This petition from the succession of Angelo, alias Antoine, Alciatore summarizes the estate that he left following his 1877 death in Marseille. A detailed twelve-page inventory filed in the succession papers indicates that the Alciatore restaurant adjoined a twenty-two room lodging house; those chambers now house the myriad of individual dining rooms that form the present-day Antoine's. Alciatore's death certificate, also filed among the papers, shows that he was born in Alassio, a town on the Italian coast, not too far from the French city of Marseille.
Can you imagine what New Orleans might have been had the Pilgrims gotten off at Pilottown instead of
Plymouth?
It's frightening . . . we might have been burning witches instead of cafe brulot; or preaching to the
quadroon beauties, instead of dancing with them; or spending eons eating boiled beef and potatoes, instead of
ecrevisse Cardinal, or pompano en papillote, or gumbo.
Thank God the French got here first.
Ed.
Hodding Carter, p. 233.]