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If you live in New Orleans you can go for weeks, months, even years, without having any connection to what goes on across the causeway, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Mandeville, Covington, Madisonville, Hammond \\u2013 they\\u2019re just names of places that get hammered when the weather forecast gets it wrong and storms go north of New Orleans.

Ponchatoula sounds interesting. You\\u2019ve thought about checking out the strawberry festival. But when it comes right down to it, why not just get a strawberry daiquiri at the drive-thru and go to one of the many festivals on this side of the lake?

That\\u2019s a pretty prevalent view from the south shore. When you live on the north shore, the perspective is, understandably, different.\\xa0

Without generalizing any more than I have been already, the North Shore sees itself as a superior part of New Orleans that\\u2019s a mere 40-minute drive away from downtown.\\xa0The towns on the north shore, they say, have all the benefits of New Orleans, without crime, potholes, poor education, exorbitant rents and inflated real estate prices.

Even die-hard New Orleanians have to agree that those downsides are real. But they might be skeptical of the North Shore\\u2019s claims to share the attributes New Orleans is best known for.\\xa0

South Shore skeptics, this show\\u2019s for you.\\xa0We haven\\u2019t got time to go into every facet of North Shore/South Shore comparisons, so we\\u2019re just going to look at one: hospitality.

If you live on the south shore, you\\u2019re familiar with celebrity chefs and restaurateurs like Alon Shaya, Donald Link, and Emeril Lagasse. If you live on the north shore you\\u2019re also familiar with Pat Gallagher.\\xa0Pat is the founder and lynchpin of The Gallagher Restaurant Group, a collection of four restaurants in Covington, Mandeville and Slidell.\\xa0Pat\\u2019s restaurants employ over 200 people, from the classic upscale Gallagher\\u2019s Grill in Covington to the casual seafood restaurant, Pat\\u2019s Rest Awhile, on the lakefront in Mandeville

If you live on the south shore, you\\u2019re familiar with elegant, traditional hotels like the Monteleone, the Roosevelt, and Le Pavilion. If you live on the North Shore, you\\u2019re also familiar with the Southern Hotel, in Covington.

The Southern Hotel existed from 1907 till 1960.\\xa0After the hotel closed in 1960, the building suffered all kinds of indignities, including a stint as a drugstore, and a City of Covington government building.\\xa0From 1983 on, it was totally abandoned.

It wasn\\u2019t till 2011 that lawyer and preservationist, Lisa Condrey Ward came along and convinced her husband, her brother, and her sister-in-law to go into business with her and buy the building.\\xa0Some three years, and $8m in renovations later, the Southern Hotel re-opened in 2014.

Today the hotel has 40 guest rooms, event spaces, a set of private guest suites in the garden, and a restaurant.

North vs South

It\\u2019s human nature to compare yourself to others.\\xa0It might not be conducive to good mental health, but we can\\u2019t help judging ourselves. Apparently, as humans, we like to know where we stand on various axes - like rich/poor, young/old, and smart/stupid.

If we really were smart, we wouldn\\u2019t do this at all. Because it\\u2019s pointless. Knowing that you\\u2019re richer, older, or taller than someone else doesn\\u2019t make you a better person.\\xa0Similarly, believing that the city you live in is better than the city someone else lives in doesn\\u2019t actually make your city better.

New Orleanians on the South Shore prefer living here for their own reasons. And the exact same logic applies to folks on the North Shore. For diehard South Shore loyalists, maybe today\\u2019s glimpse into Pat Gallagher\'s restaurants and Lisa\'s hotel will open some minds to the merits of the North Shore.

And to our friends on the North Shore, Pat and Lisa drove all the way to the Irish Channel without getting carjacked or shaken down by someone claiming to know where they got their shoes.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at\\xa0NOLA Pizza\\xa0in the\\xa0NOLA Brewing Taproom. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com

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