There's a moment, Robin Barnes tells me, when you step off the plane in New Orleans and something shifts. "People say they can taste the city when they land," she says, laughing. The Songbird of New Orleans is a ninth-generation local of a city with history that stretches back further than the United States itself. "You're coming to my house, we're going to break bread. You're probably going to eat something you've never heard of in your life – like crawfish – and it's going to be amazing."