After failing four times and after working for other people and realizing that nobody paid attention to the food like they should have, we wanted to just pay attention to the food and service.
I opened my own restaurant when I was 17. I went broke, then traveled around the country, learning about different kinds of foods, had three other restaurants that went broke. It didn't all start just a few years ago!
I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown!
In '71 or '72 I returned to New Orleans and stayed there. I started cooking Louisiana food. Of all the things I had cooked, it was the best-and it was my heritage.
It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.
