This month Rizzoli releases Julia Reed’s New Orleans: Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll as the follow-up to the bestseller, Julia Reed’s South. In Julia’s latest book, the consummate hostess and lifestyle expert shares her favorite New Orleans recipes and ways to create parties certain to “laissez bons temps roulez” – New Orleans’ unofficial motto for “let the good times roll!” Held in a variety of venues, from courtyards to gracious interior spaces, the gatherings’ menus include such dishes as grillades, grits, and seafood gumbo, and cocktails ranging from the traditional Sazerac to a Satsuma Margarita. Furthermore, I particularly enjoyed the sneak peeks Julia Reed’s New Orleans provides into her glorious apartment in the city’s historic Garden District. So today we will take a look inside Julia’s new book, and we will tour her apartment and her former home which she documented in The House on First Street.

The Homes of Julia Reed

Julia’s celebrated former home, a three-story 19th century Greek Revival in the Garden District, was decorated by AD100 interior designer and historian, Thomas Jayne. It was featured in the September 2012 issue of Elle Decor and in StyleBlueprint, pictures below…

But first let’s start with her current Garden District apartment, which is actually two apartments the previous tenant had knocked into one.  The flat has more square footage than her previous home, and Julia faced the challenge of repositioning furniture and decor that had lived in a series of rooms (two parlors, a dining room, a library, and a big sunroom) into essentially two big rooms. One of her biggest challenges of decorating her apartment was arranging furniture without a fireplace as a focal point. “My old house had two big fireplaces in both of the parlors,” she told One Kings Lane. “It was kind of weird having these huge, huge, almost loftlike rooms.”  So she called upon her friends Courtney Coleman and Bill Brockschmidt of Brockschmidt & Coleman to help with her new home. “Right now I think the best description for my style would be ‘magpie.’ All the things I’ve collected over almost 30 years have been dropped in here with me—into my giant nest!”

Julia’s Garden District Apartment 

You can take a walk-through of Julia’s apartment here via Open House TV.

The House on First Street

Julia Reed’s New Orleans

About Julia Reed:
Journalist and author Julia Reed is a contributing editor at Garden & Gun. She contributes regularly to The Wall Street Journal and is the author of several books including One Man’s Folly: The Exceptional Houses of Furlow Gatewood; Julia Reed’s South: Spirited Entertaining and High-Style for All Year Long; But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria: Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry; Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena; and The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story.  These books are all available on Amazon, including her latest, Julia Reed’s New Orleans: Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll.