the pan; seems to be a Louisiana thing), cheesy grits, caramelized onions, and garlic. Maybe the dish didn’t need it, but I doused it all in hot sauce.
I’m not going to say it gave me energy. It ate it too fast, and it’s so much food. But it made me feel a lot better.
“We used to only have that for brunch on the weekends,” Shannon White, the CEO of the restaurant group that owns Willa Jean, told me when I rang her up a few days later. “We get a lot of absolutely hungover people coming in early. I mean, this is New Orleans.
“But it was a fan favorite, and eventually it became a staple of the menu. There’s a nostalgic, throwing-a-meal-together-at grandma’s-house quality to it, too, that I think people like.”
Willa Jean, which opened in 2015 at 611 O’Keefe Ave. in New Orleans’ Central Business District, is a cute, brunchy-lunchy joint known for Southern cooking. Elsewhere on the menu, you’ll find a fried chicken and tabasco honey biscuit, or barbecue shrimp toast.
But it’s also a bakery. I had already decided I was probably going to write something about the hangover bowl. But on the way in, I’d spotted a beautiful king cake behind the glass. A moist cinnamon roll, topped with Mardi Gras-colored cream cheese frosting and white-chocolate pearls. A slice cost nine bucks.
I bought one. I had to pick up my girlfriend from the airport in a few hours. It was her first time in New Orleans. A Mardi Gras cake seemed like a proper welcome.
The hangover bowl had served as a temporary salve, but by the time I had to get out to MSY, I was irritated again: deadlines, traffic, a mix-up with the rental car company. I admit that I was not the sunniest version of myself when I pulled up to Arrivals.
This was quickly pointed out to me. I maybe didn’t respond very well to that, either. By the time we hit the highway, I was on the receiving end of a cold shoulder. Not a good start to the trip!
After a few miles of silence, I remembered the Willa Jean king cake. I reached into the back seat and presented it to her.
“What if you had some of this cake I got you?”
She looked at me for the first time in several minutes. She was still frowning, still scary. But she accepted the cake. My eyes darted between the road and her face as I watched her open the box and examine it.
I am not exaggerating when I say I could literally see her anger at me dissolve as she ate this king cake. The frown faded, her shoulders relaxed.
“I can’t believe how good this is,” she finally said.
Crisis averted: I had managed to steer the attention toward the cake and away from my bad behavior. We ended up having a lovely time.
Later, I asked White about the king cake. Everybody in New Orleans seems to have their own take on the local delicacy. She said Willa Jean’s baker, Timothy Joyner-Matz, actually changed it up recently, layering a toffee sauce into their usual cinnamon roll recipe and adding an icing that’s rich but lighter than what you find on a lot of king cakes.
“One of the goals, too, was to make something that would be soft and delicious — not just when you order it, but a couple days later,” White said.
Can confirm. I gnawed on what was left of the king cake for two days straight, taking small, surreptitious bites on trips to the kitchen. I earned a new nickname: “the little rat.” I think she meant it affectionately.
It wasn’t available when I was in last week, but as of Wednesday, Willa Jean is serving that same king cake in Chiefs and Eagles colors. They’re not far from all the action at the Superdome and are expecting big crowds of fans over the next several days.
We sent a photographer over Wednesday to snag a pic. But I’m coming for one of those Chiefs cakes before I leave town.
This story was originally published February 6, 2025 at 3:00 PM.
