Ella's Legacy, Susan's Hands

Susan Spicer to receive the 2023 Ella Brennan Lifetime Achievement Award

Alexandra Kennon

When Chef Susan Spicer was unexpectedly called into her restaurant Rosedale on a recent day off, the very last thing she was expecting was a second line.

“All of a sudden, I'm doing something in the back room, and I hear a trumpet. And I'm like, wait a minute, that's not Spotify. What is that?” Spicer wondered. “Then here comes this, you know, second line down the hallway. And I'm like, ‘Okay, what's up here?’”

To her absolute astonishment, Spicer was being informed that she was to receive the 2023 Ella Brennan Lifetime Achievement in Hospitality Award. “I was surrounded by friends and family and respected colleagues and people that I've worked with and that I admire,” she said. “And certainly having Ti Martin there, you know, and everybody there to to make the announcement, was a huge deal. You know, it was really exciting,” Spicer said. “Like I said, a complete shocker.”

WAnyone looking at Spicer’s substantial list of accomplishments and accolades would have a hard time being as shocked.

Spicer’s culinary career kicked off in the 1970s, when the young chef trained under Parisian Chef Daniel Bonnot at the Louis XVI Restaurant in the French Quarter, an experience that was followed by a stint in Paris working under Chef Roland Durand at the Hotel Sofitel. When she returned to New Orleans, she helped open Savoire Faire, a bistro in the St. Charles Hotel. She spent much of the late eighties traveling in California and Europe, returning again to New Orleans to open her flagship restaurant, Bayona, with business partner Regina Keever in a historic French Quarter cottage in 1990. She also opened Mondo in Lakeview in 2010, which has since closed but opened a spin-off in the New Orleans MSY airport terminal. Rosedale, her more laid-back, brunch-y restaurant nestled in a former home near City Park, opened in 2016.

She received the James Beard Best Chef Southeast Award for her work at Bayona in 1993, and since then her flagship has received the Restaurant & Institutions magazine Ivy Award, the Robert Mondavi Culinary Award of Excellence, and was entered into the Nation’s Restaurant News Fine Dining Hall of Fame. In 2010, Spicer was inducted into The Beard Foundation’s “Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America”. Her cookbook Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans received a nomination for Best American Cookbook by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

Even already possessing so many accolades, the weight of a lifetime honor in Ella Brennan’s name is striking to Spicer. “I really feel like she has meant so much to the restaurant community in New Orleans,” Spicer said. “She was so smart like that, and so invested in other people's success.”

Spicer values such an investment, as she grants much of her success to the very first chef that believed in her, early on in her career. “Daniel Bonnot gave me the opportunity, my first chef opportunity, which I thought he was nuts,” she recalled. Since then, Spicer has carried on this tradition, mentoring countless young people working at her restaurants, helping them work their way up to successful careers in New Orleans cuisine.

On why she decided to plant roots and build kitchens in the Crescent City, she said, “I love the city … fortunately cooking and being successful in the culinary world has allowed me to travel the world. And New Orleans is just a great place to come home to.”

Chef Susan Spicer will be presented with the 2023 Ella Brennan Lifetime Achievement in Hospitality Award at the Award Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans on January 12 at 7 pm. Find more information or get tickets at nowfe.com.