This past Thursday, I squeezed into the middle seat of a SUV packed with five other people — all male — and headed to Louisiana for the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. I had my overnight bag and was prepared with plenty of tank tops, jean shorts, hats, sunscreen and, most importantly, an adventurous appetite.

After a longer-than-expected car ride, we arrived at the Hotel Modern late Thursday evening. Seven hours and a major detour with the guys, and I was ready for a much-needed drink. I dropped my bags in the room and headed straight to the hotel’s bar. What might be more shocking than the $6 I paid for my first Shiner Bock—I guess we really weren’t in Texas anymore—was the fact that this was my first time to visit New Orleans. Ever.

So I didn’t want to wait long to taste my first dish in the Big Easy. I ordered some hushpuppies from the lounge’s small plates menu, prepared by the chef of Tivoli & Lee, the hotel’s restaurant. Mixed into the corn batter was succulent pork belly, and the hushpuppies were served with horseradish and parmesan aioli. This would be the first of a few dishes I tried during the weekend that packed that subtle creeping heat of horseradish.

If I had been in New Orleans visiting the city and the city alone, I would have made it a point to explore the city’s famous classic restaurants, headline makers and best-kept secrets. However, Jazz Fest kept me busy and a little preoccupied, and my first tastings of the legendary food city were a bit off-kilter.

We were on a tight schedule each morning to get to the festival fairgrounds — about 10 minutes from the French Quarter — so on Friday and Saturday morning we enjoyed breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. While my classic breakfast sampler wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, I was pleasantly surprised by the medium-roast Ethiopian Harrar coffee, which is locally roasted by Orleans Coffee Exchange. Houston coffee-lovers are spoiled with so many excellent local options, so sipping a mug or two of this fragrant, full-bodied coffee each morning was an unexpected delight.

At the festival — last weekend’s biggest acts included Carlos Santana, Phish, Ruben Blades, Boz Scaggs, Robert Plant and the Avett Brothers — the food options were seemingly endless and a bit overwhelming. After a stop by the information booth, we headed to order the recommended cochon de lait po’boy (photo at left) from Love at First Bite, a family-owned catering company that also operates the well-known Walker’s Southern-Style BBQ.

Served on a proper crusty roll with a soft cottony center, this po’boy was overstuffed with 12-hour-hickory-roasted suckling pig and creamy Cajun mustard slaw. The heat from the mustard helped balance the rich pulled pork, and the fluffy bread soaked up all of the sauce and juices. Nothing went to waste, and every ingredient was there for a reason.

That evening we wandered down to a dive bar a block off Bourbon Street and ordered another po’boy, except these sandwiches were flavored a bit unexpectedly. In the back of Erin Rose Bar in a room that is about 5-by-5-feet wide, Killer Poboys serves up a rotating menu of inspired po’boys and sandwiches.

The coriander lime Gulf shrimp po’boy wasn’t your traditional Cajun po’boy — marinated radishes, carrots and cucumber gave it an Asian twist — but the horseradish sauce that coated the shrimp brought it right back to the French Quarter. After scoring the lone table in the place, we sipped an Abita beer, inhaled our po’boys and quietly cheered on the Rockets to defeat Portland on the flat screen right above us.

One of Saturday evening’s last Jazz Fest performances — Phish — ended later than expected, and we had tickets to a musical variety show billed as a “river jam” on the Creole Queen riverboat that was docking between 8 and 9 pm. We rushed to the riverside dock complaining about our grumbling stomachs the entire way.

Luckily, there was catered food served on the triple-decker paddlewheeler. For $5, you could get a bowl of jambalaya, red beans and rice or shrimp pasta. We each ordered individual bowls of jambalaya plus a bowl of red beans and rice for the table. The food, though not memorable in a serious culinary way, and the music and the nighttime cruise on the Mississippi River made for an unforgettable experience that I will always associate with my first visit to New Orleans. It was the highlight of the trip.

We didn’t want to eat at the hotel restaurant for a third morning in a row, so on our walk to the bus stop before the festival, we stopped at the unassuming Cafe at the Square on St. Charles Avenue for brunch. We each ordered different renditions of the eggs Benedict. My fried green tomato Benedict was a beautiful dish (photo above) — thick-cut tomatoes, perfectly poached eggs, smoked bacon, a thick hollandaise and fresh chopped parsley. If you got a bit of each ingredient on the fork, it made for a bite that was tangy, smoky and a bit acidic.

The festival crowds grew larger each day, so on Sunday we had less time to eat because we needed more time to travel from stage to stage. After Eric Clapton’s show, with tired legs and blistered feet, we headed back to the hotel and shamelessly ordered room service. We enjoyed our last meal in New Orleans under the covers and cheering for the Rockets. Houston was calling for my return.

Note: Among the headliners for the second weekend of Jazz Fest happening this Thursday through Sunday: Lyle Lovett, The Wailers, Marcia Ball, Chick Corea, Robert Earl Keen, Al Jarreau, Christina Aguilera, Aaron Neville and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band.