Rouses Magazine - March April 2022

MARCH | APRIL 2022

Women in Food

A CULINARY HISTORY OF WOMEN CHEFS IN NEW ORLEANS

Bayou, By Her an interview with

MELISSA MARTIN of MOSQUITO SUPPER CLUB

PRALINE CAKE

with BUTTERCREAM ICING and PRALINE TOPPING

Our roots are Italian.

So is our olive oil.

WHEN YOU WANT THE BEST OF THE BEST FROM ITALY, YOU GO TO THE SOURCE.

March is Women’s History Month, and we are

Melissa Martin represents Cajun culture on so many

celebrating the women who play an important role in

levels. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, she raised more

bringing food to our stores and your table today, as

than half a million dollars for Louisiana’s Cajun Coast

well as the women who helped forge a new path, and

in partnership with the Helio Foundation, a nonprofit

changed the way we eat and cook food.

based in Houma. Her restaurant began in 2014 as a

In this issue, we trace the culinary history of women chefs in New Orleans. Leah Chase “changed the course of America over a bowl of gumbo.” She, and restaurateurs Ruth Fertel and Ella Brennan, are some of the most recognizable names in food. Lena Richard, who you may not even know — though you should — hosted a weekly cooking show on the New Orleans TV station WDSU in the 1940s, 20 years before food TV made Julia Child a household name.

series of pop-ups; today, it is the hardest reservation to get in New Orleans.

I am excited for you to meet the Women in Grocery featured on page 60. They, together with all the other outstanding women who work in our stores and our office, really are the best in the business. Their accolades include Progressive Grocer’s Top Women in Grocery and Store Brand’s Rising Stars in Private Label.

Cookbook writer Mary Land kept an alligator in her bathtub, and that’s not even the most interesting part

I hope you enjoy the magazine. We have all of these

of her story. I can’t wait for you to read it in this issue.

women, and so many others, to thank for our food — and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate them

I am looking forward to checking out the Mosquito Supper Club, the renowned New Orleans restaurant from Melissa Martin of Chauvin, Louisiana. She also has a cookbook of the same name, filled with recipes from her childhood in Southeast Louisiana.

during Women’s History Month than in our Women in Food issue.

— Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES

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INDULGE IN THE SMOOTH, CREAMY PICK-ME-UP YOU CRAVE.

Enjoy our new indulgent coffees!

© 2022 Community Coffee Company

Table of Contents In Every Issue Marketing & Advertising Director Tim Acosta

1 Donny Rouse 5 Letter from the Editor

by Marcy Nathan

Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan

7 Cookin’ on Hwy. 1 with Tim Acosta

Art Director, Layout & Design Eliza Schulze

9 Our First Woman in Grocery

by Ali Rouse Royster

Illustrator Kacie Galtier

Creative Manager

Culinary History

McNally Sislo

10 Turning the Tables

by Sarah Baird

Marketing Coordinator Harley Breaux

45 Praline Queens

by Susan Langenhennig Granger

Copy Editors Patti Stallard Adrienne Crezo

Chefs & Restaurateurs

Culinary Editor marcelle bienvenu

29 Under Ella’s Umbrella

by Marcelle Bienvenu

Advertising & Marketing Amanda Kennedy

31 Marcelle Bienvenu

by Judy Walker

Stephanie Hopkins Nancy Besson Taryn Clement

37 Bayou, By Her

by Sarah Baird

Mary Ann Florey MARCH | APRIL 2022

Women in Food

43 Alzina Toups

by Marcelle Bienvenu 48 Leah Chase

by Poppy Tooker

A CULINARY HISTORY OF WOMEN CHEFS IN NEW ORLEANS

flip t o page 47vfeorr t he co e! recip

Bayou, By Her an interview with

MELISSA MARTIN of MOSQUITO SUPPER CLUB

PRALINE CAKE

with BUTTERCREAM ICING and PRALINE TOPPING

53 The Very Clever JoAnn Clevenger

by Poppy Tooker

Founders & Creators 16 Everything Happens for a Riesling

by Sarah Baird 19 El Guapo Bitters

Supermarket Stars 60 Women in Grocery

by Marcy Nathan with McNally Sislo

Recipes We Love 7 Mom’s Smothered Potatoes

51 Humboldt & Kind

by Liz Thorpe

43 Alzina Toups' Pillowcase Cookies

59 Bananas Foster

by Poppy Tooker

47 Creole Pralines

Whiskey Women 20 Women Are Made of Whiskey and Ice and Everything Nice

by Marcy Nathan 21 A Spirited Conversation with Allisa Henley

by Marcy Nathan

Written by Women 25 Recipes for Success

by Susan Larson 28 The Host with the Most

by Susan Larson

Praline Cake Buttercream Icing Praline Topping 49 Shrimp Clemenceau 55 Fried Green Tomatoes (or Zucchini) Red Rémoulade Sauce 57 Mrs. Rouse’s Chicken Stew Mrs. Rouse’s Beef Chuck Roast 59 Bananas Foster Bread Pudding Bananas Foster

55 Southern Fried Fiction

by Susan Larson

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Bienvenue, Bienvenu Please welcome our new Culinary Editor, Marcelle Bienvenu.

Marcelle is a cookbook author and food writer, and has been a regular contributor to our Rouses Magazine. See page 31 for more on Marcelle from her friend and cookbook co-author Judy Walker.

COVER PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

The magazine you hold in your hands was written, designed, illustrated, edited and copy edited entirely by women.

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Contributors

Women at Work

SAR AH BAIRD Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books, including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask, which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Saveur, Eater, Food & Wine and The Guardian, among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans altweekly, Gambit Weekly, where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.

MARCELLE BIENVENU Marcelle Bienvenu is a cookbook author and food writer. A native of St. Martinville, in the heart of Cajun country, Bienvenu wrote Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux? and Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine with Eula Mae Dora, and other books and cookbooks. She also co-authored five cookbooks with Emeril Lagasse.

The Praline Cake on the cover of this magazine is a personal favorite. I had a slice at my first New Orleans Mardi Gras and fell in love with it! I perfected the recipe at home; it's a cake I couldn't live without.

– Mary Ann Florey, Graphic Designer

SUSAN LANGENHENNIG GR ANGER Susan Langenhennig Granger is editor of Preservation in Print magazine and director of communications and marketing for the Preservation Resource Center in New Orleans. Prior to that she was a news editor, reporter and feature columnist for The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com.

SUSAN LARSON Susan Larson is the host of New Orleans public radio station WWNO’s “The Reading Life.” She was book editor for The Times-Picayune from 1988 to 2009, and has written two editions of The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans.

I had so much fun illustrating this issue. The playful, textured style I chose was inspired by some of my favorite books from when I was a child. You can see my illustrations sprinkled throughout this issue starting on Page 20.

– Kacie Galtier, Designer & Illustrator

SUE STR ACHAN Sue Strachan has been writing and editing in New York and New Orleans, as well as working for international publications, for 25 years. Her book, Café Brûlot: The Devil Made Me Do It, from LSU Press, was published in fall 2021.

LIZ THORPE Liz Thorpe is a world-class cheese expert. A Yale graduate, she left a “normal” job in 2002 to work the counter at New York’s famed Murray’s Cheese. She is the founder of The People’s Cheese, and author of The Book of Cheese: The Essential Guide to Discovering Cheeses You’ll Love and The Cheese Chronicles.

Having the opportunity to use my collection of vintage enamelware and Pyrex in the magazine feels really special; I just so happened to have the perfect yellow dishes for our Bananas Foster Bread Pudding! Flip to Page 58 for that recipe.

– Eliza Schulze, Art Director

POPPY TOOKER Poppy Tooker is a native New Orleanian who has spent her life immersed in the vibrant colors and flavors of her state. Poppy spreads her message statewide and beyond via her NPR-affiliated radio show and podcast, “Louisiana Eats!”

JUDY WALKER Judy Walker was the longtime food editor for The Times-Picayune. She edited the cookbook Cooking Up a Storm with culinary editor Marcelle Bienvenu. In 2017 she was named one of Epicurious’ 100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time.

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R O U S E S M A R C H | A P R I L 20 22

I had the pleasure of helping Marcy write the WIG article featured in the back of this issue. I’m so proud to be a part a team that recognizes the value of women in the industry.

– McNally Sislo, Creative Manager

Letter from the Editor

By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director Long before the 1980 release of the working women’s comedy 9 to 5, Dolly Parton showed women we have more strength than we think we do, especially when we work together.

I

went to college in Nashville, Tennessee, where Dolly Parton’s influence was everywhere, and the higher the hair, the closer to God. Dolly’s rags to rhinestones story started four hours away, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. She was the fourth child of 12.

Her entire family was musical. She and her sisters performed in churches as the Parton Sisters. And she recorded her first song, at age 11, with her mother’s brother Bill Owens.

Dolly made her Grand Ole Opry debut alongside her Uncle Bill at age 13. Johnny Cash, the Man in Black himself, introduced her, and she received three ovations — a sign of things to come.

She was just 21 when she joined Porter Wagoner’s popular syndicated countrymusic variety TV show, beating out Connie Smith, Dottie West and Tammy Wynette for the spot. That’s when she came up with the makeup, wigs and big, blonde hairpieces that would become her signature look.

PHOTOS BY CHANNING CANDIES

She refused to let others’ opinions hold her back. “I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.”

What I have learned from Dolly is that it’s okay to be ambitious in your career.

And it’s okay not to take yourself too seriously. “I'm not offended [by the dumb blond jokes],” Dolly told an interviewer. “I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde.”

Now that I’m getting older, I think about the legacy I would like to leave through my work…

Dolly left the Porter Wagoner show to start her solo career in 1974 over creative differences. But instead of being rewarded for standing up for herself, she was criticized for exactly that. Even now, we still tend to reward ambitious men and criticize ambitious women. We should reflect on why that is, exactly…

Dolly was inspired by her father’s inability to read and write to establish the Imagination Library, which has gifted nearly 175 million free books to nearly 2 million children worldwide. I was at her concert in New Orleans in 2016 when the wildfires were devastating East Tennessee; they clearly weighed heavily on her mind.

Dolly personally pledged financial support to the families affected, and her Dollywood Foundation ended up giving $12.5 million to help rebuild Sevier County (Sevierville is Dolly’s hometown). Early in the pandemic, she donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, money that helped fund pandemic-related research projects, including one related to the Moderna vaccine. And her legacy is still growing.

Dolly crossed over from country to pop (and back), hosted her own daytime variety show, and starred in a series of Hollywood movies, including 9 to 5 and Steel Magnolias.

Last year we founded Women in Grocery — WIG for short, and for Dolly, who has never been shy about her love of wigs; she owns at least 365 of them. When Anthony J.

I read somewhere that Cher’s backstage request is a separate room for her wigs — I can’t imagine Dolly wanting to be that far away from hers!

Well, I tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, Pour myself a cup of ambition, And yawn and stretch and try to come to life.

Jump in the shower and the blood starts pumpin’, Out on the street, the traffic starts jumpin’, With folks like me on the job from 9 to 5.

Rouse, Sr., opened his first store in 1960, the grocery industry was predominantly male — all of retail was back then. Women are now an indispensable part of our industry.

WIG is our sincere commitment to connect women within our company and provide them with more opportunities to learn and succeed. Rouses Markets is full of successful, powerful and influential women. WIG provides a forum to share challenges, solutions and lessons learned.

And, occasionally, to remind these women pouring time, energy and passion into our business, that no matter how much we love what we do, as Dolly says, “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

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DE

F O R E S T RY

get real O

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PA R T M E N T F

R I C U LT U R

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Ms. Linda’s tent in front of our store. We had one customer who came every single week and filled up an ice chest with her ya-ka-mein to get him through the next seven days.

More and more of the local food products presented to us are made by women. I can remember when Mam Papaul’s was one of only a few being made locally. Nancy Wilson founded the brand in 1972. It was the first brand of New Orleans-style foods to be produced in convenience mixes. Jambalaya Girl, a New Orleans company founded by Kristen Preau, was introduced at our Rouses Markets in New Orleans in 2010. Now Jambalaya Girl is available for purchase in every single Rouses Market across the Gulf Coast, as well as in stores around the country. And her product line has greatly expanded.

Local is and has always been our first priority. At Rouses Markets, you’ll find products grown, caught, raised and made by women from all over the Gulf Coast. We celebrate these brands year-round, not just during Women’s History Month, and we encourage you to celebrate them, too.

MOM’S SMOTHERED POTATOES Serves 6 PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES

Cookin’ on Hwy. 1

By Tim Acosta, Advertising & Marketing Director

M

ost of us know someone who has dreamed of starting a food business — maybe you even have.

When we kicked off a local pop-up at one of our New Orleans stores, we turned to social media to find our first vendors.

During the pandemic, food-makers found they could build their brands through social media.

We were surprised by just how many of those food entrepreneurs were women. We expected it to be split pretty evenly, but more women than men seemed to find innovative new ways to support their families during the pandemic through food.

A few of the women who joined our pop-up already knew each other; others quickly became friends. It became as much about supporting each other, and pulling up everyone else along with them, as it was about just selling their individual products.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ pound bacon 1 pound Rouses Smoked Sausage 4 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed 2 large yellow onions 1 bunch green onions 3 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder 2 tablespoons Rouses Creole Seasoning Salt and pepper, to taste Chopped fresh parsley, for garnish HOW TO PREP: Start with a large, cold cast-iron skillet. Lay the bacon pieces in the skillet in a single layer so they aren’t touching, and cook over low heat until the bacon buckles, curls and starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Set aside. When bacon is slightly cooled, break it up into bits. Reserve bacon drippings in pan.

Slice sausage into 1-inch rounds. Cut the potatoes in half. Dice the white and green onions.

I really enjoyed all of the food from all of the vendors. If you are on the West Bank of New Orleans, check out Issa Snack Express in Harvey; their Cajun #DowntownDipp is a great spin on RO*TEL Dip. They also have old-fashioned smothered potatoes that remind me a lot of my mom’s.

Melt the butter in a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat, then add the potatoes, white and green onions, and sliced smoked sausage. Cover with a lid and let cook for a few minutes. Add just enough water to cover the potatoes, then cover with the lid again and cook for 15 minutes. Uncover, fold in reserved bacon bits, and cook for about 3 minutes more.

Linda Green, the well-known, well-loved Ya-Ka-Mein Lady, was one of our original pop-up vendors, and she still pop ups at our stores in New Orleans. So many festivals had been postponed or canceled during the pandemic that customers cheered when they saw

When the potatoes are almost done, season with onion powder, garlic powder and Creole seasoning. Cook without a lid until the potatoes are fork-tender, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with fresh parsley. Serve immediately.

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SO MELTY & DELICIOUS, YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT’S VEGAN VIOLIFE Cajun Mac and Cheese Prep time: 10-15 min

Cooking time: 30 min

Serves: 4

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

• 8 oz wheel-shaped pasta, or pasta of your choice

1. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package. Drain cooked pasta and set aside.

• 1 package of Violife cheddar shreds • 3 tablespoons unsalted plant-based butter • 1 small onion, chopped • ½ cup diced red bell pepper • 1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning (with salt) • 2 cloves garlic, chopped • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour • 2 cups oat or almond milk • 1 (7.05 oz) package of Violife Just Like Smoked Provolone slices • ¼ cup of your favorite non-dairy cream cheese • 2 tablespoons sliced scallions, green portion only

2. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt the plant butter and cook onion, bell pepper, Cajun seasoning and salt for 5 minutes or until tender. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds.

3. Stir flour into the saucepan and continue cooking over medium heat, 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Gradually add in the oat milk, whisking or stirring to work out any lumps. Simmer, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes or until the mixture has thickened.

4. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in Violife vegan cheeses. Stir until the cheese is melted.

5. Toss the vegan cheese sauce with the cooked pasta. Top with sliced scallions and serve immediately. © 2022 Upfield

Our First Woman in Grocery

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

W flip t o page 57e for t h ! recipes

e talk a lot about my grandfather, Anthony J. Rouse, who grew up working in his father’s wholesale produce business and who founded our company in 1960. But he could not have done it without the support of my grandmother, Joyce Guillory Rouse, who undoubtedly took on the lion’s share of the heavy lifting at home while still helping out wherever and whenever she could with the store.

Our first grocery store was in Houma, Louisiana. Then my grandfather built our first supermarket in 1975 on the lot right in front of my grandparents’ house in Thibodaux.

My dad, aunts and uncles remember working in the small office upstairs. When it was time for lunch, they would all walk over to the “Rouse House.” Granny would have chicken stew, or roast with rice and gravy, or some equally delicious homestyle meal simmering on the stove for them.

When Pa had “grocery people” in from Baton Rouge, that’s where he took them for lunch. “We’d walk over from next door, and they’d be sitting around the table, talking and eating, and having a grand old time,” my Uncle Tim remembers. “One of his associates from Baton Rouge said it was better than any restaurant and, you know, it really was.”

1890s:

HOW NELLIE MURRAY BECAME THE FOREMOST CATERER IN LA LOUISIANNE

“Who does not know Nellie Murray, the famous cuisinière, who for so many years has been the chief caterer [in] New Orleans? Indeed, so well-known is Nellie in ultra-fashionable circles, that not to know her is to argue oneself unknown,” proclaims an article in the December 4, 1896 edition of the New Orleans Daily Picayune.

By Sarah Baird It’s no secret that women have long been overlooked, ignored or written out of culinary histories. Despite being those who developed the recipes, cooked the meals, and then passed them down through a matriarchal lineage. If you crack open a historic text or peek into vintage fine dining cookbooks, it’s more likely than not that the person credited with “creating” a recipe actually learned it from an enslaved person, long-gone family member or woman deemed unnecessary to credit at the time.

Over the past 130 years, though, a constellation of guiding lights for female chefs has developed in New Orleans: luminaries who pushed boundaries, built businesses and refused to shy away from celebrating their worth. These women not only fought (and continue to fight) for change in the kitchen, but in the community as well, advocating for just policies locally — like Nellie Murray, who spoke out against segregated streetcar laws at the turn of the 20th century — and human dignity on the national stage. After all, you’d be hard pressed to find a chef more deeply entwined with the civil rights movement than Leah Chase.

