On the Cover: The Cuisine Issue

On the Cover: The Cuisine Issue 2021

Cover by Lucie Monk Carter

Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

My mom always told me that I hold my fork weird. She’d urge me, beg me to practice re-maneuvering my fingers into the “proper” cutlery cradling. And I’d roll my eyes, “Whatever Mom, who cares?” and curl my index finger around the stem, bend my wrist, and shovel dinner into my mouth. Well, as they say, folks: Mom is always right.

But if you can get past Country Roads’ Managing Editor’s poor table etiquette, you’ll see the real star of the show: Chef Alex Diaz’s gorgeous peaches and burrata plate. Executive Chef at Cena in Hammond, Chef Diaz wins one of this year’s three Small Town Chefs, along with Chef Lauren Joffrion of the Thorny Oyster in Bay St. Louis, and Chef Paolo Cenni of Paolo’s in Ponchatoula.

For the eighth year, Country Roads dedicates its annual Cuisine Issue to showcasing culinary groundbreakers doing great things in small towns across the region. We’ve eaten well in the weeks we’ve spent preparing this issue, tiresome work indeed that we hope will encourage you to venture out beyond our area’s culinarily renowned larger cities into the surrounding enclaves, where delectable things are happening, too. And we can assure you—they are worth the drive.