The Chefs Come Marching In
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It’s official: New Orleans is cooking again. In the French Quarter, chefs are reopening their restaurants with simplified menus, stripped-down crews, and plenty of passion. The challenges are legion, but New Orleans’s beloved local cuisine – gumbo, shrimp remoulade, muffalettas, beignets, and pecan pralines – is steadily making its way back to the table.
“People ask me how I can be so upbeat,” Cajun-cuisine legend Paul Prudhomme said. “But why cry over things that already happened? I just want to go back to work.”
The rebirth began three weeks ago, when a handful of smaller restaurants in the French Quarter reopened. Scott Boswell was one of the first, deciding to open his new restaurant, Stanley, despite the hurricane. Remembering it now, he’s surprised he did it. “I look back on the decision I made to open it, and it was crazy, but in the moment, it felt right,” he said. “It was such a success, way beyond what I dreamed. It gave hope to other businesspeople and kept my staff together.”
To make it work, Mr. Boswell served basic food – burgers, sausage sandwiches, a veggie burger, and two types of pie – to hungry relief workers, journalists, military personnel, and locals. The food was a far cry from the refined dishes he had served at his other restaurant, Stella. “It was the most difficult burger I’ve ever made in my life, much more complicated than the complex food we serve at Stella,” Mr. Boswell said. Last week, as city services began functioning again, he was able to offer a bigger menu.
Ralph Brennan scaled down the menu at his Red Fish Grill to suit the situation. “Right now we’re runnin’ with two appetizers – one’s a gumbo – and redfish and steak coming off of a wood-burning grill,” he said.
The city’s boil-water ordinance made washing dishes and pots especially burdensome, so Mr. Brennan served his food on plastic plates and scaled down his cooking: “We’re trying to be as simple as we can with sauces so that we don’t have to clean pots.”
Mr. Prudhomme has been cooking on an even larger scale. At his company headquarters in nearby Harahan, La., his staff has dished up an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 meals to relief workers, military personnel, and anyone hungry for a hot meal – including a mountain of red beans and rice. “You feed it to a local person, and the first thing they do is sigh. It’s absolutely wonderful to see the reaction,” Mr. Prudhomme said.
At his newly reopened K-Paul’s restaurant, the chef began serving similarly homey, simplified food last week. Profit was not the top priority. “I want to be realistic. To wait for the customers that can pay the normal prices is silly,” he said. “I’d rather do it and not make money and break even. My goal in life is just to put something good in somebody’s mouth.”
The big-ticket New Orleans restaurants will take longer to recover, but many owners vow to return in full force. Rather than scaling down their menus or reducing their prices to fit dire circumstances, these restaurants will comfort locals and tourists with unbroken tradition and unapologetic luxury.
Galatoire’s just marked its 100th anniversary, and general manager Melvin Rodrigue said he will “ramp up” the restaurant gradually until he judges that the time is right to reopen. “We’re not opening with something that’s not classic to Galatoire’s. It would be improper for us,” he said.
Antoine’s, the oldest family-owned restaurant in the country, also has standards to maintain. “The table will be ready. And it will be white, 100% cotton, starched,” the general manager, Michael Guste, said. “No plastic plates here. It’s going to be Antoine’s logo china and sterling silver.”
Susan Spicer, the chef at Bayona, one of the most acclaimed restaurants in the city, hopes for continuity: “I think we’ve served Thanksgiving dinner at Bayona every year, and my goal is to have 16 years uninterrupted.”
Most chefs are confident of the loyalty of their customers. Mr. Guste predicts his clientele will be impatient for the grand reopening. “They will be flooding the rooms, they’ll be knocking down the doors. I might have to have 24-hour guard,” he said.
Ms. Spicer has heard from plenty of eager customers. “I’ve had a lot of e-mails from customers saying that they’re going to spend their tourist dollars here,” she said. “People have a special love for this city, and they’ll be back.”
The biggest challenge facing restaurants, said Tom Weatherly, the vice president of the Louisiana Restaurant Association, is bringing back restaurant workers that have been displaced by the hurricane. “What we’re concerned about is the ‘lower tier’ of employees, people that have been working for these restaurants for years and years.”
Some eateries will certainly close: The Louisiana Restaurant Association predicts that the city will lose at least 25% of its restaurants. Smaller establishments, especially those outside the French Quarter, seem to be the likeliest victims of Katrina. Many have been irretrievably damaged, and others simply lack the funds for payroll or to refurbish. And neighborhoods that have been flooded often lack the customers needed to sustain their businesses.
Stanford Barre, owner of Pampy’s Creole Kitchen, lost more than just his restaurant – he lost his chef. The renowned Austin Leslie, a legend of the New Orleans culinary scene for the past 40 years, died of a heart attack after being evacuated from the city. “He was a master of black-skillet cooking. Okra, stuffed peppers, mustard greens, fried chicken, gumbo, all of that good Creole cooking,” Mr. Barre said. He chose his restaurant’s location on Broad Street because “that’s where all that Creole cooking was born,” but he must now look for a new location in a less devastated part of the city.
Mr. Barre will keep Leslie’s memory alive by continuing to cook his food. “I will serve the ‘number nine’ until I’m in the grave. That was his specialty. Fried chicken, bell pepper, and potato salad.”
Indeed, the long tradition of famous food in New Orleans seems to have given restaurateurs the ability to endure. “We’ve been through a lot in 100 years – wars, the Depression,” Mr. Rodrigue said. “I see a bigger and better New Orleans in the future.”
New Orleans Cookbooks Hit the Shelves
Two new cookbooks on venerable New Orleans restaurants are being published this month. Both showcase the remarkable culinary heritage of the city.
Delmonico was more than just a famous restaurant in New York – a sister branch opened in 1895 in New Orleans, became a legend in its own right, and has continued to thrive long after the original closed its doors. Emeril Lagasse purchased the restaurant in 1997 and reopened it the following year with a new menu that combined spiffed-up classics and new dishes. The recipes in “Emeril’s Delmonico” (William Morrow, $29.95) showcase this hybrid approach, though the close-up photographs of the food don’t give the reader a sense of the spirit of the restaurant itself.
Galatoire’s celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, and “Galatoire’s Cookbook” (Clarkson Potter, $35) aims to capture the history and continued vibrance of the New Orleans institution. The book is filled with the indulgent atmosphere of an endless Friday lunch, spiked with images of courtly waiters and memories from generations of happy patrons. The French Creole recipes have a few modern touches, but they have retained the same polished patina of the meticulously maintained interior.