The timeline that follows — which covers more than 130 years — traces how change begets change, and how today’s female chefs are standing on the shoulders of the fearless giants who came before them. Because if we want to build a culinary history that’s fair and true, we must ensure that women not only get credit for their kitchen creations but are remembered for the foundational ways in which they shaped the very fiber of dining in the Crescent City.

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Born in Bayou Goula on the plantation of Paul Octave Hébert, the fourteenth governor of Louisiana, around 1835, Murray came from a long line of esteemed Creole cuisinières: enslaved cooks who were charged with preparing lush, sumptuous meals for high society families.

Murray spent her childhood watching as her mother and grandmother labored over seasoning dishes just so, setting tables with the linens perfectly crisp and making sure the drip coffee was prepared just right — skills Murray would forge into a lucrative career in the post-Reconstruction era.

During the 1890s, Nellie Murray became the foremost caterer in New Orleans for wealthy, upper-class clientele, carving out her prime position as the go-to chef for families like the Howards and Whitneys. Murray’s aristocratic demeanor paired with her flair for entertaining cemented her celebrity status in the city and beyond, landing her enviable publicfacing roles like the chef de cuisine at the Louisiana Mansion Club during the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and serving Susan B. Anthony at a private luncheon as part of the 1903 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention.

“There is no place in the world outside of Paris where people know how to cook, except in New Orleans,” Murray recounted after an extended transcontinental trip across Europe in the mid-1890s. “I saw a New Orleans gentleman at one dinner, and he said to me en passant, ‘Nellie, this

is all very good, but...I would put you alongside of a Parisian cook any day.’”

1930s:

LENA RICHARD: A TRAILBLAZER OF “FIRSTS” FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN

We’re taught in school about how Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, how his bravery, smarts and commitment to the betterment of the world landed him on the craggy lunar landscape on that fateful day in 1969. But pound for pound, New Orleans’ own Lena Richard is every bit a trailblazer as Neil Armstrong, if not more so: knocking down walls and upending stereotypes as an African American woman raised in the Jim Crow South — and not just in the kitchen, but also through publishing, entrepreneurship, education and media.

A New Roads, Louisiana, native and Fanny Farmer Cooking School-trained chef, Richard is often described as “Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart” — and that she was.

ran from 1947 to 1949 on WDSU, and is widely regarded as the first instance of a Black woman hosting a television show in American history. Sadly, no recordings of the show remain today.

While catering for the city’s socialites and running restaurants throughout the 1920s and '30s, Richard found her recipes to be so popular that she decided to compile them into a cookbook. The 1939 self-published work, Lena’s Richard’s Cook Book — which was republished for a national audience by Houghton-Mifflin in 1940 and renamed New Orleans Cook Book — pulled the curtain back on Creole recipes like courtbouillon, baked stuffed oysters and calas tous chads that, until Richard came along, had been regarded primarily as dishes of the well-to-do.

“These are no longer dishes to be prepared in secrecy by French chefs, to be eaten by the rich,” Richards wrote. It is considered the first Creole cookbook written by an African American.

Richard died suddenly of a heart attack in 1950, but over 70 years later, her influence continues to reverberate throughout the ages. Miss Lena wanted to use her time on earth to shift the landscape for future generations of aspiring Black chefs in New Orleans and beyond: to teach, in her own words, “men and women the art of food preparation and serving in order that they would become capable of preparing and serving food for any occasion and also that they might be in a position to demand higher wages.”

But a definitive cookbook is only part of her legacy. Around this time, Miss Lena also continued to operate a cooking school for her community; opened her largest restaurant yet, The Gumbo House; started packaging frozen food; and made the most leap-of-faith move of all: She became the star of a twice-weekly show on a newfangled device called television.

Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book

It can be a little overwhelming to consider, even in passing, Ella Brennan’s legacy in New Orleans. After all, if you begin mapping out the city’s culinary landmarks — from Old Absinthe House to Brennan’s to the 14-restaurant empire she helped birth nationwide — it becomes glaringly obvious within seconds that Brennan (and her wide-ranging, occasionally quarrelsome family tree of siblings and children)

1940s:

THE COMMANDING GRAND DAME OF NEW ORLEANS FINE DINING: ELLA BRENNAN

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Opposite: During the 1890s, Nellie Murray became the foremost caterer in New Orleans for wealthy, upper-class clientele. Line drawing from the Daily Picayune of 1894.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Above: Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book ran from 1947 to 1949 on WDSU, and is widely regarded as the first instance of a Black woman hosting a television show in American history. Photo courtesy Archives and Special Collections, Newcomb Institute of Tulane University.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Above: Ella Brennan was, in her bones, one of the purest distillations of a legend-inher-own-time New Orleanian, once telling the Times-Picayune, “I’m not going to die if heaven is not like Lafitte’s.” Photo courtesy Commander's Palace.

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sizzled her business acumen and personality, both razor-sharp, into the very fiber of the city’s fine dining sensibilities.

And she started so young. “’Vieux Carré was a terrible restaurant,’” she told the Times-Picayune in 2007.

“The more she griped about it, she remembers, the more her brother challenged her: ’I was complaining so much that Owen finally asked me, Why don’t you come do something about it, smarty?’” So she did. And by the time she was 18, she was running the place.

Her early trial by fire at her eldest brother’s establishment proved to be the sort of mettle-testing that would set her public persona in the New Orleans restaurant industry for decades to come: unafraid to take chances, studious, simultaneously elegant, wry and indefatigable, but most of all — she was in charge.

From the top: ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Leah Chase turned Dooky Chase’s Restaurant from a neighborhood sandwich shop and lottery ticket outpost into the premier restaurant for African Americans to gather, celebrate and enjoy themselves in the heavily segregated Jim Crow South of the 1950s. Photo courtesy The Times-Picayune/ New Orleans Advocate.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Willie Mae Seaton of Willie Mae’s Scotch House and her secret recipe for wet-battered fried chicken were honored with a James Beard Award in 2005, placing it rightfully among the ranks of America’s Classic Restaurants for the Southern Region.

Photo courtesy The Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT In the 1960’s, Ruth Fertel launched Ruth’s Chris Steak House, the publicly traded, international hospitality empire of 150 franchises (and counting!). Photo courtesy Ruth's Chris Steak House.

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Nowhere is her singular presence felt more wholly than Commander’s Palace, where Brennan and her four siblings not only raised the bar sky-high for out-andout service and pleasure during a meal (jazz brunch, anyone?) but created the sort of kitchen that was creative, boundarypushing and fertile enough to birth several generations of the country’s finest chefs — including Emeril Lagasse and Tory McPhail — cooking in a “new style” (c. 1974) she called Haute Creole. Local was paramount, and the definition of Louisiana cuisine wildly reinvigorated.

“I was convinced,” she wrote in her 2016 autobiography Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace, “that Louisiana cuisine, in both its countrified Cajun and refined Creole forms, was a world-class, Indigenous cuisine — America’s best — that was poised to break out of home kitchens and into restaurants.”

Brennan passed away in 2018 at the age of 92 — in her lavish home right next door to Commander’s Palace, naturally — but for her 70-plus years in the restaurant business, seemingly never tired of finding new ways to infuse joie de vivre into the very foundation of her restaurants. She

was, in her bones, one of the purest distillations of a legend-in-her-own-time New Orleanian, once telling the Times-Picayune, “I’m not going to die if heaven is not like Lafitte’s.”

1950s:

WILLIE MAE SEATON’S LEGACY EXTENDS FAR BEYOND (LEGENDARY) FRIED CHICKEN

When you sink your teeth into a piece of Willie Mae Seaton’s stuff-of-legend fried chicken on any given afternoon at Willie Mae’s Scotch House, you can easily tell there’s something charmed about it. Some might say that maybe — just maybe — it’s the little pinch of Mississippi soul that the luminary of Creole cuisine added to her recipes.

Born and raised just outside of Jackson, Seaton moved to New Orleans in 1940 and opened Willie Mae’s Scotch House in 1957, initially as a bar that just happened to serve food. (The bar’s signature drink?

Scotch and milk.) After moving to the restaurant’s current location on St. Ann Street in the early 1970s, Seaton’s cooking — and, in particular, her secret recipe for wet-battered fried chicken — became the Sixth Ward’s best-kept secret.

But by 2005, Seaton’s delicious secret was out. Just months before Hurricane Katrina flooded the restaurant, Willie Mae’s Scotch House was honored with a James Beard Award, placing it rightfully among the ranks of America’s Classic Restaurants for the Southern Region. “It’s just such a good feeling. I just can’t explain it,” Seaton, said, teary-eyed during her acceptance speech. “I do my best to try to serve the people.”

And serve the people she did. Willie Mae’s Scotch House is a still a place where everyone gathers: Black and white; lawyers and store clerks; the young and the old; the neighborhood regulars living two doors down and the high-and-mighty folks who take a special trip just to sit within its walls, like President Barack Obama, who made a pilgrimage to Willie Mae’s for lunch in 2015. There’s a reason the line out the door has become as much a part of the Willie Mae’s mythology today as the food itself.

“They know about me ‘cause when you treat people nice...word gets around, you know. It helps to support you,” Seaton, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 99, told the Southern Foodways Alliance in 2006 after returning to rebuild after the storm.

“And there it is, baby; I just got to pick up the pieces and keep walking — ‘cause God was able to save our life.”

1960s:

LEAH CHASE “CHANGED THE COURSE OF AMERICA OVER A BOWL OF GUMBO”

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her cooking: the fried chicken, the shrimp Clemenceau, the Holy Thursday gumbo z’herbes that is perhaps as sacred as the Lenten day itself in many circles.

Undoubtedly the preeminent authority on Creole cooking, Chase, along with her husband, Edgar “Dooky” Chase II, turned Dooky Chase’s Restaurant from a neighborhood sandwich shop and lottery ticket outpost into the premier restaurant for African Americans to gather, celebrate and enjoy themselves in the heavily segregated Jim Crow South of the 1950s. And by the early 2000s, Chase’s well-known determination had elevated Dooky Chase to national landmark status, serving Black luminaries from James Baldwin to Quincy Jones. Even the legendary Ray Charles PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO sang, “I went to Dooky Chase to get me something to eat / The waitress looked at me and said, ‘Ray, you sure look beat.’”

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on activism: serving the Freedom Riders when they came through New Orleans and offering up Dooky Chase as a place for Black and white organizers to gather and discuss strategy during the Civil Rights movement. As she often said in interviews, “We changed the course of American over a bowl of gumbo and some fried chicken” — and she was not wrong.

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her love of art: the bright colors and vivid scenes that leap off the walls at Dooky Chase, which is perhaps the finest gallery of African American art in Louisiana.

Though she was 54 before stepping foot into an official art museum, Chase’s collection — a large swath of which is on display for diners at the restaurant — now includes

the likes of Samella Lewis, John T. Biggers and Jacob Lawrence.

When some remember Leah Chase, they focus on her tenacity: part of a generation of African American women who “set their faces against the wind without looking back,” as Jessica B. Harris wrote in Mrs. Chase’s New York Times obituary. Never shying away from doing the right thing, Chase became not only a cultural icon in the culinary world, but for New Orleans itself. Her resilience and life-affirming attitude were unshakable even in the face of insurmountable upheaval.

And though Chase would likely just attribute her place in the history books to the results of hard work and God’s grace, she was a force unlike any other. “I just think that God pitches us a low, slow curve, but he doesn’t want us to strike out,” she told The New York Times’ Kim Severson in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I think everything he throws at you is testing your strength, and you don’t cry about it, and you go on.”

1970s:

RUTH FERTEL’S JOURNEY FROM SCRAPPY SINGLE MOTHER TO HOSPITALITY HONCHO

Ruth Fertel had already lived plenty of lives before the fateful day in 1965 when she noticed an ad in the classified section of The Times-Picayune listing local restaurant, Chris Steak House, for sale.

Brainy and determined from a young age, Fertel graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in chemistry at the ripe old age of 19, became the first female Thoroughbred trainer in Louisiana while bringing up two young sons, then found work at Tulane Medical School as a lab technician following her divorce. But despite her preternatural ability to be three steps ahead of everyone else in the room, Fertel could’ve never seen coming the success that her steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris, would have as it launched into the publicly traded, international hospitality empire of 150 franchises (and counting!) it is today.

After reviewing the classified ad, Fertel put her home up as collateral in the mid-1960s to purchase Chris Steak House, and quickly got to work learning quite

literally everything about the business: from cutting steaks herself to overseeing the books with eagle-eyed precision. She also hired an almost entirely female waitstaff, including many single moms, a move that proved from the beginning Fertel wasn’t going to be doing things the same way as the “good old boys” club that dominated the steakhouse scene at the time.

After a fire destroyed the original Chris Steak House in 1976, Ruth planned to move the entire business to a larger space.

Her contract, however, stipulated that the name “Chris Steak House” could only be used in the exact, initial location. With only a week to come up with a solution — and not wanting to lose name recognition or her customer base — Fertel settled on “Ruth’s Chris Steak House” as a way to combine familiarity with a not-so-subtle wink that a new generation of restaurateur, a woman, was in charge.

“I’ve always hated the name,” Fertel told Fortune in 1998. “But we’ve always managed to work around it…[and] make the steak the star.”

Undoubtedly, Fertel, who died of lung cancer in 2002, played a pivotal role in redefining steakhouse culture for a modern era, taking away the backslapping, maledominated, cigar-smoke-thick dinners of old and creating a space where everyone is welcome to enjoy a fine filet mignon.

1980s:

HONORING TRADITION WITH CELESTINE DUNBAR…

From the very start, there was no missing the fact that Dunbar’s Creole Cooking was a family affair.

“And after all these years, Dunbar’s is still a family business,” a 1998 Times-Picayune article noted of the stick-to-your-ribs comfort food restaurant, which opened in 1984. “Dunbar’s sisters and granddaughter wait tables, [her] brother-in-law is the chef, [her] grandson washes dishes and mom is still behind the cash register ‘keeping us all in check.’”

Running the show then and now — with a warm smile and a commitment to “give the customers what they want” — is none other than “mom” and restauranter herself, Celestine Dunbar.

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This mom-and-pop (but, let’s be honest, mostly mom) restaurant quickly became the go-to lunchtime stop throughout the 1980s and 1990s for Uptown regulars who knew the daily lunch specials like clockwork, college kids searching for reassuring meal, and devotees of Dunbar’s dream-aboutthem hot plate staples like greens and rice covered with turkey neck gravy.

“Walk into Dunbar’s Creole Cooking on Freret Street at the end of the week and see customers happily munching on the new Friday special — smothered okra and shrimp,” the 1998 Times-Picayune article observed. “Red beans and rice with fried chicken is so popular that it’s served every day.”

From profiles in Gourmet magazine to likes of Mohammed Ali stopping by for a plate, Celestine Dunbar’s commitment to bringing the downhome comfort food she learned at the knees of her father — who taught her that the roux should be “browner than a copper penny” — never wavered, even when faced with tragedy. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed Dunbar’s longtime Freret Street location, Celestine served her signature Creole dishes from a pop-up stand at the Loyola University student center for a time and finally, after a long and winding road, reopened her restaurant on Earhart Avenue in 2017. The community response to the restaurant’s homecoming was familial fanfare, like welcoming back a long-lost cousin after years away. And while this incarnation of Dunbar’s closed in early 2022, rest assured that Celestine, now 78, will still be bringing her beloved homecooked New Orleanian food to her devoted, hungry fans — no matter the obstacles.

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s: …AND BREAKING TRADITION WITH SUSAN SPICER While most chefs across New Orleans were “bamming!” with Emeril and still blackening their dishes a la Paul Prudhomme, Susan Spicer brought a subdued ease to the city’s fine dining scene when her restaurant, Bayona, opened in 1990.

“In a town famous for its flamboyance, Susan Spicer is the city’s stealth chef… she speaks softly, has no desire to build a restaurant empire and serves neither Cajun 14

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nor Creole food,” Marian Burros lauded in a 1998 New York Times article. “But if she is quiet and self-deprecating, the food at her restaurant, Bayona, shines… [relying] on the goodness of the ingredients and her captivating approach.”

Banking influence from her travels across Europe and along the west coast then channeling it into her dishes, Spicer became the national face of a “new” style of New Orleans cooking that was less about showmanship and more about whispers of surprise on the plate. After winning the James Beard Award for Best Chef South in 1993 and being inducted into the organization’s crème de la crème Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America 17 years later, Spicer continues to leave her fingerprints all over the city’s dining scene: from Herbsaint and Mondo, to the more recently opened Rosedale, which comes full circle for the chef with a menu dedicated to Louisiana flavors.

2000s:

LINDA GREEN’S YA-KA-MEIN IS A CURE-ALL FOR THE BODY AND SOUL

It’s happened to everyone at some point.

While grabbing an after-work boulevardier with coworkers, you bump into a trio of high school pals you’ve only seen over Zoom for two years; which leads to an impromptu “let’s catch up!” dinner with plenty of oysters and a couple bottles of Tempranillo; which leads to someone saying, “I hear Kermit Ruffins is playing tonight!” and, well, you know the rest.

Fortunately, Miss Linda Green’s ya-kamein is there to sooth troubled systems when our brains are beatboxing and stomachs have turned tempest-like after a night of bacchanalian overindulgence.

Ya-ka-mein (also called “Old Sober,” for obvious reasons) is a hybrid of African American and Asian American flavors, combining spools of noodles and beef in a salty, soy sauce-rich broth alongside a bobbing hard-boiled egg and dusting of green onions over top. A grab-and-go

corner store favorite meant to be gobbled up in a hurry or on the move, ya-ka-mein proves that sometimes food can be the get-right medicine you need — and Ms. Linda has the prescription.

Referred to as “The Ya-ka-mein Lady” by those in the know, Green has created a cult following throughout the decades, popping up at festivals and second lines, and most recently every Thursday night at the Ogden Museum After Hours.

“I keep telling people all the time that ya-ka-mein is New Orleans’ best kept secret,” Miss Linda told me back in 2018.

“In our community growing up, ya-kamein was known as a poor man’s dish, but also a delicacy. When my grandmother would cook it, the aroma would go out the window and into the streets, and folks would say, ‘Mama Georgia’s cookin’ her ya-ka-mein!’ They’d come with their bowls to sit on the porch and eat it.”

