Holy Thursday Gumbo in New Orleans: Gumbo z'Herbes

Holy Thursday gumbo in New Orleans is gumbo z'herbes, a green gumbo made with many greens and cooked on the Thursday before Easter. Dooky Chase's Restaurant in Treme is the best-known kitchen that serves it, once a year, and its lunch seatings fill months ahead. Plan early, and treat it as a tradition as much as a meal.

What is Holy Thursday gumbo in New Orleans?

Holy Thursday, also called Maundy Thursday, is the day before Good Friday. Creole families in New Orleans have long marked it with a pot of green gumbo, often spelled gumbo des herbes. It is tied to the Last Supper and, traditionally, to the last day Catholics ate meat before fasting until Easter.

That is why the dish is also a Lent food in New Orleans. Where a gumbo built on seafood or sausage belongs to any cold evening, this one belongs to a single day of the church calendar, and many families only ever eat it then.

What is gumbo z'herbes made of?

The base is greens, and plenty of them. The tradition is an odd number, usually nine to thirteen kinds, with mustard, collard and turnip greens common and watercress and spinach added in some pots. The greens are cooked down, blended into a roux and seasoned, then finished with filé powder and served over rice or on its own.

Some say nine is preferred because it matches the churches devout Catholics visit on Good Friday. Another saying, repeated by Leah Chase herself, is that the number of greens is the number of new friends you will make in the coming year. Treat both as lore: they are told, not proven, and they are part of why people enjoy the dish.

Is there a meatless gumbo for Holy Thursday?

Yes, and it may be the older form. Because Lent once meant abstaining from meat for the whole season, older versions of the gumbo may have been meatless, and meatless pots are common today. The pot served at Dooky Chase's is the opposite: a meat-rich gumbo with smoked sausage, ham and beef.

So the question to ask a cook is simple: is this pot meatless or not? If you eat no meat, say so when you book or order, and expect the answer to differ from place to place.

Where can you eat green gumbo in New Orleans?

One place is confirmed by independent sources, and it is the one most people mean.

• Dooky Chase's Restaurant, on Orleans Avenue in Treme, serves gumbo z'herbes on Holy Thursday, a once-a-year dish there, and has long held a Holy Thursday celebration under the late Chef Leah Chase. Food writer Jessica B. Harris writes that its lunch sittings book up months ahead.

No other New Orleans restaurant turned up in our reading as serving green gumbo on that day, so this page names only one. Other kitchens and home cooks make it too, and a church or community event may serve it. Ask a neighbor, a church or a local cook, and always confirm with a place before you travel.

How do you plan for Holy Thursday gumbo?

• Decide your date first. Holy Thursday moves with Easter, so look at the calendar for the year you plan to visit.
• Contact the restaurant early. Parties of many people are common on the day, which is why seatings fill.
• Eat the whole meal, not only the gumbo. A recent article on the restaurant's Easter dishes mentions shrimp Clemenceau, a dark-roux gumbo, red beans and rice and fried chicken as the dishes people add.
• If you cannot get a seat, cook it. A pot of green gumbo is something you can make at home from a farm stand's greens, and cooking it with family is part of the tradition.

How do you rate and remember a dish you eat once a year?

A dish that comes round once a year is easy to misremember, so write it down. In the Mosey app only the place and stars are needed, and "Rate each dish too" lets you name the gumbo itself, so next year you can compare the pot with this one. If you try a different dish, "Had something else? Name the dish." keeps it separate.

Use "Who were you with?" to tag the people you ate with. Tag people you follow, and they can add their own rating of the same meal, which is a good way to settle whether the greens or the sausage carried the pot. Tags such as Group Dining can sit on the rating when the table was large. Write one line with each rating, such as the heat or the size of the pot, because a note about the dish helps the next reader more than a star count.

Keep a list too. A list called Once a year can hold this gumbo, a king cake bakery and a St. Joseph's altar, with a note on each saying why it belongs. Share the list by invite link with the family you cook with. The ratings page explains the rating steps, and the lists page explains how to share one.

Where next in the city?

For the rest of the Lenten calendar, the St. Joseph's Day altars guide covers the meatless altars of March. For the gumbo family itself, the Creole and Cajun gumbo guide explains the differences, and the red beans and rice Monday guide covers another weekly custom. For meat-free eating all year, see the vegan and vegetarian guide. The Louisiana hub lists the rest, and the US food guides cover other towns.

Take the Mosey app to your next Holy Thursday table, rate the gumbo by the dish and keep it on a list for next spring.