Celebrity Chef Driven Kitchens

One of our long term growth strategies is to partner with notable chefs in key cities to stimulate interest, media coverage and customer visits to our restaurants.  This strategy has worked well for us in Minneapolis with Tim McKee at Sea Change, Ryan DePersio at NICO Kitchen + Bar at NJPAC and  Todd Gray at his namesake Watershed in WDC.

The Approaching Storm

This past weekend I had the great fortune of dining around New Orleans (mercifully spared by Hurricane  Isaac) and went to one of the most famous celebrity chef restaurants in the country, Emeril Lagasse's NOLA in the French Quarter.  NOLA has been around for years and I feared that some of the luster may have faded as Emeril's celebrity grew.  Happily, this was not the case.

NOLA's Display Kitchen

The restaurant is wonderfully decorated in a New Orleans Industrial Chic motif with an open kitchen and a dramatic glass elevator that ascends to the primary dining room.  The hostess seemed genuinely glad to see us.  Our service team (there were three of them taking care of two of us) was led by a witty, off-beat and super professional waiter who clearly loved his job-- and everything on the menu.

Starting with perfectly prepared martinis, we enjoyed the lagniappe of tiny brioche rolls that were warm from the oven and very moist, dense cornbread muffins proffered with room temperature butter in a crock.  I usually forego bread but ate one of each with noisy gusto, vowing an extra 30 minutes of cardio in the morning (and which I fulfilled!)  My next course was celery root and beets with lobster chunks, but my companion's soup of cream of Parmigiano-Reggiano and roasted garlic was so good it seemed like proper marriage material.  We finished with a nicely grilled, flavorful sheepshead fillet and Emeril's signature shrimp & grits, which were both stunning.  The ticket before tax and gratuity was under $80-- well worth that price and quite unexpected given the famous name on the marquee.

So I understand better now why our celebrity chef driven kitchens draw in more customers.  It is the talent and the passion and the show business they bring to the industry that elevates a diner's experience from simply enjoying a meal to making it a most memorable excursion into the culinary arts.