From the top: ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Celestine Dunbar, “mom” and restaurateur of Dunbar’s Creole Cooking.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Chef Susan Spicer continues to leave her fingerprints all over the New Orleans dining scene: from Herbsaint and Mondo, to the more recently opened Rosedale, which comes full circle for the chef with a menu dedicated to Louisiana flavors. Photo by Channing Candies.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Referred to as “The Ya-ka-mein Lady” by those in the know, Linda Green has created a cult following throughout the decades. Photo

by Romney Caruso.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Nina Compton opened Compere Lapin in 2015. A Caribbean (and, in particular, St. Lucian) influence breezes over dishes at the flagship Warehouse District restaurant. Photo

by Denny Culbert,courtesy of Brustman Carrino PR. ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Meg Bickford took over the executive chef position at Commander’s Palace in late 2020 after working in the Commander’s family of restaurants since 2008. Photo by Chris Granger, courtesy of Commander’s Palace.

But with the way white-table-cloth chefs are adapting their own versions of the Styrofoam-cup favorite as elevated cuisine and Miss Linda has become a sought-out icon from the pages of Rolling Stone to Food Network’s Chopped, if her cure-all potion still flies under the radar among the non-hungover masses, it won’t for long.

2010s:

NINA COMPTON AND SUE ZEMANICK FUSE INTERNATIONAL FLAVORS WITH LOCAL FLAIR

Take a quick scan over the resumes of both Nina Compton and Sue Zemanick, and it’s difficult to identify pretty much any award or accolade the two haven’t received over the past 15 years. (Short of a Nobel Peace Prize, that is.)

Both are winners of the highly-coveted, ultra-prestigious James Beard Award for Best Chef South — Zemanick in 2014; Compton in 2018 — and both made Food and Wine’s annual “who’s who” list of best new chefs before their 40th birthdays.

They’re both household names thanks to their appearances on Top Chef (Compton) and Top Chef Masters (Zemanick), but at the end of the day, their most important victory is ushering in a breath of fresh air when it comes to woman-helmed fine dining in New Orleans.

In Compton’s case, it was, in fact, the aforementioned filming of Top Chef that made her fall in love with New Orleans, and the feeling has been mutual since she opened Compere Lapin in 2015. A Caribbean (and, in particular, St. Lucian) influence breezes over dishes at the flagship Warehouse District restaurant, with plates like curried goat with sweet potato gnocchi and blackened pig ear with smoked aioli building a loyal following among locals and in-the-know tourists alike. Her second New Orleans restaurant, Bywater American Bistro, also pulls from both regional and international culinary quivers while creating a convivial, neighborhood space, with dishes like barbequed octopus with smoked carrot anchoring the menu.

Because wherever Compton and Zemanick cook, diners are welcome to come with an inquisitive mind and an empty stomach, ready to eat food prepared

by chefs who know that, no matter the accolades, it’s a generosity of spirit that’s at the heart of every great restaurant.

2020s:

MEG BICKFORD DONS THE TOQUE AS FINE DINING ’S NEXT GENERATION

From the icon herself, Ella Brennan, to Sue Zemanick, who worked at the restaurant before assuming the reigns at Gautreau's, any story of Commander’s Palace should include a chapter on women in leadership — with Meg Bickford as a prominent character.

Bickford took over the executive chef position from Tory McPhail in late 2020 after working in the Commander’s family of restaurants since 2008, and has since been carving out her own unique approach to Haute Creole cuisine while adhering to a hyper-local “dirt-to-plate within 100 miles” ethos.

Turns out, it’s working beautifully.

The Gulf Coast terroir is hard to miss in dishes like cherried marrow antelope: a grilled south Texas antelope chop drenched in melted bone marrow and dark cherry compound butter over stone ground grits with brandy-soaked cherry-bone jus rôti. And while some menu stalwarts remain as popular as ever — the turtle soup au sherry isn’t going anywhere, of course — Bickford’s imaginative additions genuflect to the bounty of Louisiana while adding a studied earthiness that would make all Commander’s ladies proud — even Miss Brennan herself.

“If I can inspire someone to feel like they can do anything, then that is exactly what I intend to do,” Bickford told USA Today’s The American South shortly after assuming her new position in November 2020. “If you haven’t noticed…women have been running Commander’s for generations. It was never lost on me that the head chef here always worked for or with women. It’s kind of a natural thing that’s been going on around here.”

And with this through-line of brave, creative, female chefs serving as a blueprint for New Orleans’ culinary future, there’s no shortage of role models to help inspire greatness for the next 130 years.

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Everything Happens for a Riesling

By Sarah Baird When Robin McBride reflects on the growth of her company, McBride Sisters Wine, over the hectic, high-stress past two years, she lets out a deep sigh. “These have definitely been a very scary and challenging past couple of years. But we’ve grown so much during this time, in part because so much light has been shed on the importance of taking an interest in, and supporting, womenowned and Black-owned businesses.”

T

he largest Black-owned wine business in the country, Robin operates the company — which makes, among other vintages, the popular Black Girl Magic line of wine — with her sister Andréa. And in the face of these challenging times, the duo has created a model for how to use digital tools to build a more inclusive, welcoming wine world for drinkers across the globe, even during a global pandemic.

The open-arms attitude the sisters have toward community is rooted in their own story, which started when the siblings found one another as adults and began to see parallels between their continents-apart upbringing.

“When we met and learned that we both grew up in wine country — Andréa in New Zealand and me growing up in the Central Coast of California — that definitely put a little pin in ‘Hmm, what are the chances?’

That doesn’t feel like something that’s normal, particularly for little girls of color to have grown up in really agricultural areas that have a focus on wine.”

While getting to know each other, the pair spent weekends meeting up at wineries along the California coast, a choice that would lead to a business idea that would not only shape their lives but also redefine the boundaries of global wine stewardship.

“We encountered a lot of situations where it was assumed that we didn’t know much

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about wine, or that we couldn’t afford some of the wines. So, we started to say to ourselves, ‘Wow, it would be really great if we didn’t experience this.’ I started to think more seriously about what it could be like if we were able to teach people about wine and change how it’s delivered to consumers, and piece by piece, it suddenly seemed like, ‘We can actually do something here.’”

Robin and Andréa started McBride Sisters first as importers of New Zealand wines; then distributors; then producers of their own wines from New Zealand before opening up production in California. But by the early days of 2020, the McBrides had a new challenge, and used the global pause brought on by the pandemic to take a deep breath, assess the shifting sands of the wine landscape and tap into their creativity.

“We’ve been on the road for 15 years, basically, so sitting still for a little while really helped us to get those creative juices rolling and find out what people want, what’s valuable, and how people like to engage with wine,” says McBride. “Helping folks

find the right wine — and food — for their every day, not just special occasions, has been really eye-opening.”

With so many people setting up Zoom cocktail hours or enjoying a glass of Rose while toasting a milestone virtually with family and friends, the power of online relationship-building came to the forefront for Robin and Andrea as they figured out how to provide new ways of creating meaningful connections that were winecentric and digital. And that’s how the Black Girl Magic Wine and Book Club was born.

“Our Black Girl Magic line of wine has become very popular over the past couple of years, and we partnered with Simon and Schuster to do a book club where we match our wine with one of their new releases by black women authors,” McBride explains.

“We have a club shipment for the wines that are paired with the story, and then we do virtual book club meetings where everybody gets to taste the wine and the author chitchats with us. That has turned out to be something that I don’t think we would’ve

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Andréa McBride John and Robin McBride are the founders of the McBride Sisters Collection, the largest Black-owned wine company in the United States. Photos courtesy McBride Sisters.

done [if not for lockdowns], but it’s been a lot of fun.”

The first book-and-wine pairing included one bottle each of Black Girl Magic Riesling and Merlot, with an advanced-release copy of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

by Dawnie Walton. The novel — which follows the winding career of afro-punk, avant-garde singer Opal and songwriter Nev — speaks to the sort of approach the McBrides have taken when building their business: forward-thinking, imaginative and unafraid to redefine a landscape desperately in need of expanded horizons. More recently, the book club celebrated the 20th anniversary of soul icon Patti LaBelle’s W W W. R O U S E S . C O M

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ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Since 2005, The McBride Sisters’ mission has been clear: to transform the industry, lead by example, and cultivate community, one delicious glass of wine at a time. Photos courtesy McBride Sisters.

seminal cookbook, LaBelle Cuisine: Recipes to Sing About, with a virtual sit-down chat at her home, and the sisters' favorite pairings of Black Girl Magic Wines with the Grammywinner’s most iconic dishes.

Finding novel ways to make wine more accessible has also resulted in quite a bit of restaurant industry collaboration. Because the McBrides believe that wine should be enjoyed in a casual, everyday way — not gathering dust on a shelf in preparation for some once-a-lifetime event — it only makes sense that they’d play matchmaker between their wines and complementary recipes. In a free-to-download e-cookbook on their website, Robin and Andréa worked alongside celebrated Washington, D.C. recipe developer, Alex Hill, to create a wine-and-meal pairing guide called Rooted in Tradition, Remixed for Everyday Life. The handful of recipes — including a Thai coconut curry salmon paired with the McBride Sisters Collection Chardonnay — takes all the guesswork out of your next big dinner party or casual-but-considered bubbly brunch.

But the biggest digital-first wine accessibility effort so far by the McBride Sisters is their wine school, McBride Certified: Wine 101 with Robin and Andréa. This completely online course has helped flip the script on more traditional (and, let’s be honest, stuffy) wine education, appealing to both seasoned sippers searching for a social outlet and newcomers who might not know their tannins from their terpenes — yet.

“Wine education has always been something that my sister, Andréa, and I have really wanted to dig into because our demographic is not necessarily the traditional wine consumer, and they haven’t had a lot of confidence in the space of tasting wines, purchasing wines and furthering their own education. We’ve heard that a lot over the years,” explains Robin. “Plus, traditional wine education is expensive. If you’re going to go through a certification or take classes, it can be really, really pricey.”

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The McBrides have created a welcoming, easy-to-follow, module-based course that not only helps participants learn more about the wines they’re sipping — and, in turn, more easily identify what they liked to drink and why — but creates a community of people upping their Chardonnay chops from all reaches of the globe.

“When we were all locked up in our homes [in April 2020] and decided that we were going to do a virtual wine school, we literally just started filming modules on different topics on our phones and created a Facebook [education] group online. The courses are taught by us, first person, as we walk through the main styles of wine, but then we also pair wine and their characteristics with celebrities and icons. So, we have wines that we’ve matched up with Prince and Beyonce and Grace Jones. It sounds silly to explain, but we hope that having a musical or cultural connection with celebrities and singers will help people better remember the wine information that they just learned.”

Turns out, Robin and Andrea were right: With a little bit of help from Prince and

Beyonce, the wine school has been a smash hit. The sisters are approaching the final module of the program, which has seen over 15,000 people make their way through classes.

“It really took off on its own. We thought, ‘We’ll create these little videos and talk people through the different kinds of wines… and we’ll choose wines and tell stories to make sure it’s not stuffy.’ I think we hoped maybe a few hundred people would think it was really cool, and in the future, we’d maybe do something a little bit more serious.

But it’s really taken off organically.”

There’s also a playfully competitive, social element to the McBrides’ wine school that makes completing modules and moving swiftly through the coursework almost like a game. And at a time when people have needed alternative outlets for enrichment, creativity and connection, the wine school has proven to be just that.

“Each module has a quiz, so you go through the lesson, take the quiz and get a score. But we quickly saw that people were taking the quizzes and then posting

it in the chat,” Robin laughs. “People have gotten really competitive, in a fun way, with their scores. It’s become a really communal place for people to learn about wine and talk about wine. It also turned out to be something that has helped us get through and stay connected.”

An ability to embrace change while pairing serious wine with a wink-and-a-nod to pop culture gives the McBride Sisters a distinct advantage in our modern drinking climate over many of the immovable, old school stalwarts of the wine world. Because as these companies stay stuck in outdated modes of thinking and drinking, the McBrides are creating an inclusive, diverse space where people feel comfortable being themselves in the world of winemaking and consumption.

“When we started in the wine business 17 years ago, a lot of times we didn’t feel welcome, quite honestly. We felt like outsiders, and uncomfortable in a lot of places because we didn’t look like anyone else around us. But it really gave us fuel to make sure that everybody feels welcome,

regardless of their background and where they are in their wine journey. We want everybody to love wine like we do. It really is our mission.”

And as the wine industry continues to become a more wide-ranging, forwardthinking space for people at every stage of wine production — from vineyard owners to winemakers to distributors to wine critics — the legacy of the McBride Sisters as profoundly influential will only continue to grow.

“I think the last two years have really forced people to take a look at the future of wine and the future of the industry. And if you don’t create an industry that’s inclusive of the next generation of wine drinker, you’re not going to have an audience anymore. It’s a no-brainer from a business standpoint,” explains McBride. “I’m really happy with a lot of the effort and commitments that I’ve seen, particularly from the mature players.

And I hope it continues. There are a lot of us holding each other and the industry accountable going forward.”

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT In 2009, when she was still a student at Auburn University, Christa Cotton helped her parents open Thirteenth Colony Distilleries, the first legal distillery to operate in Georgia since Prohibition. After graduation, Cotton moved to New Orleans, working first in advertising at a firm that specialized in tourism and hospitality. In 2017, after years spent in the company of chefs and hoteliers, she founded the New Orleans Beverage Group and acquired the El Guapo trademark.

El Guapo had developed a unique brewing process for zero-proof bitters.

El Guapo Bitters, still the country’s only dedicated brewer of bitters, expanded into handcrafted artisan syrups and mixers, using ingredients that are locally sourced. Today Cotton and her team are preparing to move from a 3,000-square-foot manufacturing site on Tchoupitoulas Street in Uptown New Orleans to a 35,000-squarefoot, state-of-the-art bitters brewing operation on Gravier Street in Mid-City.

Cotton was named a 2021 James Beard Foundation Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Fellow, a tribute to her strong commitment and contributions to the hospitality industry.

PHOTO COURTESY EL GUAPO BITTERS

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have even inspired our pop culture depiction of witches, and it seems likely; alewives transported their beer in large vats or cauldrons, and wore tall hats to stand out in the crowded marketplaces. Even the association between witches and broomsticks may go back to the 1500s. Brewers would stick a broom called an ”ale stake” in front of their homes to let neighbors know when they had beer to sell.

LEAVING HER MARK ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Margie Samuels came up with the name for her husband Bill’s famed Kentucky whiskey brand, Maker’s Mark, and she also designed the square-shaped bottle and hand-lettered label. She even developed its iconic red-wax seal; it’s said she dipped the bottles in her home kitchen, using a fryer full of melted wax. Her ingenuity paid off, as she was the first woman directly connected to a distillery to be inducted into the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame.

WOMEN AND PROHIBITION ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT American women involved in the temperance movement, which preached moderation or abstinence, helped pass the 18th Amendment outlawing the manufacture, sale or trafficking of intoxicating liquors.

Ironically, women made, sold and consumed more liquor during Prohibition than at any time before in history. Women like “Moonshine” Mary Wazeniak and Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe (known to many as the Bahama Queen) proved to be very adept bootleggers and rum runners, and faced little punishment when they were caught with the illicit liquor. Organized crime syndicates grew throughout Prohibition, and they took advantage of the fact that many states had laws specifically prohibiting male police officers from searching women, so these organizations often recruited women to smuggle their alcohol.

Eventually, law enforcement wised up and hired women to become prohibition agents — women like Georgia Hopley, who signed on as the first female Internal Revenue Service agent in the Prohibition Unit in Washington, D.C. in 1922.

By Marcy Nathan WITCHES BREW ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Ale — and later, beer — was made and sold almost entirely by women throughout the Middle Ages, probably because it was commonplace for the beverage to be made at home then. Widows with children and unmarried women brewed the beverage and sold it at marketplaces to earn money; married women made the beer their husbands sold at the market as well as in taverns. But as the Reformation gathered speed in the early to mid 1500s and charges of witchcraft became widespread, male brewers, eager to push the women out, began crying witch. Eventually it became too dangerous for the alewives, as women who sold beer were called, to sell their beer. When the witch hunt began, women accused of witchcraft weren’t just shunned in their communities, they were tried for sorcery, imprisoned and even executed. Some argue medieval alewives may

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THE CELLAR MASTER ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Pierrette Trichet is the only female maitre de chaise in the history of the renowned Cognac houses of France, which have been producing that well-loved brandy variety for centuries. Having grown up in Armagnac, Trichet had a lifelong familiarity with the vineyards and winemaking, so it’s not surprising that she was well-suited for the task.

Although Trichet retired from her role as cellar master at Rémy Martin in 2014, she remains to this day one of the most influential women in Cognac.

HISTORY IN THE MAKING ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Women have been involved with whiskey production and distribution — legal or otherwise — throughout time, but there have been few female distillers. Tennessee native Allisa Henley made history when she was named the first female master distiller of a

Tennessee whiskey at Cascade Hollow Distilling Co., where George Dickel Tennessee Whisky (”whisky” at Dickel is spelled in the Scottish way, without an ‘e’) has been produced for nearly 150 years. Henley moved to Sazerac of Tennessee, but another talented woman, Nicole Austin, quickly filled her shoes. Austin joined Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. in 2018. Whisky Advocate named her first major release, George Dickel Bottled in Bond, a 13-year-old bottling, its whiskey of the year in 2019, and it was named the top-rated American Whiskey of 2019

by Wine Enthusiast. George Dickel Bottled in Bond is now in its third iteration.

STORMING THE SAZER AC ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Historically, Mardi Gras was the only day of the year that women were allowed inside the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, until a 1949 publicity stunt ended the bar’s men-only policy.

On September 26 of that year, a large group of women stormed into the establishment, determined to enjoy a bit of equality and some excellent libations. While the revolution was actually the brainchild of the hotel’s then owner — who was basically drumming up some press for his business — the Sazerac Bar, and the nation, never looked back.

WOMEN WINEMAKERS ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, known as the Grande Dame of Champagne, was the first woman to run a Champagne house. As a young parent, she took the reins of the family wine business at age 27 upon the death of her husband, François. A new generation of winemakers include Séverin Frerson, the first female cellar master in the 200-year history of Maison Perrier-Jouët, and Julie Cavil, the first female cellar master of Champagne house Krug, one of the top winemaking jobs in Champagne.

A SPIRITED CONVERSATION Q&A WITH ALLISA HENLEY, DISTILLER AND GENERAL MANAGER, SAZERAC OF TENNESSEE

By Marcy Nathan What is so special about Tennessee whiskey?

