Happy birthday, America. And on behalf of New Orleans, you’re welcome. That’s for the debt of gratitude owed for many contributions to this great nation, including in the world of food and drink.
It starts with the fact that New Orleans has its own food, the country’s most successful fusion cooking, Creole cuisine, a polyglot tale of blended influences in the New World. It’s the basis for the New Orleans reputation for food, which made it a gastronomic destination long before the current craze for it.
Consider Antoine’s Restaurant, founded in 1840. It was key in establishing the idea of a grand restaurant destination serving a local cuisine distinctive to the city, an early “bucket list” to experience a place and its culture through dining.
It set the template that was in place nearly a century later when Owen Brennan opened his first restaurant in the French Quarter, thus launching the Brennan family restaurant saga.
From Brennan’s, we get to Commanders Palace, which in the 1970s became a forerunner of the idea of modern American cuisine. Elevating local ingredients and dishes, it emboldened chefs all over the country to forge their own paths, rather than strive to fit European ideals.
Commander’s was the launching pad for chef Paul Prudhomme and his hugely influential K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen. It became a sensation for its robust flavors and creative ways. In the analog era, the chef’s blackened redfish “went viral.” He even hosted the equivalent of pop-ups, setting up temporary traveling versions of K-Paul’s in other cities.
In the same era, chef Austin Leslie rose to national prominence for his mastery of Black Creole cooking. His restaurant Chez Helene inspired the CBS sitcom “Frank’s Place,” which in 1987 used food as the entry point to bigger cultural issues.
Back at Commander’s Palace, the chef to succeeded Prudhomme was Emeril Lagasse, whose own Emeril’s Restaurant set his star trajectory in creating a new kind of celebrity chef, more akin to a rock star, inspiring generations to follow in cuisine.
In New Orleans, history is around every corner. Sometimes on that corner is a restaurant where we can visit to experience the living laboratory of what American cuisine can be.
