A first-hand account from someone who saw it all.
by James Hendrickson
Twelve years ago, I
came to New Orleans, a 23-year-old professional cook, looking for something
more exotic than my home-town of Minneapolis. What better place, I thought,
than the opposite end of the Mississippi River: New Orleans. Over the years, I
learned Cajun cooking and French/Italian Creole in French Quarter restaurants.
I rose to the level of chef de cuisine in one of the legendary Brennan family
restaurants, the same family that groomed Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme. I
don’t claim to be another Emeril or Prudhomme, but the experience and knowledge
I gained in New Orleans was priceless. The racial knowledge I gained in a city
that was 67 percent black was priceless in its own way, too.
As for hurricanes, people in New Orleans thought of them the way people
in Los Angeles think of earthquakes. We all knew “The Big One” was coming
eventually, but we never thought it really would — not in our lifetimes, anyway……To Read More…..
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