Well, first is it’s from Tennessee. However, what really makes it special is the charcoal mellowing process we do before aging our whiskey in the barrel.

Charcoal mellowing can help filter out any impurities leftover from distillation, giving the whiskey a smoother taste.

Women now make up an estimated 36% of American whiskey drinkers, according to 2020 data from the market research firm, MRI-Simmons. Is it only that bourbon and whiskey are getting more popular, or is there something more?

Whiskey and bourbon are definitely more popular with the resurgence of the classic cocktail. I think women have always been interested in whiskey, but now there is more information that is easily accessible — and more brands to try — so we’re likely just noticing it more.

You’ve lead seminars on Tennessee whiskey and women’s historical role in the business. Who are some notable contributors, and who do you consider today’s leading women in whiskey?

This question would probably have been easier to answer 15 to 20 years ago, as there were so few women in the spirits industry. However, now there are more and more women that I met every day that are not only working in the spirits industry, but holding leadership roles.

From distillers to executives, we are staking our claim in this industry. I really enjoy participating in women in whiskey groups, where I continue to meet and learn from women all over the country.

What is your favorite part of the distilling process?

It’s the small moments for me. Like the smell of aged whiskey as it runs out of the barrel into a dump trough. Or I love the smell of mash that hits me in the mornings when I

get to work and get out of my car. Anything that engages my sense of smell and taste definitely sticks with me. Also, I enjoy watching the bubbles form in fermentation.

It’s fascinating and somehow soothing to me to watch the yeast work with the mash.

Sazerac, the parent company of Buffalo Trace in Kentucky, seems to have big plans for its Tennessee Distillery. We know whiskey takes time, but can you give us a look into the future?

We did purchase 55 acres with a beautiful five-acre spring-fed lake in Murfreesboro.

We look forward to building a distillery campus and homeplace in the future. For now, we are concentrating on making the best Tennessee whiskey, and aging more and more barrels every day. We hope to have our new Tennessee whiskey ready to launch within the next three years or so. I am so excited to bring a Tennessee whiskey to the Sazerac family.

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By Susan Larson

FANNIE FARMER

Cookbooks — the best ones — last not only when their recipes work, but because their advice is tried and true. The Boston-Cooking School Cookbook, later known as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, began with the basics, instructing readers “how to build a fire.”

It has transcended its time and lives on through many editions, partly because of its attention to the fundamentals.

Fannie Farmer (1857-1915) was born in Boston and raised in nearby Medford. Her parents, John Franklin Farmer, a printer and an editor, and Mary Watson Merritt, had four daughters; Fannie was the eldest. At 16, she became ill, probably with polio, and suffered partial paralysis, retaining a limp throughout her life. In her 20s, she went to work for Mrs. Shaw, a well-off family friend, who encouraged her to attend the Boston Cooking School, founded to help women find meaningful work. The experience was transformative. After graduating in 1889, she became the second-in-command at the venerable institution.

Real fame came with the 1896 publication of The Boston CookingSchool Cookbook and expanded as Farmer went on the lecture circuit, even appearing at Harvard Medical School to discuss diet and health. She was the food editor for Women’s Home Companion, an important magazine of the period. In 1902, she opened Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, which was quite successful. And because everyone kept referring to The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook as “the Fannie Farmer cookbook,” the name was changed. The rechristened book remains in print to this day, including a very attractive 100th anniversary edition, updated by Marion Cunningham, the author of Lost Recipes.

Farmer is widely credited with stressing precision in her recipes. “A cup must be level. A teaspoon must be level.” As a result, her recipes, especially for cakes and pies, always work.

Likewise, Farmer’s personality seemingly guaranteed her success.

She had charisma; she inspired her women students, wasn’t afraid to talk about cooking as entertainment, and saw that cooking offered exciting professional opportunities for women. In 2018, The New York Times honored Farmer with a long-overdue obituary, in their “Overlooked No More” column, which covers notable deaths that, at the time, went unreported by the newspaper.

“But Farmer’s enduring legacy is a simple one: exactitude in cooking,” wrote Julia Moskin in that obituary. As Laura Shapiro, author of Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the

Century, told Moskin: “She made it possible for any woman to put a meal on the table, even if she couldn’t cook at all,” Shapiro said.

“There’s nothing more democratizing than that.”

IRMA ROMBAUER

What classic cookbook seems like it’s always existed? The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer (1877-1962) and Marion Rombauer Becker (1903-1976), of course! This kitchen bible took shape as a widow’s attempt to provide for her family. When Rombauer lost her husband in 1930, she decided to write and publish a cookbook. Although known for baking beautiful cakes, she was reminded by friends in St. Louis that she was a terrible cook. Undaunted, she set about collecting recipes from wellknown cooks in the area, found a printer, and got to work. The Joy of Cooking was self-published in 1939 in a first-edition printing of 3,000 copies.

Joy became the family business as Irma sought the help of her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, for later editions. Marion’s husband, John Becker, would work on the book as well, as would other family and friends. It started as a basic cookbook for young women, and it adapted with culinary tastes over time — from its early reliance on processed foods (think Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup) to fresher, healthier ingredients, to recipes with an international flair. Becker, an excellent gardener, was an early proponent of “grow your own” food and she introduced global produce, like carambola and durian, to the cookbook.

Joy has a long and storied history, one of the great sagas of 20th-century publishing, beginning with Irma signing a contract that gave her first commercial publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, ownership of copyrights. Irma Rombauer would spend the rest of her life attempting to regain control of her work. She and her publishers would wrestle over the number of recipes, cover illustrations, length and format, and even the red ribbon bookmark. After its publication, Joy was a de rigueur wedding gift for brides. Now, when you’re holding it in your hands, you’re looking at a piece of rich American culinary and publishing history. It is still in print; her grandson, Ethan Becker, edits the book today.

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JULIA CHILD

Bon appetit! All true food-lovers hear these words in a warm, plummy, cheerful voice.

You know the one — it belongs to Julia Child (1912-2004), whose enthusiasm for la belle France and its cuisine transformed American taste after the 1961 publication of Mastering The Art of French Cooking and the success of her first educational television cooking show, The French Chef.

Child can remember the day she fell in love with French cuisine. It was November 3, 1948, and she and her husband had just arrived in LeHavre to begin their new lives in Paris, where Paul Child was to be the United States Information Service’s exhibits officer. After getting their car off the boat, they drove to Restaurant La Couronne in Rouen, where Julia had her first taste of oysters served with rounds of buttered rye bread, sole meuniere, salade verte, fromage blanc and a dark café filtre. Oh, and wine, of course. The seduction was complete.

Child used her time in France well, visiting local markets, exploring restaurants, taking on the mission of translating French cuisine for American cooks. She studied at the Cordon Bleu (she flunked her final cooking exam, but passed on her second attempt). Here is what she did after she learned of her failure, as she writes in My Life in France: “Later that afternoon, I slipped down to the Cordon Bleu’s basement kitchen by myself. I opened the school’s booklet, found the recipes from the examination — oeufs mollet with sauce béarnaise, côtellettes de veau en Surprise and Crème renversée au caramel — and whipped them all up in a cold, clean fury. Then I ate them.”

That determined spirit served her well in the years that followed.

She found collaborators for her cookbook project in Louise Bertholle and Simone (Simca) Beck. The work was arduous (Paul Child referred to himself as a Cordon Bleu Widower) but the women kept at it. After a long and tortuous submission and revision process (Houghton Mifflin rejected it), the book was finally published by Alfred A. Knopf, beautifully edited by the legendary Judith Jones, herself a cookbook author and tastemaker.

After the success of the 2009 film Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and based on Julie Powell’s memoir of making every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, there was a renewed interest in Child as well as a celebration of her as a culinary icon. Women gathered for Julia Child dinner parties, celebrating her life by recreating recipes for such delicious dishes as Cream of Mushroom Soup, Boeuf Bourguignon (a classic, but allow two days to make it) and Chocolate Mousse. Child laments that the

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recipe that took the most work to compose — for a simple baguette — was the one least used.

She would go on to write many more cookbooks and continue her charming and informative television shows. Through it all, she taught women the pleasures of cooking something new and making mistakes. Drop something? Just pick it up. Have to flip something in a frying pan? Do it with courage and confidence. “When you’re alone in the kitchen,” she said, “Who is going to see?”

JULIA REED

When Julia Reed (1960-2020) invited people to a party, they went.

A consummate entertainer, she knew how to serve up delicious Southern food with a twist, strong drinks, and great stories — told in her unforgettably husky voice. The parties were complemented by beautiful surroundings, whether in a French Quarter apartment, a Garden District mansion (right across the street from the house of Anne Rice at First and Chestnut) or at home in her native Greenville, Mississippi. No one would miss it for the world.

Reed seemed to live a charmed life, but she worked at it. She was a prolific writer with a knack for catchy titles: Ham Biscuits and Hostess Gowns, Queen of the Turtle Derby, But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria. With readers, she shared a memoir, The House on First Street; essays on Southern culture, South Toward Home; and two gorgeous lifestyle and entertainment guides, Julia Reed’s South: Spirited Entertaining and High-Style Fun All Year Long and Julia Reed’s New Orleans: Food, Fun, and Field Trips for Letting the Good Times Roll. A posthumous collection, Dispatches from the Gilded Age: A Few More Thoughts on Interesting People, Far-Flung Places, and the Joys of Southern Comforts, with longtime assistant Everette Bexley, will be published Summer 2022. Behind the catchy titles and humorous stories, Reed imparted wit and wisdom on not just entertaining but on life itself.

A daughter of Greenville, Mississippi, Julia attended the Madeira School, and her first assignment as a journalism intern at Newsweek was to cover Jean Harris’ infamous murder of “Scarsdale Diet” doctor Herman Tarnower. Julia always did know how to make an entrance.

She had a keen political eye and interviewed everyone from Hillary Clinton to Barbara Bush for Vogue. In the post-Katrina days, she was one of New Orleans’ staunchest advocates, serving as the chair of the board of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. She also served as a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and Elle Décor and as a columnist for Southern Living.

And, oh, did she shine as a hostess. To read either of her entertainment guides is to find a road atlas to great parties, right down to the perfect playlist. In Julia Reed’s New Orleans, she comes up with a “Festival of Strawberries and Crawfish” that honors the local custom of celebrating everything in season, and her Reveillon dinner (oyster tartlets, stuffed mushrooms, crab cakes, roasted ducks, potatoes and cabbage, banana tarte tatin) and Mardi Gras brunch (buttermilk biscuits with ham and preserves, grillades, garlic cheese grits casserole, grapefruit and avocado salad, and king cake, of course), offer food that can sustain revelers over a long weekend of partying.

In Julia Reed’s South, she ranges far and wide, from a Tomatopalooza at the home of friends in Giles County, Tennessee, to a picnic on a Mississippi sandbar, a Jeffersonian evening honoring bestselling author Jon Meacham after the publication of his biography of Thomas Jefferson, and a duck dinner at Hollywood Plantation in Benoit, Mississippi. For the latter, Julia reprises the history of the plantation, known as the “Baby Doll” house for its use in the 1956 film based on Tennessee Williams’ play.

Reed puts her philosophy succinctly. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned,” she says. “It’s that life is short. There’s joy to be had. You just have to summon up the willingness to find it. So make some cocktails, heat up the cheese dreams, and phone up your friends and neighbors.” All hail the Hot Tamale Queen of the Delta Hot Tamale Festival!

THE WILD LIFE OF MARY LAND

From the opening lines of Louisiana Cookery, we know that author Mary Land (1908-1991) means business. “When I was big enough to tote a gun, I did,” she wrote. “And at the mature age of four, I felt no fainting fits from jabbing a fishhook into a worm — for I was reared by my father.”

Land was an unconventional woman. And what else would you expect from a someone born at a place called Rough and Ready Plantation in northern Louisiana? She grew up hunting and fishing with her father in Benton, near Shreveport; her mother was an invalid.

let the lion be around other lions. Walking down Royal Street with her lion on a leash (in high heels!), she was a true French Quarter character. She also moved in literary circles with writers Lyle Saxon, Harnett Kane, Roark Bradford, Frans Blom, Tennessee Williams and Robert Tallant. Her parties were legendary, filled with popular musicians of the time, a generous bar and her delicious food.

Land wrote about food with excitement and pleasure, and collecting recipes and stories was second nature. Louisiana Cookery, published in 1954, was a landmark volume, and it was duly celebrated. Photos capture Land in a silk brocade suit with a giant shoulder corsage, holding court with a huge crowd at a publication party at Tess Crager’s Basement Street Bookshop on Zimpel Street.

It was lovely recognition for a woman who wanted to share “a love and longing for the wilderness and a knowledge of how to use the groceries supplied by Mother Earth. The cookbook included illustrations by Morris Henry Hobbs, a local artist known for his charming sketches. According to historian Karen Leathem’s essay on Land in Louisiana Women: Their Lives and Times, James Beard, an influential supporter of Land’s first cookbook, once wrote to her: “I loved your house; I loved the parties; I liked your husband immensely; I adored you.” Great praise from a man at the top of the food world.

From the fundamental to the rarefied, Louisiana Cookery remains a pleasure to read. Land collected recipes and advice everywhere she went and was an anthropologist by nature. Love of place is evident in many recipes, such as “Breaux Bridge Bisque,” “Woodcock St. Tammany” and “Biloxi Bacon,” the final being a recipe for mullet fish. Other recipes bear the names of friends, like “Owen Brennan’s Pirate’s Dream,” a rum cocktail that serves eight, or “Sunfish au Bob Scearce,” whom Land tells us is “an experienced wielder of the rod and pan.”

“To be free of fear and do first things first” were the important life lessons Land learned from her beloved cousin Gammon, and the natural world was where she applied them. She grew to love nature so much that she wrote poems about it, spent time outdoors whenever she could, and became the first woman member of the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association. She had the confidence of a girl who grew up with her father’s approval and a sense of financial security.

She didn’t settle in her personal life; she married and divorced five times — twice to musicians — and had a son and a daughter.

In the ’40s and ’50s, Land lived in New Orleans at Jackson Square’s iconic Upper Pontalba building, where her kinship with nature drew amazed stares.

For a time, she had a pet alligator, given to her as a Mother’s Day gift. For a year, she had a pet lion cub that she and her son adopted from the zoo. She once told an interviewer that the secret to raising a lion cub was never to let the lion get the best of you and to never W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 2 7

There is an abundance of recipes for game in the cookbook’s “Gastronomic Gambles” chapter. For “Poached Alligator Tail,” Land tells readers that a gator just under three-feet long is the best for culinary purposes, and for “Crocodile,” she simply states that its tail is much tougher than alligator. There are recipes for blackbirds, crows and owls, as well as porpoise, rays and sharks. It’s easy to imagine Land out in the swamp, a rod or gun over her shoulder. And while contemporary readers may doubt they’ll need seven recipes for bear, it’s fun to read them.

Land didn’t just enjoy the gifts of the outdoors. She wanted other women to enjoy them, too. She was great friends with naturalist Caroline Dormon (1888-1971), who shared her love of poetry and nature, and Land supported Dormon’s efforts to save the Kisatchie National Forest. The two women encouraged each other, in conservation and in writing. “How good of you to send me your gorgeous book!” Dormon wrote Land. “And thank God you did not put sugar in your cornbread!”

Land worked for the Louisiana Department of Conservation, and she was the only female member of the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association. In 1947, she was one of a handful of women who attended the national association’s convention. Many of her articles in the Louisiana Conservation Review and her syndicated columns were addressed directly to women. In one, she advised them to practice casting in the back yard when their families were away so they could develop their skills without criticism. She went on to become an acclaimed sportswoman and sport fisherman herself, competing in — and winning — tarpon rodeos across the Gulf South from Lake Charles to St. Petersburg, Florida. Sometimes the fish were as big as she was.

Land followed Louisiana Cookery 15 years later with New Orleans Cuisine, which, now out of print, can command up to $500 for first editions. One of the longest chapters includes recipes from the city’s most famous restaurants of the period: Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Brennan’s, Corinne Dunbar’s, La Louisiane, Maylie’s, Tujague’s, Turci’s, Pascal’s Manale, Monsieur Victor and Galatoire’s, and the Gumbo Shop. A recipe from Commander’s Palace makes the reader wonder if its yield of ten gallons of turtle soup might actually come in handy. The chapter is transporting, taking the reader back to a grand time in New Orleans restaurant history. “To be ‘rich as a Creole,’” she wrote, “is to have all of the best, especially in cookery.”

One particularly evocative chapter includes recipes for street foods of old New Orleans, calling to mind scenes with vendors of fruit, calas (rice cakes), oysters and, as Land writes to the dismay of the Lucky Dog, “not a hot dog man.” Another fascinating chapter is devoted to “Riverboat Cuisine.” All are told in her distinctive, friendly style.

As Land’s friend Owen Brennan said of her, “She’s a Louisiana girl from ’way back — and what she can’t do with her grandmama’s iron skillet, a brown roux and a pod of garlic ain’t worth remembering anyway.”

Makes you wonder why Louisiana’s license plates don’t bear “Sportswoman’s Paradise” in Land’s honor.

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The Host with the Most

By Sue Strachan There are many only-in-Louisiana moments conjured up by the one and only Poppy Tooker, a woman whose seafood gumbo was so enchanting that musician and New Orleans native Wynton Marsalis called it “the have-mercy Poppy gumbo.”

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ike the time she beat Bobby Flay on his Food Network Throwdown show when he was trying to compete for the best gumbo. If you didn’t see the episode, you can imagine the look she gave Flay when he added carrots

to his pot.

Poppy grew up in New Orleans, but her biggest food influence came from down the bayou. “My paternal great grandmother, my Maman, spoke French,” Poppy said.

“She was a fabulous cook, and from her, I acquired my palate. But I learned more than just how to cook — she taught me how to love people with food. Because that’s what she did, and that’s what I do.”

For 13 years, Tooker she has been the producer and host of Louisiana Eats!, which is broadcast weekly on NPR affiliates throughout the Gulf South and is available worldwide as a podcast.

(Rouses Markets is a sponsor.) The show is for people who cook and people who love to eat.

Lately, Poppy has been enthusiastically watching the rise of women chefs in New Orleans. “I am just so tickled and thrilled, coming from the age of when I worked in restaurants in my twenties, and it was very, very rare to find a woman in the kitchen,” Poppy said.

