I think people in the Lower Nine like those greasy fried chicken [places]

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New Orleans City Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen apologized on Sunday for comments she said were taken out of context in a story published Sunday in The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate, in which she described a preference among residents of the Lower 9th Ward for “greasy fried chicken” places.

“In the context they were presented, my example of residents enjoying fried chicken and its abundance in the area came off as insensitive, and for that, I apologize,” she said in a statement to neighborhood residents.

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The comments that Hughes said he found offensive came during a recent interview conducted with Nguyen during a driving tour of the Lower 9th Ward. Nguyen was responding to a question about what kind of commerce the neighborhood can realistically support, given its shrunken populace since Hurricane Katrina.

“I’ll be candid -- having Wal-Mart come to the neighborhood, it ain’t gonna happen,” she said in the interview. “The concept of even like a Raising Cane’s, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

She went on: “This is just a reality, OK, and this is not putting anybody down: I think people in the Lower Nine like those greasy fried chicken [places],” Nguyen said.

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What she was trying to impart, Nguyen wrote on Sunday, was not “that fried chicken is all residents of the Lower 9th Ward want or deserve." Rather, "it was to describe that the Lower 9th Ward is a food desert, with the lack of access to healthy food alternatives due to the saturation of convenience stores and gas stations with unhealthy food options.”

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