Part 1: Allyship

It is a chilly day in March, Women’s History Month. A sizable crowd has gathered for an event organized by the women’s employee resource group at a local business. A consultant has been flown in to speak. The topic today: male allyship.

What follows is an hour and a half lecture, delivered by a man to a group of women, about how those women need men to leap to their defense. If someone interrupts a woman in a meeting, he says, it’s up to the men to stop them and ask the room to let the woman continue. If a woman is tasked with taking notes, he says, it’s up to the men to say, “No, Guy Mandude will take the notes.”

There is no discussion of challenging ourselves as men to learn, to ask questions, to listen and have more situational awareness, to coach one another away from biased behaviors and language. There is no call to action for men to intentionally take up less space than what is often afforded us. Instead there is a focus on reinforcing patriarchal relationships by being the protector, the white knight. There is encouragement to speak up more in the form of defending a woman in the moment, as if she is incapable of doing so herself, instead of on using our voices and privilege to combat the systemic problems at play. There is no discussion of showing up for pay equivalence, of speaking out for equitable representation in leadership - both formal and informal, of demonstrating our allyship in a supportive and encouraging way.

At least one audience member bristles. After work, she tells me all about it. I sympathize, and I listen, and I consider how I might be a better ally myself in the workplace and the world.

Part 2: First Courses

It has rained off and on all day, but this has not kept people at home on Friday night. Ash and I circle Market Street several times in search of parking before resigning ourselves to a nearby garage. We are meeting our friends for dinner at Lou Lou on Market, the newly opened sister restaurant to long-running St. Matthews eatery of the same name.

Lou Lou has moved into the building previously inhabited by Decca, one of the restaurants from the first wave of transformation and rebranding of the East Market district into Nulu. Decca closed last year after a decade in business, never having fully recovered from the departure of Chef Annie Petty and the blows dealt by the coronavirus pandemic. The spot is a prime location in the heart of a bustling shopping and dining district. It boasts a speakeasy in the basement, multiple floors for dining, a patio for live music and more dining space, a second floor deck (still enclosed for the weather), and an Airbnb atop it all.

Inside, the restaurant is bright and energetic and somewhat loud, though not unbearably so. The walls are lined with art that leans into the New Orleans styling Lou Lou aims for. A mural evoking the French Quarter stretches across one wall. There are five of us dining. We’re lead down a narrow hall to a steep and sharply winding staircase to the upper level dining room. An old building, the rooms tend to be somewhat chopped up from one another. There are at least two more dining areas on our floor, along with the deck. This place can seat a lot of people, and on this night it is full up.

Our server greets us. He seems friendly enough as he talks about aspects of the menu, which is heavily cajun but also boasts several other entrees, pastas, and pizzas. He bluntly tells my wife to not bother with the pasta dishes. The special tonight is snapper.

The cocktail menu does not speak to me, but one of our companions orders the Pikant Old Fashioned, a spicy take on Louisville’s official cocktail. He tells me it is quite good.

We order some appetizers for the table: hush puppies, mozzarella sticks, and Bayou Dip, though the table subs in chicken for the crawfish that normally comes in that one. The hush puppies are quite good; smaller and crunchier than I would normally expect, but flavorful and served with a delicious smoked honey and a cajun butter. The mozarella sticks are more akin to a cheese pizza with marinara on the side. They are nothing special, but it is hard to go wrong with copious amounts of garlic and cheese. The dip is a hit with the table: creamy and packed with flavor from the “Lou Lou dust” and chiles.

Part 3: Microagressions

The meal is off to a good start, but there are cracks here and there. The smell of pot smoke wafts to us from time to time from the Airbnb upstairs. There is a busser wandering around, sweaty, with his shirt unbuttoned so that his unappetizing thatch of chest hair spills out. These are things we can look past as we catch each other up on our travels and new jobs and when exactly our friends are opening up their heated pool.

Our server arrives to take our entree orders. He starts with Ash, who orders the red beans and rice. “Order something else,” he replies. She pauses and he tries to explain his reasoning about how he thinks there are better things on the menu. She sticks with her order. I order the wings appetizer as my meal; our server almost moves on before I can clarify for him that I want the dry rub option and the ranch dipping sauce. I ask for a side of fries with them. My other two male companions order, but I miss which dishes. Finally, the other lady at the table, Helen, chooses the snapper special. “You should get the mahi instead,” our server says. She sticks with her order. “Well, if you’re local, you can always come back for the mahi.” She didn’t ask.

I am now struck by the subtlety of it all. Five orders placed, and our server, for whatever reason, has attempted to correct the women, but not the men. I have to admit that it escaped my notice in the moment. It did not escape the notice of the ladies. Regardless of whether the server was conscious of his actions and if so what his motivations were, the message sent was the same: you ladies can’t be trusted to make the best decisions for yourselves, but the guys can.

We call them microagressions, but ultimately we are talking about a fabric of dismissive or patronizing behavior. Part of being a good ally is situational awareness, being able to spot these behaviors and hopefully avoid engaging in them ourselves. Part of our responsibility is to coach other men away from unproductive or damaging behaviors, to help each other see the impact of our behaviors in these situations.

It is possible the server heard us discussing this after he left the table, and I hope if he did that he reflects on how he approaches women in the future. He certainly became less conversational of the rest of the service, which was probably for the best.

Part 4: Oh, This Was a Restaurant Review

Our entrees arrive quickly. My dry rub wings are decent, but nothing special. If anything there is a tad too much of the rub. The Dan O’s ranch is a great sauce, though. My fries have been forgotten , but ultimately I am okay with that, as there is too much food to finish already. I cannot recall what my other friends ordered, but they like it enough to box up the leftovers. Helen likes her snapper. Ash enjoys her red beans and rice. I guess they knew what they were doing when ordering, after all. We skip dessert.

The food at Lou Lou isn’t anything special, but it is decent. The flavor is there, and we have so few cajun restaurants around that another option never hurts. That said, I wouldn’t go there for the food alone, and certainly not for the service. The atmosphere is lively, and in nicer weather, enjoying some New Orleans jazz on the patio sounds like a fun night. That’s the real draw of the place: it is conducive to a good time. And microagressions nothwithstanding, we had a good time there with our friends.