“It’s thrilling to see Susan Spicer still at it, decades later, and I’m really excited watching the new tribe of ambitious women entrepreneurs who have begun making their mark during the pandemic.”

Poppy is the author or co-author of seven cookbooks that touch upon the city and state’s edible mélange, including Louisiana Eats!

The People, The Food and Their Stories, and Drag Queen Brunch, which she wrote with photographer Sam Hanna. And while Poppy says she isn’t working on a book, there is one percolating right now. (Think ghost stories with a food angle.) She is also a regular on Steppin’ Out, New Orleans’ only weekly arts and entertainment review, which airs on WYES, the city’s PBS affiliate. (Rouses Markets is a sponsor.)

The highlight of Poppy’s spring is planned for this year’s New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, when she will bring drag brunch to the Food Heritage Stage, complete with a savory pain perdu cooking demo, and performances from Laveau Contraire and Debbie with a D. “I like to take classic dishes and change them up a little. This should really cause a stir,” Poppy laughed. The onlyin-Louisiana demo promises to be an unforgettable time.

Under Ella’s Umbrella

By Marcelle Bienvenu, photos courtesy Commander’s Palace I met Ella Brennan in 1971 when I was working on American Cooking: Creole and Acadian for Time-Life books. We became instant friends. After my assignment was finished, I went to work at the University of New Orleans, but Miss Ella and I kept in touch.

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ne day, she invited me to visit her at Commander’s Palace, which she and her siblings had recently purchased. We sat in the courtyard, where we had a Sazerac and talked about food — both Creole and Acadian. She wanted to know about what we cooked in the country, and I was delighted to learn more about New Orleans cuisine.

When we were making our goodbyes, she asked if I would be interested in coming to work with her. I was astounded. I didn’t know anything about the restaurant business other than that I enjoyed eating good food.

“Miss Ella, I don’t know, restaurants are open at night, on weekends and on holidays, and I like having time to date and to enjoy my new home in New Orleans,” I explained.

She promised that she wouldn’t make me work bad hours. I would be working in the catering department, booking tour groups, private parties, weddings and business meetings.

I acquiesced. Within a week, I was at my desk in a tiny office behind the courtyard at Commander’s. The office also accommodated Ella’s office, the purchasing agent’s office, and it was busy with the comings and goings of other staff members, from servers (we called them waiters back then) to captains to maître d’s, and a constant slew of visitors.

While my position was to book, plan and execute events, I soon learned I had to know what the restaurant could accommodate — seating capacities, different menus (brunch, lunch, rehearsal dinners, cocktail parties, business meetings) — to ensure each guest had a great dining experience.

Miss Ella made us all have turns at the front desk to meet and greet guests. Several times, I was told to come in at 5:00 a.m. to work with our purchasing agent when orders

arrived and to check and re-check orders to ensure the quality and quantity. Many times, I stayed late to assist managers in taking inventories of liquor and wine, and checking the number of base plates, silverware, napkins and anything else that needed counting. Miss Ella also made sure that we sent thank-you notes to those who hosted parties or came to enjoy a celebratory meal.

I soon realized that I was working long hours, but was surprised I enjoyed it — despite sore feet and my diminishing social life.

In 1975, Miss Ella and her siblings brought in Chef Paul Prudhomme to be executive chef.

When Ella and her family announced that they were going to hire Paul, I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine a restaurant of Commander’s caliber with a “Cajun” chef. At the time, you would have been hard-pressed to find a restaurant in the Crescent City offering chicken and Andouille gumbo. (Heck, few people other than those living in Acadiana had ever heard of Andouille.) I explained to Miss Ella that the chicken in a Cajun gumbo was cooked “with bones and skin” and the sophisticated diners at Commander’s wouldn’t like to have to handle whole thighs and breasts in their bowl of gumbo.

“No problem, Marcelle. We’ll take the chicken off the bone before it’s served,” said Miss Ella, who always knew how to solve any problem for her dining guests.

It was an exciting time to see the menu overhauled with Chef Paul’s creativity and the Brennans’ ability to combine Cajun and Creole on their menu.

In 1977, Miss Ella suggested that it was time for me to be in a managerial position and sent me to Brennan’s of Houston to be assistant general manager. Needless to say, I was quite flattered, but I knew I would have to continue learning about the business. And indeed I did, but in 1979, I had the opportunity to return to south Louisiana and open

my own restaurant, Chef Marcelle, near Lafayette in Broussard. Miss Ella was a great cheerleader and we kept in touch. I often asked for her advice and encouragement, which she gave generously.

When the oil business went bust in 1984, I closed the restaurant and went directly to see Miss Ella. What do I do now? New Orleans was busy with the World’s Fair and I was able to get some part-time work. But Miss Ella said, “We need to get you something better than that.”

“Have you given any thought to writing a food column? You come from a newspaper family and you tell great stories.”

Before I could answer, she said that Leon Soniat, a popular New Orleans cookbook author and contributor to The TimesPicayune had recently passed away; maybe I should try to take his place, she suggested.

A few phone calls later, she advised me to W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 2 9

to dine, and they each had reservations for “their table.” (Adelaide may not have known table numbers, but she knew where each local had to be seated.)

go see the editor. In the fall of 1984, I began writing my column, Cooking Creole, which I continued for more than 30 years.

I have so many memorable Miss Ella moments, but one that stands out was in 2009 when Judy Walker, the former TimesPicayune food editor, and I were nominated for the James Beard Award for American Cooking for our book, Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The TimesPicayune of New Orleans (Chronicle Books).

Although we didn’t win, we were there when Miss Ella was awarded the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award by the James Beard Foundation. Miss Ella had many awards under her belt, but I think she was overwhelmed with this one.

The award gala was held at the Lincoln Center and when it was over, Miss Ella wanted to go across the street to Bar Boulud for drinks. It was raining and she was in a wheelchair, but my nephew got out into the busy street and halted traffic so we could get safely to our destination.

Despite her busy schedule, she always found time to listen, advise and encourage.

Fortunately for me, she was a mentor to me until the last year of her life. I am thankful for knowing Miss Ella, who was gracious, energetic and enthusiastic. She taught me so much — not only about the restaurant business, but also about how to treat people and to make everyone’s dining experience 3 0 R O U S E S M A R C H | A P R I L 20 22

a special one. God only knows where I would have ended up without her. I miss her. (To read more about her incredible life, I recommend the book Miss Ella of Commander’s Palace.)

And, oh, the stories I could tell. For example, one rainy, cold night, Ella called me at home and said to put on a dinner dress and come to Commander’s as soon as possible. A guest had to bow out at the last minute, and she had an empty seat at the table where she was entertaining a dear friend. Within an hour, I was seated at the dinner table and introduced myself to my fellow diners. Imagine my surprise when I realized I was seated next to Carol Burnett!

But I kept my cool and the evening was a spectacular success in my book.

After dinner, Ella insisted we walk to her house (at the time a few blocks away) for after-dinner drinks. It was raining; Ella ordered one of the captains to swath us all in yellow tablecloths used in the Garden Room.

The Garden District police were called to accompany us on our trek to Ella’s, where a piano player was waiting to entertain us. In short order, Carol Burnett had us dancing in a chorus line in the ballroom of the house.

One Sunday night, I was at the maître d’s desk with Adelaide, Ella’s glamorous and fashionable sister who was always dripping in emeralds and graciously greeting guests.

Sunday night was when the “locals” came

One of the guests, a Louisiana Supreme Court judge, had ordered a baked Alaska for his niece, who was celebrating her birthday. Their server, the only female at the time, had given the sign to dim the lights as she marched toward the table. That’s when the flaming baked concoction slid off the platter and landed on a nearby customer.

There was a moment of complete silence before members of the restaurant staff swung into action and did what Ella would have done. They cleaned up the customer with the dessert on his head, told him his check was taken care of, and he was directed to send us his cleaning bill. Another baked Alaska was ordered and everyone in the dining room was offered a drink on us. That’s when I realized that what I always thought was Adelaide’s glass of ice water was really a vodka on the rocks. I always wondered why she was so charming.

One more tale... One night in 1977, while living in Houston and working as assistant general manager at Brennan’s, I get a call from Miss Ella in New Orleans.

“Marcelle, get the bartender to make you a batch of Bloody Marys, tell the chef to get two quarts of turtle soup, a few orders of one of our desserts, and pack it in a box. Then go to the hotel at the Galleria and deliver it to Room ###.”

Within a half-hour, I was knocking at the door and almost dropped the package when I realized it was none other than Robert Mitchum answering my knock! He and his buddies were playing cards and needed some sustenance.

I relate these stories to emphasize how exciting it was to work with Miss Ella and her family and staff. Never a dull moment.

Miss Ella was incredible in that she wanted everyone who dined in her restaurant to know that they were special and that they should have a fabulous dining experience.

She was my cheerleader even when I left Houston to return to my hometown to open my own restaurant near Lafayette. She was always encouraging, always interested in what I was doing.

Marcelle Bienvenu

By Judy Walker Marcelle Bienvenu is beloved in the world of Louisiana cuisine for many things. Perhaps it’s because she is a superb storyteller, informative and often hilarious. Her 1991 cookbook, full of family stories, has perhaps the best title in cookbook history: Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux?

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hen her 30-plus years of writing recipe columns for The Times-Picayune ended in 2016, she wrote, “It’s not easy coming up with a humdinger of a story on a weekly basis, but I had only to look to my family and friends for interesting subject matter.” She has a lot of both, and our lives are richer for it.

Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, notes that “Marcelle Bienvenu loves to eat, and isn’t afraid to let you know it.

“Her recipes are really stories of how central food and people are to life.”

Born in St. Martinville into a large newspaper family, she has experienced, written about and educated folks worldwide about Cajun and Creole food, often working behind the scenes. She was mentored by Ella Brennan when she worked at Commander’s Palace, and has said she was influenced by Brennan’s leadership style.

In her twenties, she lobbied for and contributed to the Creole and Acadian cookbook for the wildly influential Time-Life Foods of the World series. She co-wrote Emeril Lagasse’s first four cookbooks and gave The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book its last revision for the Sesquicentennial Edition in 1987, translating “gills” into modern measurements. Her many cookbook titles attest to her decades as the most popular cookbook collaborator in the state.

PHOTO COURTESY ACADIAN HOUSE PUBLISHING

I was fortunate to be Marcelle’s editor for several years. We co-wrote Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune after Katrina, published in 2008. When the book was nominated for a James Beard Award, we attended the ceremony and had a wonderful weekend in New York. With Marcelle, I experienced places I wouldn’t have gone on my own: an exclusive restaurant where she knew the chef (of course), St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a high-end jewelry store to see historic displays. We had several cocktails after we didn’t win.

Around that time, Marcelle became a chef instructor at Nicholls State University.

“Marcelle Bienvenu possesses a lifetime of fascinating experiences involving Louisiana culture and cuisine. We were so fortunate to have her share these gems with

faculty and students of the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute for more than ten years,” said John Kozar, director of the Institute in Thibodaux. “There is no one quite like her.”

One of her Nicholls students, New Orleans chef Michael Gulotta, of Maypop and Mopho, has been nominated for the James Beard Best Chef South award for the last four years.

“There’s so much to love about Marcelle,” said journalist John Pope. “For starters, she has the smarts. She knows her subject and her region thoroughly, and relays what she knows so engagingly, leavening the facts with innate charm and beaucoup anecdotes about her friends and family.

“Marcelle doesn’t teach. She performs, and anyone who listens to her can’t help being bewitched.”

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Farm to Fork Vidalias are grown in low-sulfur, sandy soil, so they are naturally low in sulfur compounds, which gives them their signature mild sweetness. In 1990, the Vidalia onion was adopted as the state vegetable by the Georgia legislature. Since the 1980s, it has been defined and required by law that Vidalias can only be grown in a 20-county region in the state. The same variety of onion would not be so sweet grown anywhere else.

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 3 5

Excerpted from Mosquito Supper Club by Melissa Martin (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2020.

Photographs by Denny Culbert.

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Bayou, By Her

By Sarah Baird Photos by Denny Culbert One of the great universal mysteries that still exists — at a time when mystery seems to be falling by the wayside — is how a food memory is created. Out of all the dishes eaten over all the years, what makes a single flicker of a bite linger in the mind? What elevates it to a gauzy, glimmering thought over other delicious encounters? One of the ephemeral moments that’s taken up long-term residency in my brain is the first time I ate a slice of tarte à la bouillie — 2015 or 2016, I want to say, but years are irrelevant in the rearview — at a pop-up bakery in a (now defunct) Central City butcher shop hosted by Mosquito Supper Club’s Melissa Martin.

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y this point, I had already gathered to dine at Martin’s long, ocean-hued table to eat the spoils of her generational culinary legacy, and showed off my two left feet at a zydeco dance in St. Maurice Church where Martin provided sustenance between songs. Born and raised in Terrebonne Parish, Martin’s cooking always feels wholly of herself, and for a while, a roving jamboree of music and merriment celebrating all things South Louisiana seemed to follow her wherever she decided to cook. But when I hoisted a fresh piece of tarte à la bouillie from its milky, sea-glass-colored stand and the velvety richness of the French custard pie melted in my mouth, I felt like I had truly learned something about Martin’s bayou home. It felt like memories distilled.

“From the beginning, I…set some boundaries. I cooked only the food I grew up eating — the style of food that my grandmothers, mom and aunts cooked. It was a style of food I never came across in New Orleans — full of flavor and stripped down,” Martin writes in her 2021 cookbook, Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou. “I wanted to elevate the cuisine of the women in my life. They were my muses, and I intended to carry on their recipes and share them with whoever wanted to have a seat at the table.”

otherworldly nature of her Cajun home.

Crabs are “the summer sun held together by shell and seawater” and “poetry”; okra is delicious, you just “need to know how to handle the slime” and Cajuns themselves are “standing guard at our stoves, resilient to the changing landscape…the bridge from the past to the present, holding the land and sea together.”

As the above meditation suggests, Martin is not only preternaturally gifted at channeling the dazzling magic of her bayou home onto a plate — from her earliest pop-up iterations to Mosquito Supper Club’s current beloved, permanent restaurant home — but she’s also a skilled author. Her recipe-packed love letter to South Louisiana cooking recently won the nationally coveted International Association of Culinary Professional’s Cookbook of the Year, but the soul of the work remains so deeply rooted in the mud of the bayou that it makes anywhere above I-10 feel like the “North.”

Lyrical — almost musical — in its composition, Martin speaks about ingredients affectionately enough for them to be kinfolk and doesn’t shy away from alluding to the

Martin also sees so cloudlessly how paperthin the walls are between South Louisiana’s hardscrabble past and uncertain future; oysters as bellwethers for marine health and oysters as victim of climate change; and the beauty of the region’s brackish waters and their potential for destruction. The seams holding it all together are tenuous at best.

Decades of environmental degradation and human destruction are causing not only the land itself to vanish — swallowing up coastline at an almost unfathomably breakneck pace — but threaten the very fiber of South Louisiana’s identity.

“Our marshes are breeding grounds for shrimp, oysters, crabs, fish and more seafood — these creatures not only make up a large part of our diet in South Louisiana but also comprise our traditional industries.

The environmental and physical scope of the region has changed. Only when fishermen started noticing lakes widen and bayous and marshes disappearing did we realize W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 3 7

Martin speaks about ingredients affectionately enough for them to be kinfolk and doesn’t shy away from alluding to the otherworldly nature of her Cajun home. Crabs are “the summer sun held together by shell and seawater” and “poetry”; okra is delicious, you just “need to know how to handle the slime” that Louisiana was sinking,” Martin writes, noting that South Louisiana loses a football field’s worth of land every hundred minutes.

“It is time to recognize the problem and the risk: When this land disappears, it will talk with it a portion of our nation’s safety and food supply, and a long legacy of culture and traditions.”

This, I believe, best encapsulates what Mosquito Supper Club embodies, and what sets it apart from practically all other dining experiences in New Orleans. Martin’s food — whether popping up or full-service tasting menu — is a vessel for storytelling about her Cajun community and the generosity that pours forth with every bite. The meals are delicious, of course, but what makes it wisp around in the back of my brain is the urgency attached to each dish as the coastline disappears. For the next generation of South 3 8 R O U S E S M A R C H | A P R I L 20 22

Louisianans, preserving and celebrating these recipes could mean all the difference between young people staying and fighting for their home, or resigning themselves to let the tide carry it away.

When Hurricane Ida ripped through the bayou in last August, Martin became a de facto community organizer for South Louisiana, raising upward of $768,000 to support direct aid to those who needed it most. Speaking to Melissa early in 2022, I decided to tell her story eloquently, in her own words, about what the past months and years have meant for cooking, eating and standing on that bridge between past and future: a woman returning home again and again to mend, repair and build in the face of an uncertain future.

Melissa Martin: I was down in Chauvin [in Terrebonne Parish] soon after the storm to bring my parents back home and assess the damage, and between Chauvin and New Orleans, neither place had electricity.

Chauvin also didn’t have running water, but my parents would not leave their house. There wasn’t much I could do about that because I think they had to stay in their collective grief, but I realized pretty quickly that what I could do to help the community was not going to happen on the ground. I had to leave, which was a really, really painful decision.

As I drove toward Asheville, North Carolina to stay in a cabin with family — there were so many of us, my two sisters, their partners, my daughter, her partner, my brother, his partner, my other brother, his partner just cooking Cajun food in this huge house — I created the GoFundMe and made it live. And I was like, “Okay, this is my job for the next month.” Then I spent basically every moment of my life networking and fundraising, and frankly, losing my mind completely.

We injected $768,000 into the community by doing mini-grant programs: handing people anywhere between $400 to a thousand dollars; grocery cards — we served over 200 families with grocery cards — and a lot of hiring of electricians and plumbers to help people hook up a camper or a trailer on the land where their house was once. Then we put about $80,000 into a “float boat” sort of program, which was trying to help fishermen recover their seaworthy vessels that had been capsized in the bayous and lakes. We also bought new rigging and things like that for boats and crab traps.

The greatest thing was, for lack of a better term, the person power: people who got in touch with me and said, “What needs to happen?” The people on the ground, like my friends I grew up with, they just ran themselves ragged doing work. Their roofs were gone, their houses were messed up. I mean, it was just insane how much everyone did because nobody could stop. Because you know the feeling when you stop it’s over

for you? It was a good three or four weeks until any of us stopped, and then everyone was just destroyed.

The bayou is still just a disaster, but it’s better than it was at first. There are still trailers floating in the bayou, but there aren’t multiple homes floating and multiple boats capsized. But the levee for miles is still just covered with boats, houses, debris, cars — everything that had been picked up by water and blown over.

When I went to the IACP awards [in October 2021], I was in no place to go anywhere. I mean, I had been through the storm, I had reopened my restaurant in probably the worst mental state I’ve ever been in, and then I went to the awards. And we won, which was exciting. But what was the most jarring thing is people came up to congratulate me after and they said, “Don’t worry, New Orleans always recovers.” That was the worst thing to tell me. It was like: The book is not about New Orleans! But that’s always the sentiment. People forget that there’s a whole 'nother world an hour away.

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When people come to New Orleans, I don’t know if they think we’re getting seafood actually from New Orleans, but all of our seafood, our vegetables, everything, is outside the city. I’ve been in touch with all of my purveyors to ask, “How can we help?” But I’ve lost so many purveyors because people just can’t reopen. It’s one thing when water comes into your business and then leaves, but it’s different when two feet of mud gets stuck in your house like in Lafitte. It’s just insane.

My favorite vendors were the Higgins in Lafitte. I’ve been buying crab from them for over 20 years. They brought together a co-op of crabbers, which I think was the best crab meat I’d ever seen in the world. And I could get oysters from them. They started shucking oysters in November, and they also shucked the oysters how I liked them with their own liquor, so I could also buy gallons and gallons of oyster liquor water from them.

They would save them for me so I could make all these different recipes from my grandmother. That’s the one that hit the hardest, losing them as a vendor, because they just were so integral to my business.

The hardest recipe in the book is jambalaya, and I got a lot of hate mail on that, but then I got a lot of people who figured it out. It took me years to be able to make the jambalaya, and it’s still a scary recipe. It just is what it is.

You can only give people so much information. You’re trying to teach them intuition, and like anything, you have to practice. It takes time.

But Mosquito Supper Club has been in a constant state of change since we went into lockdown. We have pivoted so many times, my friend said the other day, “I never want to hear the word pivot again.” But the restaurant has done well. We received so much press from the book, and people were itching to get out after lockdown, even though we could only serve 12 people at a time inside. We expanded outdoor dining, and that was just an organic progression.

We went from being communal dining, to not being communal dining, and then recently we went back to communal dining, so back to the form that we started with at my very first dinner in 2014.

Running the business during COVID for any restaurant was just a new set of skills and mental exhaustion that you’ve

never experienced before. No one has a touchstone for it, but I think it has definitely changed my relationship with the restaurant forever. And I think that it really opened up the fact that I created this form and I love it, but I want other people to practice their craft in it. I think that’s the biggest thing recently, as I start to write my new book, is that I have these people that I trust that run the restaurant for me, and if I can be there in the restaurant and talk to guests, then that’s lovely. If I can’t, because I’m at home practicing radical self-care and writing, then that’s okay, too.

I’m a big meditator, so I meditate and do yoga every day, no matter what. Then I start writing, so I’m usually writing by 8:00 in the morning. By 2:00 p.m. my brain is melted, and I have nothing left to say. So I’ll go to the W W W. R O U S E S . C O M

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restaurant and sit down with my recipe tester to figure out which tweaks we’re making.

From the first book, a “favorite recipe” I heard a lot in the beginning was smothered chicken. And then I think it was shrimp spaghetti. And then I think people were really happy with the gumbo recipe and tried different variations. The hardest recipe in the book is jambalaya, and I got a lot of hate mail on that, but then I got a lot of people who figured it out. It took me years to be able to make the jambalaya, and it’s still a scary recipe. It just is what it is. You can only give people so much information. You’re trying to teach them intuition, and like anything, you have to practice. It takes time.

I think my last book was a lot of industry, and really introducing the reader to what it’s like to live [in South Louisiana], what the business of seafood is like, and just a lot of history regarding the bayou that I’m from.

I think this next one is a lot more, I guess, ephemeral, and more about emotions and the day-to-day celebrations: as Virginia Woolf would say, the tiny sparks, the tiny matches that you light. The things that when you feel them, you’re like, “Oh, this is what it’s like to be from here.” This is the innate thing that people can’t quite understand, but it’s what sets this culture and tradition apart.

I think some people, but very few, realize how local everything is at the restaurant.

There are a lot of people who don’t know what they’re getting into, because they expect a deconstructed fine dining meal, and they haven’t read that we’re putting grandma’s food on the table. But then there are definitely some that have done their homework and are there for all the right reasons. I think it’s because of our price point, they’re like, “Oh, well it has to be smoke and mirrors.” But you’re paying that much so I can get the best possible ingredients, and so I pay people really well so I can keep them, and so we can run a sustainable business.

Also recently, someone sent me a hate message on Instagram. I tried to explain to them why the price was what it was. And he was unhappy with his meal. He said to me, “I didn’t go to your restaurant for charity.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know what to tell you.” And he’s a chef too! It’s in the middle of this pandemic, and the work is so hard.

It really took me aback that someone from my industry would say this, but, whatever, so

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it is. He was very unhappy with my grandmother’s food!

If my grandmother was around — she didn’t speak a lot of English, she spoke French — I think that she wouldn’t actually get all of this. I think my parents are just starting to get it. When I handed my mom the book for the first time, she was like, “Wow, a real book!” Even though she helped me write it and I spent three months in my childhood home in Chauvin researching it. I think my grandmother would’ve not understood it, but she did spend time in New Orleans when my grandfather sold oysters here — he was

an oyster fisherman — and she learned a lot about cooking in New Orleans from the different people they met. So I’m sure she would be happy.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Excerpted from Mosquito Supper Club by Melissa Martin (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2020. Photographs by Denny Culbert.

ALZINA TOUPS’ PILLOWCASE COOKIES Makes 2 dozen cookies This recipe is adapted by Melissa Martin for the Mosquito Supper Club cookbook. Melissa notes, “According to Alzina, the story of these cookies began with oyster fishermen. They worked during the cold winter and could be on the water for weeks at a time. They brought cookies onto the boats in a pillowcase, to remind them of the warmth of the homes they would soon return to.

These cookies are slightly sweet and puffy, like a cross between hard tack and a sugar cookie.”

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup raw unrefined sugar 1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/2 cup unsalted butter 2 large eggs 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract HOW TO PREP: In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pulse, pulse, pulse. Add the butter and pulse for 30 seconds. Add the eggs and vanilla and pulse until the dough comes together.

Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Position an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.

ALZINA TOUPS ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT I first heard of Alzina’s cooking in 2011, when I read an interview by a fellow member of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), home-based at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. Everyone was raving about her homestyle cooking; it was nearly impossible to get a reservation. I noted her again in 2013, when SFA awarded Alzina with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of PHOTO BY ROMERO & ROMERO the Flame for her humble devotion to preserving our Southeast Louisiana foodways. This piece is about my first visit to Alzina’s Kitchen.

It was a chilly fall evening six years ago when friends and I headed out from Thibodaux to Galliano, a small community in Southeast Louisiana—at the “end of the world.”

The organizer of the trek had made the mandatory reservations, which were hard to come by and sometimes had to be booked several weeks, and even months, in advance. We were looking forward to meeting the legendary cook from “down the bayou” and enjoying her homecooked meals at the end of our journey.

When we arrived at Miss Alzina’s Kitchen, thanks to GPS, it was surprising to see that her restaurant was housed in what was once a welding shop. She welcomed us and showed us into a room that was both kitchen and dining area — where diners ate at communal tables. A collection of pots and pans were stashed neatly on shelves or hanging from hooks. Mixing bowls, dinnerware and an array of spices were in easy reach near the two stoves, from which the aromas of her famous

Transfer the dough to a clean, lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to a 1/4-inch thickness and cut it into whatever shape you desire (I like to use an alligator-shaped cookie cutter). Dip the cookie cutter into flour first, then press it into the dough. Use an offset spatula to transfer the cookies from your work surface to the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until the edges are golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pan for 2 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and let them cool completely. These cookies taste great for up to a week; store them in an airtight container at room temperature.

Amaretto yams, crabmeat lasagna and a variety of homemade breads wafted through the room.

Pictures of the Blessed Mother, saints and other Catholic memorabilia were prominently placed around the dining area. Her cookbook was displayed and, of course, everyone in our group bought a copy.

We were invited to join Alzina at her stove, and even to stir a pot or two. Alzina, with her tufts of silver hair, ever so humble and genuine, answered our questions about her style of cooking, which reminded me of my great aunt Grace and my mother, who were always showing me how to cook “the old way.” No shortcuts here. The crabmeat in Alzina’s crab lasagna is hand-picked by her, and the lasagna is handmade. She and her sidekick granddaughter, Jenny Toups Stevens, are constantly tasting as they cook to be sure the seasoning is just right.

Her gumbo, made with a light roux, is always just right. The roasted pork loin is perfectly browned and tender. The smothered shrimp is spicy — but not too spicy. Those who turn their noses up at smothered cabbage will change their minds once they have tasted hers. The walnut torte is like no other. But for me, above all else, the “floating” angel food cake with coconut sauce is the pièce de résistance — and I usually don’t care for coconut.

While dining, I totally understood why she has received so many accolades. And I’m so pleased that she feels so strongly about preserving our cultures and foodways of South Louisiana.

Miss Alzina has officially retired, a decision that was made before Hurricane Ida damaged her kitchen. Being that she is in her mid90s, I think she deserves to step away from the stove and let her granddaughters, Jenny Toups Stevens and Tish Toups, continue her legacy. There are plans to resume the dinners when repairs are completed to the structure in April.

- Marcelle Bienvenu

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flip t her page foke t his ca ! recipe PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

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Praline Queens

By Susan Langenhennig Granger Here’s a funny thing about pralines: New Orleans’ favorite candy doesn’t really like New Orleans’ typical weather. A swampy day can spell problems for praline makers.

When there’s high humidity, a praline’s texture can turn out more granulated. It won’t set well, ending up with a grainy, fudge-like candy rather than the traditional creamy, smooth classic New Orleans praline.

K

eyala Marshall, one of the modern praline makers stirring up this traditional business, checks the forecast each week, hoping for clear skies on Tuesdays, when she spends six to 12 hours in a co-op kitchen, churning out batch after perfect batch of Keyala’s Pralines, the pinkboxed treats sold in Rouses stores. Her pralines hit that perfect sweet spot: soft, but not too soft; smooth and creamy, with a hefty shower of pecans captured in the caramelized sugar.

Throughout New Orleans’ history, praline makers probably doubled as amateur meteorologists, feeling it in their bones when the weather wasn’t right. They knew what worked and what didn’t. But here’s the science behind it: “Cooking candy syrup to the desired temperature means achieving a certain ratio of sugar to moisture in the candy. On a humid day, once the candy has cooled to the point where it is no longer evaporating moisture into the air, it can actually start reabsorbing moisture from the air,” according to The Science of Cooking. “This can make the resulting candy softer than it is supposed to be.”

VENDEUSE DE PRALINES

Praline entrepreneurs — the vast majority of them women — have a long, inspiring history in New Orleans. But like most things in this complex city, there’s a bitter edge to this sweet treat, as its history traces back to the time of slavery and post-slavery economic survival.

But let’s back up first to the very beginning. Pralines reportedly hail from 17th-century France, where a sugarcoated almond treat was created by a chef

working for César, duc de Choiseul, comte du Plessis-Praslin, who supposedly ate the candy to help with digestive issues. These pralines became widely popular in Europe and crossed the pond when French settlers brought them to Louisiana.

Once here, though, the settlers realized a problem: almonds were hard to come by.

But pecans, well, they were plentiful.

It was African-American women who are credited with the “creolization of the praline” by swapping out the almonds for pecans and adding sugar and milk, wrote Chanda M. Nunez in her meticulously researched thesis on the history of praline entrepreneurs. “The culinary genius of African American women created the New Orleans praline, as we know it.”

Craig Claiborne, the acclaimed restaurant critic and food journalist who passed away in 2000, differentiated between old-world pralines and new-world ones in two recipes that can be still found on The New York Times’ Cooking website. The recipe for “Creole Pralines” calls for four cups of pecan halves, two cups of granulated sugar and one cup of dark brown sugar, as well as butter, milk and corn syrup, while his “Classic Pralines” recipe is made with whole blanched almonds and one cup of sugar (it doesn’t specify white or brown), as well as corn oil and water.

“Of all the differences between the classic French and the New Orleans French, none amuses me more than the preparation of pralines,” Claiborne wrote in 1987, describing Creole pralines as “homespun.”

While the homespun nature of the Creole praline is highly debatable, it’s a fact that for centuries praline sales have helped New Orleans women climb the economic ladder, some using it to even buy their freedom from slavery. As Nunez writes in her thesis: “The tradition of African Americans selling goods in the New Orleans community dates from the colonial period.

Enslaved Africans initially took part in the market economy to provide financial relief to their masters and to earn additional income to provide their own food, clothing, and shelter. While New Orleans was under French rule, the Code Noir was established in an effort to control the slave population.

Article V of the code excused slaves from work on Sunday; as a result, slaves used this day to their economic advantage by selling goods in the market.”

Long after slavery ended, pralinemaking continued to be a valuable skill, providing a path to entrepreneurship.

Ingredients were relatively inexpensive — pecan trees grew throughout New Orleans — and selling treats on the street allowed praline makers, pralinières, to raise quick money for their families. “After Emancipation, the selling of sweets became a time-honored way of earning a small but honorable living,” wrote Jessica B. Harris in The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking.

Well into the 21st century, that tradition continues. For some local entrepreneurs, pralines are a full-time business. For many others, they’re a sweet side hustle.

Several years ago, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, known as SoFab, held an exhibit exploring the business of praline-making. “We had W W W. R O U S E S . C O M 4 5

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Keyala Marshall, owner, Keyala’s

Pralines. Photo by Channing Candies.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Billboard design by Shannon

Ford, Art Director, Outfront Media

advertising materials from a number of the praline houses that have been continually owned by descendants of their founders.

They have been owned for generations by the same families,” said Liz Williams, founder of SoFab. “Some may have started as street vendors, and the next generations were able to open a shop.”

But the sisters kept at it. And soon they perfected the recipe and were ready to take them out for a test drive. In 2016, they made 50 pralines and sold all of them during the Nine Times Social Aid & Pleasure Club Second Line parade. “We were so excited,” Marshall said. “I was like, ‘I want a praline empire!’”

“The vendeuses from the 19th century may have sold other candy, too,” Williams said. “There were peanut candies and coconut candies. But pralines continued, and I think that’s because of the pecan. The peanut is ubiquitous, and peanut candy was not that unique. And pecans could be harvested for free, which is why pralines could be affordable to make.”

While refining the recipe in her free time, Marshall was working at the Rouses Market on Baronne Street in downtown New Orleans. She started in 2011 in the salad bar, but quickly moved up to other positions within the store. She also went back to school, first to study culinary arts at Delgado Community College, then transferring to earn a degree in business management.

TRADITIONAL TREAT, A MODERN BUSINESS

Keyala Marshall was a praline lover long before she was a praline maker. She would buy them everywhere she saw them — from her neighborhood praline lady; from the various candy shops around town; from the supermarket. She developed a sophisticated palate. She knew the texture and flavors she liked best.

“My sister Latasha said, ‘Let’s learn to make them,’” Marshall recalled. So, they found a recipe, and that first batch, well...

“They came out awful,” she said, laughing, “like little rock balls.”

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On her days off, she would make pralines on her mom’s kitchen island and then bring them into Rouses to give to her coworkers. Hardly surprising, they were a hit. One day, her boss asked her to bring some for a business meeting that Rouses CEO Donny Rouse would attend.

With Rouses’ encouragement, Keyala’s Pralines officially took off. The business was especially sweet as Marshall teamed up with her younger sister Latasha, who had cystic fibrosis. “We would walk the second lines selling pralines,” Marshall wrote in a post on the Keyala’s Pralines’ Facebook page. “Eventually, when her health got worse, we set up a candy shop

in my momma’s house for the neighborhood, so she didn’t have to walk too far.

And people would knock on the door all day and night.”

Latasha Marshall, who was just 11 months younger than Keyala, passed away on May 16, 2018, at 27 years old.

Her death devastated Marshall and her tight-knit family. “The business was on hold because I didn’t know how to continue without her,” she wrote. “Eventually, I found the strength, and she lives through me.”

More determined than ever to succeed, Marshall worked hard, selling pralines at local festivals and markets and direct through her website. Soon, she took the big leap to leave her full-time job at Rouses and dedicate everything to growing her business. Expanding her menu, she added candied roasted pecans, praline sweet potato pies, praline brownies and pecan bread pudding with praline sauce.

With the help of her dad, mom and siblings, she now sells her candy at the Rouses where she once worked. Keyala’s Pralines also can be bought through her website, kpralines.com, and at festivals and pop-up shops around the area. “My dad has been at every event with me,” she said, dubbing him “Papa Prahleen” on social media.

And just three days into 2022, Marshall’s name made it big — literally — when a new

billboard for Keyala’s Pralines went up in downtown New Orleans. “This is just the beginning,” she said. “I want to have a praline factory, a praline shop, a praline food truck. I want to see my pralines at all the Rouses Markets in New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama.”

LORETTA S. HARRISON ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Loretta S. Harrison, one of the most beloved praline vendors in Louisiana, died of cancer Feb. 16 in New Orleans. She was 66. Dubbed the “Praline Queen,” Harrison was the chef and owner of Loretta’s Authentic Pralines, a business she founded to make extra money while also working fulltime at the LSU Medical Library, according to an article in The Times-Picayune. She was the first Black woman to own and operate her own praline company in the city.

Eventually, she became a vendor at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where a much larger crowd got to experience their first bite of her sweet treats. Harrison’s pralines — in flavors ranging from traditional to chocolate, coconut, peanut butter and rum — became so popular, she left her job at LSU to focus full-time on her candy business. Soon, Loretta’s Authentic Pralines had shops in the French Market and on North Rampart Street, carrying on a centuries-old tradition of praline entrepreneurs in New Orleans. Her family plans to continue operating the business.

- Susan Langenhennig Granger

PRALINE CAKE Serves 12

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup unsalted butter, softened, room temperature ½ cup vegetable oil 1-½ cup granulated sugar 4 large eggs, room temperature 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 3 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt 1-¼ cup buttermilk, room temperature Buttercream icing, recipe below Praline topping, recipe below Pecan halves, for decorating Whole pralines, for decorating HOW TO PREP: Preheat oven to 350°F and prepare two deep 8-inch round cake pans by lining the bottoms with parchment paper and lightly greasing the sides. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the butter, canola oil and sugar until creamy and well-combined.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating until thoroughly combined after each addition.

Stir in vanilla extract.

In a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

Using a spatula and gently hand-mixing, alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture and mixing until just combined after each addition.

Evenly divide batter into your prepared cake pans. Bake until the surface springs back to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out mostly clean with few moist crumbs (no wet batter), about 30 to 35 minutes.

Allow cakes to cool in their cake pans for 10 to 15 minutes before inverting onto cooling rack to cool completely before frosting and assembly.

Frost cake using buttercream icing.

Pour praline topping over fully frosted cake and decorate with pralines and pecans as desired.

BUTTERCREAM ICING Makes enough to frost a 2-layer cake

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup unsalted butter, softened ½ cup shortening 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted ¼ cup milk HOW TO PREP: Cream room temperature butter with a hand mixer, the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or a wooden spoon until

smooth and fluffy. Gradually beat in powdered sugar until fully incorporated.

Beat in vanilla extract.

Pour in milk and beat for an additional 3 to 4 minutes until smooth.

PRALINE TOPPING Makes about 1-1/2 cups

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar ½ cup butter ¼ cup milk 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract HOW TO PREP: Bring light brown sugar, brown sugar, and butter and milk to a boil in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat, whisking constantly; boil 1 minute. Remove from heat; whisk in powdered sugar and vanilla until smooth. Stir gently 3 to 5 minutes or until mixture begins to cool and thickens slightly. Use immediately.

SUE ROUSE'S CREOLE PRALINES Makes 36

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 3 cups sugar 1-1/2 cups whole milk 1/4 cup white corn syrup 3 cups pecans, roughly chopped 2 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon vanilla HOW TO PREP: Lay down a piece of parchment paper before cooking.

In a medium-to-large saucepan, combine sugar, milk, corn syrup and pecans.

Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until syrup comes to a boil. Let boil, stirring constantly, until mixtures reaches a softball stage, 235°F on a candy thermometer. Remove from heat, whisk in butter, and set aside until pot is cool enough to handle. Add vanilla and whip until smooth. Drop spoonfuls onto parchment paper. Cool until firm before serving. Keep pralines up to 2 weeks in airtight container.

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SHRIMP CLEMENCEAU Serves 4

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: Vegetable oil, for frying 2 Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into small dice 1 cup frozen small green peas, or 15-ounce can petit pois peas, drained 5 tablespoons butter 1 pound large wild-caught Gulf shrimp, peeled and deveined 2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced ½ pound cremini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

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HOW TO PREP: In a deep, heavy-bottomed pot or an electric deep-fryer, heat 1 inch of vegetable oil to 360 degrees. Add potatoes (in batches if necessary) and fry, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the potatoes to a platter lined with paper towels.

Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add peas and cook for one minute. Drain, rinse under cold water, and set aside.

and half the garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until shrimp are opaque, about 3 minutes. Transfer shrimp to a plate.

Melt remaining 1 tablespoon butter in skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and cook, turning once or twice, until golden, about 2 minutes.

Increase heat to medium-high. Add potatoes, peas, and shrimp to skillet. Mix well, then add parsley and remaining garlic and season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, for 1-2 minutes. Serve hot.

Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add shrimp

PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

Leah Chase

By Poppy Tooker Shrimp Clemenceau was a secret weapon in Leah Chase’s arsenal. The simple sauté, featuring mushrooms, crispy Brabant potatoes, garlic and canned green peas has always been a mainstay at Dooky Chase Restaurant, the place she called home for more than fifty years.

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eah loved to prepare the deceptively simple dish for cooking demonstrations. As Leah stirred the pot, she would quip to the crowd, “This is the perfect dish because you can watch your soaps and just before your husband comes home, you throw it together.

He’ll think you’ve been cooking all day!”

Galatoire’s Restaurant is credited with creating the original Clemenceau in honor of Georges Benjamin Clemenceau, a World War I-era statesman who became France’s Premier in 1906. The original was a chicken dish featuring broiled, bone-in pieces topped with a garlicky, vegetable laden sauce.

From her earliest days at Dooky Chase, Leah always strived to elevate the experience. Looking back on those times, she would often laugh about serving Lobster Thermidor because it sounded so fancy. The lobster didn’t last, but Leah’s magical touch with Louisiana seafood was legendary.

In Leah’s kitchen, fresh shrimp were substituted for chicken, lifting her Clemenceau to new heights. Glistening with butter and accented with bright green, freshly chopped parsley, Dooky Chase’s Shrimp Clemenceau looks as beautiful as it tastes.

Her most important finishing touch was paprika. “Creole people love red!” she’d claim. “I sprinkle a little paprika in almost everything. It brightens the dish up.”

One of my happiest memories with Leah is of the bright, sunny Saturday morning we cooked Clemenceau together to celebrate the post-Katrina reopening of the downtown Crescent City Farmers Market.

We collaborated on a combo version, sautéing strips of boneless chicken with the garlic and mushrooms before piling on the shrimp and Brabant potatoes for the grand finale. When I find myself missing my dear old friend, I stir up a pot of Clemenceau — and in my mind’s eye, we’re laughing together again.

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Humbolt & Kind

By Liz Thorpe Our country is learning about cheese, and about the mind-boggling range of styles being made by cheesemakers across all fifty states. It’s still new to us. But if American cheese has a Steve Jobs equivalent — a mad scientist tinkering in the garage, fueled by a vision and passion way before its time, and, ultimately, producing a product that changes the way Americans experience their lives — then Mary Keehn is probably that person. Only, as she would undoubtedly point out, with way more elbow grease and way less money.

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ary Keehn and Humboldt Fog, the signature cheese she created, are the quintessential success story of what entrepreneurialism can be. Her story begins in the early ’80s, as a single mother of four children who had trouble digesting cow’s milk. Living in small-town northern California, she had an opportunity familiar to many rural Americans: enough land to support some goats that she could milk to feed her kids. As she reminded me recently, “Goats are the poverty animal.

Maybe people know goat milk because they ate their grandma’s cheese, because they had to. And when they get a chance, maybe people want to trade up. We are a cow culture.” The appeal of goats and food made from their milk is novel in 2021. In 1983, it was commercially negligible but of great personal value to Mary.

A year or two after she got her first goats, Mary traveled to France and fell in love with their soft cheeses. Although she spoke no French, she learned to make Brie-style (bloomy rind) cheese from the farm family

she stayed with. On the plane ride home, she fell asleep and dreamt of a cheese that didn’t yet exist. A mash-up of many characteristics that had beguiled her in France, this cheese had the white, soft, edible rind of the cheeses she had learned to make, but it was taller, drier and sturdier so it could be more easily transported. Across the snowy, flaky interior, the cheese was cut through with a wavering line of black ash, similar to famed French cheese Morbier. Mary dreamt every detail of this imaginary cheese, gray and foggy as the coast near her home. In homage to her damp, Pacific terrain, she decided to call the cheese Humboldt Fog after Humboldt County, California.

When I ask Mary, as I have in conversations over the past 15 years, why she thinks Humboldt Fog became the Apple computer of the American artisan cheese world, she says she doesn’t know. But she has some inklings. “I am not at all risk averse. I think about what I want to do, and I go for it. A lot of people who take risks aren’t successful.

There’s a lot of luck involved. I was willing to take the risk; people were beginning to travel, people were getting interested in food, and it all just kind of came together.”

That coming together, however, took thirty very gradual years.

The first hurdle was getting her cheese down to the metropolitan market of San Francisco, with its chefs and population density. This is where Mary got her first distributor. But, as she was quick to acknowledge, the challenges of being first to market were balanced by some benefits.

There weren’t as many rules in the ’80s and ’90s as there are today. There were far fewer competitors. Mary could do things like send her cheese from her farm down to San Francisco on the Greyhound Bus — a move that would get you shut down today, or at least brutally skewered on social media.

There was more possibility for making it up as you go, and Mary’s farm Cypress Grove steadily rode that wave.

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, it became clear that if Cypress Grove was to continue growing from a regional to a coastal and even national business, Mary would need to sell her herd of goats, which

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she finalized doing in 2003. I see this as a major turning point for Cypress Grove; the move allowed Mary to focus solely on the making and selling of cheese. The cheese got better. Mary developed a network of farms whose milk Cypress Grove would buy, and she helped other family farms struggling to subsist on the sale of cows’ milk convert their dairies to goat dairies that her operation could support.

Meanwhile, the world around her was starting to pay more, and different, attention to the complexities of smaller-scale American food production. Mary sagely drew a parallel between the impact of the media in the early aughts and the impact of the media today: “When the media reports on something, it becomes real. The media has a lot more power than people realize.

And it’s a wonderful thing when it works out.” Florence Fabricant at The New York Times wrote about Humboldt Fog and said it was a great cheese. And thus it was. An article collecting the top 100 designs in the world ran the gamut from great architecture to Hermes scarves to…cheese? And so Humboldt Fog was a world-leading design innovation. Just as people started to hear about this thing they had to have, Mary had positioned Cypress Grove to make that thing available from Texas to New Jersey.

The legacy benefits of this growth can’t be overstated. As Cypress Grove became a “big” artisan cheesemaker, it also became a company that could preserve open space in the community and offer employees a profitsharing plan. As Mary looked to the future of the business, she was adamant about her stewardship of the people, and the cheese, that made Cypress Grove great. “As an entrepreneur,” she told me, “you care about the business. You birth it, you take care of it, you’re there in the middle of the night when 5 2 R O U S E S M A R C H | A P R I L 20 22

PHOTOS COURTESY CYPRESS GROVE

there’s a problem. You do everything you can. Having your business succeed is like having your child succeed. On top of that, there all the families that rely on you — I had people who had been with me for 20 years.

I want the business to go on as much like it is.” After receiving multiple offers, Mary opted to sell the business in 2010 to Swiss dairy conglomerate Emmi, which owns and operates multiple American subsidiaries.

She saw this as a partnership of shared values, with financial backing that would allow Cypress Grove, for the first time in its existence, to plan and build for future growth, not just immediate need.

As a cheese expert, I regularly encounter resistance to goat cheese. Maybe it’s because consumers are less familiar with it, or because they are familiar with it and associate it with a legacy of compromise.

Perhaps it’s because, as Mary says, we live in a cow culture. I attribute a lot of this resistance to the tangier, more citrusy, more intense flavor of fresh goat cheese as opposed to more familiar white cheeses like cream cheese, or cottage cheese, or

mozzarella. Goat cheese is different from what most of us are used to.

I’d argue that’s what makes Mary’s 1984 plane dream so particularly visionary.

She imagined a cheese that was part Brie, part goat, part cheesecake. She took an unfamiliar food and enrobed it in the trappings of, if not familiarity, then delightful decadence. Humboldt Fog is essentially a white-frosted layer cake. It’s a childhood fantasy that, when sliced, demands your consideration with its insistent striping of (totally edible) black vegetable ash. A bite of this cheese is like tropical frosting: light and smeary, but bright. Sunny, with a lemony, citrus tang. That Brie-ish rind softens the acid and introduces some yeasty notes, all of which pair brilliantly with California Chenin or Sauvignon Blanc.

I’d say everyone should try Humboldt Fog at least once because you’re eating a piece of history. That’s the first reason. The second time, you’ll eat it just because it’s so damn good.

The Very Clever JoAnn Clevenger

By Poppy Tooker JoAnn Clevenger smiles when relating her favorite quote from famed 18th-century epicure Brillat-Savarin, who claimed, “The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star.”

Clevenger, who invented the now-classic Creole dish, Fried Green Tomatoes with Shrimp Rémoulade, estimates her invention made millions happy over the decades it was served at the now-shuttered Upperline Restaurant.

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oday, fried green tomatoes are thought of as a Southern dish, but food historians agree that it likely arrived in the United States with European Jewish immigrants. The earliest print versions are found in 19th century Northeastern and Midwestern cookbooks, utilizing the last of the season’s green tomatoes gathered before the winter’s first frost. The recipe begins to appear in newspapers between 1900 and 1919, but none of them are of Southern origin.

Fried green tomatoes were a regular side dish at home during Clevenger’s childhood in central Louisiana. “Mother always grew tomato plants that often bloomed extensively. When that happened, we’d wait till the tomatoes were just big enough and cull the green ones in order to give the others a better chance,” Clevenger said.

The fried green tomatoes of her childhood were always served with pepper vinegar for sprinkling on top.

During Chef Tom Cowman’s time at the Upperline, he occasionally made a green tomato pie, flavored with warm brown spices for dessert, but when Fanny Flagg’s book, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café was about to be made into a movie, Clevenger knew they belonged on her restaurant menu. After three days of brainstorming, on the fourth morning she woke inspired with an answer — Shrimp Rémoulade! “We always had shrimp rémoulade prepared in the restaurant’s kitchen, so it was easy from that point of view,” she said.

When Clevenger moved to New Orleans in her late teens, she had never seen shrimp served any other way than fried. The cold shrimp rémoulade she discovered at A&G Cafeteria captivated her, right down to the plates it was served on. Upperline’s first chef, Clevenger’s son Jason, made his rémoulade two ways, presenting chilled shrimp with both a red and a white version served on little oval platters reminiscent of the A&G originals. “I chose the red rémoulade for its acidity and we served the new dish on those same little ovals,” Clevenger remembered.

When Chef Ken Smith took the reins at the Upperline, JoAnn challenged him to new heights with the lowly fried green tomato.

At her direction, he substituted them for eggplant in Parmesan and used fried green tomatoes instead of English muffins for a new twist on Eggs Benedict. Long before vendors at the annual Oak Street

PHOTO BY CHERYL GERBER

“Mother always grew tomato plants that often bloomed extensively.

When that happened, we’d wait till the tomatoes were just big enough and cull the green ones in order to give the others a better chance,” Clevenger said.

Poor Boy Festival debuted their versions of JoAnn’s creation, she and Ken experimented with putting the combination on a poor boy loaf. That dish never made it onto the Upperline menu, but Clevenger remembers all the fun they had cutting that poor boy into little slices for diners to try.

In November of 2021, when Clevenger announced the Upperline would not reopen after two years of pandemic closure, legions of fans joined together in mourning the restaurant’s loss. The Upperline might be no more, yet in the thirty years since its creation, Fried Green Tomatoes with Shrimp Rémoulade have joined ranks of the greats — like Oysters Rockefeller and Bananas Foster — in the canon of great Creole cuisine. For that alone, we all owe JoAnn Clevenger a debt of gratitude for her delicious vision.

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FRIED GREEN TOMATOES (OR ZUCCHINI) Serves 4 Green tomatoes refer to unripe tomatoes, which are firmer and drier than ripe ones. If you don’t have green tomatoes in your garden, you can use substitute zucchini, like we did. (Zucchini has a similar taste and texture). Upperline Restaurant served fried green tomatoes topped with shrimp rémoulade.

or zucchini slices in egg mixture, letting excess drip off. Dredge in cornmeal mixture, shaking off excess. Repeat.

In a large sauté pan, heat oil over medium heat. Place tomato or zucchini slices in a single layer in pan; cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides, about 6 or 7 minutes.

Garnish plates with shredded lettuce or salad greens. Place 3 to 4 tomato or zucchini slices on each plate; top with chilled shrimp, then spoon the rémoulade sauce over the shrimp. Serve immediately.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 large egg 1 cup whole buttermilk 1 cup yellow cornmeal ½ teaspoon kosher salt ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper 8 (½-inch-thick) slices large green zucchini or green tomatoes 6 tablespoons vegetable oil 24 medium boiled Gulf shrimp, cooked, peeled, deveined and chilled Shredded lettuce or salad greens, for serving

Makes enough for 4 servings of Shrimp Rémoulade We paired red rémoulade, a tomato-based sauce, with our fried green zucchini because that’s how Upperline Restaurant served their fried green tomatoes, but you can also use white rémoulade, which is mayonnaise-based.

HOW TO PREP: In a medium bowl, whisk together egg and buttermilk. In a shallow dish, combine cornmeal, salt and pepper. Dip tomato

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup Creole mustard 2 tablespoons ketchup 2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic

RED RÉMOULADE SAUCE

SOUTHERN FRIED FICTION ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Fried green tomatoes are a simple, seasonal pleasure: unripened tomatoes coated in cornmeal and fried to golden perfection, sometimes with a buttermilk dipping sauce. At the novel’s end, Flagg provided two recipes, including one with milk gravy. Two of the most beloved versions in New Orleans restaurants were served at Iler Pope’s iteration of Café Atchafalaya and JoAnn Clevenger’s Upperline Restaurant (the latter served with duck Andouille sauce — mmm, mmm). Now, every celebrity chef from David Chang to Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond has a signature recipe for the dish.

Flagg is the first to confess that she enjoys consuming food rather than preparing it. When she told friends she was writing a cookbook, she was met with disbelief. “You would have thought that I had just announced my attempt to overthrow a foreign government with a fork,” she said. As she’s quick to explain in the cookbook, the fictional Whistle Stop Café was based on her great aunt Bess’s Irondale Café in Irondale, Alabama, and that the recipes have stood the test of time rather than Flagg’s own preparation.

Flagg is a warm and funny evangelist for good eating and comfort food, which was just coming into vogue again when the cookbook was published. Fried chicken and biscuits with honey? Yes, please! Cheese

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice 1½ teaspoons paprika ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper ¹⁄₈ teaspoon ground black pepper ¹⁄₈ teaspoon ground red pepper Kosher salt, to taste ½ cup olive oil ¼ cup minced celery stalk with leaves 2 tablespoons grated yellow onions 1 tablespoon minced green onions (green part only) 1½ teaspoons minced fresh parsley HOW TO PREP: In a small bowl, stir together mustard, ketchup, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, paprika, white pepper, black pepper, red pepper and salt. Whisk in olive oil in a slow, steady stream until emulsified.

Add celery, onions, green onion and parsley, stirring until well combined. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

grits? Fried chicken livers? Some will draw the line at roast possum, but others will identify with “Completely Mess Up Your Kitchen Gravy.”

Many of us likely have a completely-mess-up-your-kitchen recipe of our own.

Warm and funny — and sassy — is Flagg’s brand. No wonder she loved working on Allen Funt’s Candid Camera and television shows like Hollywood Squares (lower right corner), Match Game and Love Boat. Her film works include Grease, Five Easy Pieces and, of course, Crazy in Alabama. In 1975, she won first prize in the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, presented by Eudora Welty, for the short story, “Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man,” which became her first bestselling novel. When Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café was published in 1985, it stayed on the bestseller list for 36 weeks. Flagg revisited Whistle Stop in 2020 with The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop, updating readers on her beloved characters and their small town.

And you can bet she still loves Southern food. “They say that the only book that outsells the cookbook is the Bible,” she wrote, “so you can see how serious food is to us. I try not to get serious about food more than three times a day. Or four if I can swing it.”

- Susan Larson PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO

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MRS. ROUSE’S CHICKEN STEW Serves 4

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 cup canola or vegetable oil 1 medium onion, chopped 1 medium green bell pepper, chopped 1 celery rib, chopped 1 cup white button mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced 6 cups chicken broth 5 pounds bone-in chicken thighs 1 bay leaf Creole seasoning, to taste Hot rice, for serving Fresh parsley, for garnish HOW TO PREP: Heat oil in a 4- to 5-quart heavy pot over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking. Stir in flour with a flat metal or wooden spatula and cook, scraping back and forth constantly (not stirring), until roux is the color of milk chocolate, 10 to 20 minutes.

Add onion, bell pepper, and celery. Cook, scraping back and forth occasionally, until

onion is softened, about 8 minutes. Add mushrooms and stir to combine.

2 bay leaves White rice, for serving

Add chicken broth and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally until roux is incorporated. Add chicken and bay leaf. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until chicken is cooked through and gravy is thickened, about 1 hour.

Remove bay leaf and discard. Stir in Creole seasoning. Serve hot over rice with parsley garnish.

MRS. ROUSE’S BEEF CHUCK ROAST Serves 8

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 chuck roast, 3-4 pounds 1 tablespoon Creole or Cajun seasoning mix of your choice 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 large onion, coarsely chopped 6 garlic cloves, peeled 1 cup (or more as needed) beef broth or stock 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

HOW TO PREP: Preheat the oven to 325°F. Season the roast with the Creole seasoning and dust evenly with the flour.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the roast evenly all over, about four minutes on each side. Transfer the roast to a platter.

Add garlic and onions to the pot and cook until slightly browned, stirring, scraping up brown bits from bottom of pot. Return the roast to the pot and add beef broth or stock to cover the meat. Add bay leaves and parsley. Cover and cook for about 45 minutes or until the meat is fork tender.

Remove the pot from the oven and adjust seasoning if necessary. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Allow the meat to rest for about 15 minutes before slicing.

Serve with white rice.

Our first grocery store was in Houma, Louisiana. Then my grandfather built our first supermarket in 1975 on the lot right in front of my grandparents’ house in Thibodaux. My dad, aunts and uncles remember working in the small office upstairs.

When it was time for lunch, they would all walk over to the “Rouse House.” Granny would have chicken stew, or roast with rice and gravy, or some equally delicious homestyle meal simmering on the stove for them.

-Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

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BANANAS FOSTER Serves 2-4 This dramatic dessert is the most-ordered item on Brennan’s menu.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) butter ½ cup light brown sugar ¼ teaspoon cinnamon 1-½ ounces banana liqueur 1-½ ounces aged rum ½ banana per person (peel the bananas and cut each in half lengthwise, then in half crosswise) HOW TO PREP: Combine butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a flambé pan.

As the butter melts over medium heat, add the banana liqueur and stir to combine.

As the sauce starts to warm, add the bananas to the pan. Cook the bananas until they begin to soften (1 to 2 minutes).

Tilt back the pan to slightly heat the far edge. Once hot, carefully add the rum and tilt the pan toward the flame to ignite the rum. Stir the sauce to ensure that all of the alcohol cooks out.

BANANAS FOSTER ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The lowly banana forms the foundation of the world’s most famous flaming dessert: Bananas Foster. It all began right here in New Orleans. Long associated with Brennan’s on Royal Street, Bananas Foster debuted at Owen Brennan’s first restaurant, the Vieux Carré.

Originally a liquor salesman, Owen became a bar owner in 1943 with the purchase of the Old Absinthe House. When the restaurant across Bourbon Street became available in 1946, he snapped it up. All along, Owen’s greater goal was to create a family business that would take care of them all. The first family member onboard was baby sister, Ella.

When she graduated from high school, he convinced their mother, Nellie, to allow Ella to handle his books and banking for the bar.

Her role expanded dramatically with the restaurant acquisition, when Owen asked her to help manage the place.

Serve the bananas over ice cream and top with the sauce.

BANANAS FOSTER BREAD PUDDING Serves 8

WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 4 large eggs 2 cups whole milk ¼ cup plus ½ cup brown sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 tablespoon banana liqueur 1 tablespoon and ½ cup dark rum 1 teaspoon plus ½ teaspoon kosher salt 6 cups cubed brioche, about ½ loaf 5 ripe bananas, peeled and cut crosswise into ½ inch slices 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 5 tablespoons unsalted butter ¼ cup heavy cream HOW TO PREP: Heat oven to 350°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, ¼ cup of brown sugar, vanilla, banana liqueur, 1 tablespoon rum and 1 teaspoon salt. Add the bread, making sure to saturate all of it.

Set aside to soak.

Fortunately, the accomplished Dutch chef, Paul Blangé came along with the purchase.

Ella shadowed him closely, challenging him to create new dishes not found on other menus in town. Chicken Pontalba, stuffed flounder and redfish courtbouillion based on classical French cuisine were Americanized with Creole touches. The two soon hit their stride and Owen Brennan’s Vieux Carré became the toast of the town.

One morning in 1951, Owen appeared in the kitchen to challenge Ella with a dessert assignment. His close friend, Richard Foster, had just been appointed chairman of New Orleans’ newly created vice commission and Owen was hosting a dinner in his honor. “Kid, an exciting dessert. By tonight. For Richard.

Got it?” she recalled him asking.

Looking around the kitchen Ella noticed an abundance of bananas and thought of a favorite dish from their childhood. Their mother, Nellie, sautéed bananas with a

Butter a 2-quart baking dish with 1 tablespoon of the butter, and place it on a baking sheet. Line the bottom of the dish with banana slices, then spoon about half of the soaked bread over them. Top with banana slices, and spoon the remaining soaked bread over the top. Bake for 40 minutes, then sprinkle with the tablespoon of granulated sugar. Continue baking until the pudding is moist but not wet in the center and puffed and golden on top, about 10 minutes longer.

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the remaining 1/2 cup brown sugar, cream, remaining rum and salt, and whisk until combined. Simmer, whisking, until the sauce has thickened, 5 to 8 minutes.

Remove from heat.

Serve the pudding warm, cut into wedges or squares, with some of the sauce drizzled over the top, alongside a small scoop of vanilla or caramel ice cream.

little butter and brown sugar, often for breakfast. Next, Antoine’s Baked Alaska popped into mind. “Everyone loves that damn dessert, a little cake with meringue that folks love because they flame it. Let’s flame ours!” she suggested to Chef Blangé. Ella’s final touch was a little sprinkle of cinnamon that sparkled in the flames like fireworks, especially when the dining room lights were dimmed.

A new Creole classic was created, but Ella never forgot Owen’s complaint upon tasting his first Bananas Foster. “Gee,” he said.

“Why did you have to ruin it with the ice cream?”

Sorry, Owen! For decades now, millions of satisfied diners have thought differently.

- Poppy Tooker

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Women in Grocery

By Marcy Nathan with McNally Sislo Photos by Channing Candies

G

o to just about any crawfish boil, and you will likely find a man in charge of the pot — and other men standing around, debating what to put in it. Corn, potatoes, garlic, onions and lemons are a given; Brussels sprouts and pineapple, not so much.

What might come as a surprise is that a woman buys all of the live Louisiana crawfish we sell at Rouses Markets — more than 4 million pounds every crawfish season.

Denise Englade is our Director of Seafood. She has worked in seafood almost her entire career.

“I was a young mother of three boys living in Washington State, and I needed insurance. I went to my local Safeway and applied for a job making sandwiches.

The store manager knew that I was raised in Louisiana, and that I had worked in a sandwich shop that also had a small seafood display. He said, ‘We will pay you $3.50 an hour to make sandwiches, or $6.50 an hour to work in seafood.’ It was a no-brainer.

“I went from part-time in seafood, to full-time, to running the seafood department at that Safeway, then at other stores in

From left: ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Director of Seafood Denise Englade has worked in seafood almost her entire career.

Denise buys all of the live Louisiana crawfish we sell at Rouses Markets — more than 4 million pounds every crawfish season.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Director of Beer, Wine & Spirits Julie Joy’s specialty is private label. Julie is growing private label for Rouses Markets, so expect some great value bottles to stock up on.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Beer, Wine & Spirits merchandiser Jourdan Dorsey oversees our programs at stores from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Orange Beach, Alabama. She has been with Rouses Markets since 2012.

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Washington State, and eventually worked my way into a director’s role.

“When my mom developed Parkinson’s, I knew it was time to come home. I saw an ad for Rouses Markets that said, ‘We are looking for good people,’ and I reached out to the Director of Human Resources.

‘I’m good people,’ I told him.

“I’m now on my second stint at Rouses Markets. When my parents got really sick, Rouses Markets allowed me take some time off to care for them. Eventually, I had to step away to care for them full-time.”

When Denise was ready, Rouses Markets hired her back.

“When I was starting out in Washington State, they were just putting seafood departments in grocery stores; seafood fell under the meat market, and all of the meat managers were men. Most of the stores I direct for Rouses Markets have seafood departments. Most of our stores even feature seafood boiling rooms. There are more and more women in the business, which is really encouraging, and I am working with more women on the vendor side. Two of my three seafood merchandisers are women.

“As I moved up in seafood , and I started going to seafood shows, like the big one in Boston, I was one of the few women at the show who wasn’t there as someone’s wife.”

In March, Denise is a featured panelist at that big Boston show — the Seafood Expo of North America.

Julie Joy, Director of Beer, Wine & Spirits, still sets stores in the calling order from the liquor gun dispenser she used as a bartender before and during college — Scotch, Whiskey, Bourbon, Gin, Vodka, Rum, Tequila.

Her first job in retail was as a cheese and snack buyer for a major wine and spirits store. “After I was promoted to store manager, I had to learn all about liquor, beer — even cigars. There wasn’t a question I couldn’t answer or find the answer to.”

Julie learned about allocations, pricing and quantity discounts, and how to market alcohol as she moved up to regional manager, then national manager, then a director of beer, wine & spirits.

Her specialty is private label. “It’s all about giving you a better value at a better price.” Have you ever tried the

wine Cupcake? Julie helped develop the brand. “My manager at the time thought Cupcake was too girly for our company, so we didn’t keep it as an exclusive.” Ironically, according to Nielsen numbers, 57% of wine consumers are women.

“When you start off with something like Cupcake, everyone stares at you like, what’s next? Eventually, I took a year off to find my next adventure. During that time I perfected my own Margarita recipe, and learned to make the famous Irish coffee created at the Buena vista in San Francisco."

“In the wine industry, there is no better place to work than in grocery. Grabbing the attention of customers as they think about food and wine at the same time is the dream. Rouses brings the ultimate food experience, and I am thrilled to be part of the ultimate beer, wine & spirit experience for our customers.”

Julie is growing private label for us, so expect some great value bottles to stock up on. And expect more bourbons and other spirits in our Rouses Barrel House stores.

“Now we see all sorts of spirits being aged in different barrels — cognac, sherry, wine, you name it. We are doing several great barrel picks with the best bourbons and whiskeys available. There is always

something fun and new happening, and they all turn out different.”

It’s not uncommon for companies to have a 50/50 gender parity, or something close to it, in entry-level positions. But the proportion of women workers usually drops from there, and continues to drop the higher up the ladder you go.

But not here. We have woman department directors, store directors, category managers, merchandisers and managers.

As Dean of Rouses University, Ashley Bond Candebat leads our training program, which includes in-person and online training. Michelle Knight is our Bakery Director in charge of 64 stores.

Susan Sistrunk has been our Floral Director since 2007. Celeste Hildago, our Controller, oversees our daily accounting operations. She has been with us for more than 35 years.

Amanda Kennedy, our Senior Manager for Brand & Marketing Strategy, is just as passionate about our private label offerings as Julie Joy is. Amanda oversees our private label design for grocery and fresh products.

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THE PULSE OF PRIVATE LABEL

JULY/AUGUST 2021

www.storebrands.com

WINNERS

P. 20

RISING STARS

IN PRIVATE LABEL

2021

ROUSES’ RISING STAR AMANDA KENNEDY JOINS OUR LIST OF FUTURE LEADERS IN PRIVATE BRANDS

Clockwise from top: ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Jennipher Landry has been an Assistant Store Director at our Freret location since it opened in May 2021.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Amanda Kennedy, our Senior Manager for Brand & Marketing Strategy, was named a Rising Star in the August 2021 issue of Store Brands magazine — and made the cover.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Marcie Pellegrin helps coordinate our facility services. The facility services division is responsible for the operation and maintenance of our stores, corporate office and warehouses.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Regional Vice President of Operations Stacy Wiggins launched her grocery career as a seasonal employee at Walmart.

ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Taryn Clement leads planning and strategy for Rouses Markets e-Commerce, focusing on consistent convenience and customer service.

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For the fourth consecutive year in grocery, private label — especially premium private like our Rouses Markets brand — has surpassed name brands in year-over-year sales growth.

Before we can even think about bringing a new product to the shelf, Amanda sets up a cutting, which is when we taste-test options to compare between suppliers. We only create private label products when we find items we believe in and want to share with our customers. Our buyers then partner directly with the brand or manufacturer, which keeps the costs low.

“I love seeing it all come together, from that first taste-testing, to the label design — there is so much pressure on that label; we know you have to buy it in order to try it, so we want it to appeal to you — to seeing the product on our shelves. The process is challenging but very rewarding.”

Last year Amanda was named a Rising Star in the August 2021 issue of Store Brands magazine — and made the cover.

Taryn Clement leads planning and strategy for our e-Commerce, the fastestgrowing segment of our business.

Women are, unfortunately, underrepresented in tech. “A lot of times, I’m the only woman in the room,” says Taryn.

E-Commerce has revolutionized the way we shop. Taryn just helped launch our new Rouses Markets Shopping App, which you can download on the App Store or on Google Play. There is no curbside pickup fee on orders over $35, and you pay the same price as in-store. Our own team members — the people who know our stores and selection better than anyone else — hand-select every product ordered for curbside pickup. It’s like having your favorite Rouses Markets team member as your own personal shopper.

Taryn keeps up with ever-changing technology, as well as customer preferences that continue to evolve, but to her, e-Commerce comes down to consistent convenience and customer service.

“I’m a working mom with two young kids, so I understand the necessity of e-Commerce, especially our new curbside pickup,” says Clement. “If you’re a new mom like me, or a caregiver for your own

parents who now has to do the grocery shopping for two households, or you are a suddenly single dad who needs that extra help, I get it.”

Beach, Alabama. She has been named to Progressive Grocer’s Top Women in Grocery list three times.

Taryn says Rouses Markets gets it, too. “The company has been great about accommodating my needs as a mom.”

Jennipher Landry is an Assistant Store Director. She is involved in everything from hiring, training and managing employees, to supervising inventory and monitoring sales.

But for some working moms, there are days when you feel like wherever you are, at work or at home, you should be somewhere else. Stacy Wiggins, our Regional Vice President of Operations, says sticking to your commitments will help you find work-life balance, or at least let go of the guilt.

“When my husband and I left the military, we relocated to Pennsylvania. I applied for a seasonal position at Walmart and, to my surprise, I immediately fell in love with retail. The military really taught me the importance of teamwork and taking care of one another, and retail is not really that much different. I love taking care of customers and being a part of something that is good for the community. When the holidays were over, and I was asked to stay on full-time, I said yes.”

Stacy went from that part-time career, to store manager, to district manager, to a job working for a big East Coast grocery chain.

When she took a promotion in New Jersey, her kids stayed back in Maryland with her husband. She came home every weekend.

Her son had a baseball game on a Friday night, and she made a commitment to him that she would make the game: “I might not be there for the first pitch, but I would be there.” She drove three-and-ahalf hours to the game that night and made it just as he was coming up to bat. “When he rounded home plate, he looked at me and grinned.

“After the game, he said, ‘I knew you would make it.’ It was at that moment that I truly realized what it meant to do what I said I would, even if I couldn’t be there the entire time. It’s not always the amount of time, it’s the quality of the time that matters most.”

Stacy is responsible for overseeing our entire East region, which stretches from New Orleans, Louisiana, through Orange

She says: “Sometimes new customers, salesmen or vendors just assume I’m not in charge because I’m a woman.”

“There are always challenges,” acknowledges Stacy Wiggins, who oversees Jennipher’s regional district, “but we don’t let that stop us.”

Jennipher started as a cashier in 2006, then moved to front-end manager responsible for overseeing all of the cashiers and customer service at the store. Handed the opportunity to move even further up in store leadership, she turned it down.

“I had the best supervisor, Monique Hemelt, who was our Customer Service Specialist for the entire company, and I wanted to work for her. She took so much pride in her work.”

Monique passed away in 2016, and “we literally had to fill her position with multiple people,” says Ali Rouse Royster, third-generation family member. “She was one-of-a-kind, for sure.”

“After that, I was ready to move up; I knew I had more to give,” says Jennipher.

Jennipher honed her management skills at several Rouses Markets. “Every store is unique. The teams are smaller at the smaller stores, and bigger at the bigger stores. Both sizes present their own unique managements challenges, but you still have to make sure the departments are performing well in every area.”

Jennipher has been an Assistant Store Director at our Freret location since it opened in May 2021. “When the time is right, I hope to join the ranks of our women store directors like Donna Madere and Michelle LeBlanc who set the path for others to follow.”

“You can count on that,” says Stacy Wiggins.

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AD Get live Louisiana crawfish by the sack or hot from the pot. Our down-the-bayou recipe has been perfected for over three generations, so our seafood always comes out seasoned to perfection.