We shuffle to a small counter, where she points toward a single canapé the size of a gumball and announces, “New Orleans blue crab remoulade with finger lime and 180-day-aged caviar.” She waits.
I pop it into my mouth — fully aware the entire kitchen is watching — and swallow with all the manners of a proper rube. Tiny fireworks of lime explode against my tongue, followed by a commotion of saline. The crab comes on cold and sweet. Damn, I should have savored that more slowly, I think. Is that all there is? My eyes dart around the table, fruitlessly searching for another.
The anonymous cook clears her throat to refocus my attention, then proceeds to tell me about tonight’s menu: The oysters (displayed on ice in front of me) are from Maine, she explains, but almost everything else (also on display) comes from the city, the gulf or independent family farms in the region. There’ll be trout almondine and boudin sausage and veal daube glacé — essential flavors of New Orleans.
I last dined here 15 years ago, and while my memory of that visit is fuzzy, I know this with clarity: This Emeril’s is nothing like the Emeril’s of yore.
Emeril Lagasse — Louisiana’s (and perhaps television’s) most famous chef — stepped aside recently and handed the keys of his 35-year-old Tchoupitoulas Street institution to his only son, Emeril John “E.J.” Lagasse IV — who wasn’t even born when these doors opened in 1990. But for the artwork, it’s unrecognizable, a totally different restaurant. Gone are the gigantic portions, loud flavors and rebel attitude — the famous “BAM!”
E.J. promptly threw out the old man’s menus and introduced a Michelin-bait degustation that starts at seven courses, with truly inspired wine pairings from the 31,000-bottle cellar. The dining room, which was once filled with boisterous conventioneers, now feels serene, with plush carpets underfoot, crisp white linens on the tables, velvet chairs, new china, new everything — including membership in Relais & Châteaux and a jackets-for-gentlemen dress code. Servers don black suits and white gloves. The kitchen got rebuilt and framed in soundproof glass, a culinary theater outfitted with custom Molteni stoves. The cute young couple at a nearby table has flown in from Japan for dinner (if I overheard them correctly), and they seem downright giddy.
Is a 22-year-old E.J. ready for this?
The answer begins trickling in as I swallow the first flurry of hors d’oeuvres: a tiny Vietnamese spring roll of chili-glazed pork — a nod to the city’s vibrant immigrant community. Alongside it: what the server calls a “blue-fin tuna sandwich.” But it’s less a sandwich than a deconstructed Japanese hand roll: The bread, if you will, is actually two house-made nori crackers. I look up to see a grinning face staring back at me, only to realize it’s my goofy reflection in the kitchen glass. I compose myself and reach for the daube glacé. It’s not the traditional Nawlins grandma version (a rich veal stew so thick with ham hock that it cools into an aspic) but rather a petite sphere that bursts with innuendos of andouille and horseradish.
Before I can blink, another wave swoops in, a menagerie even more gorgeous than the last. I quickly devour the one-bite fried-oyster po’boy. Then a shot of gumbo — not what you’re thinking, but rather almost a consommé, its lightness and flavor impossibly authentic. Last up is a dime-sized croustade of barbecue shrimp — a dollhouse version of a recipe the elder Lagasse made famous.
“That was my baby food,” E.J. says. “Literally. My dad used to chop it up and spoon-feed it to me.” The Asian-inspired prawn cracker he serves alongside it is new, but “if I close my eyes,” he says, “it still tastes exactly the same.”
Behold, or beware, the cornbread trolly. While E.J. miniaturizes and deconstructs most of his father’s — and the city’s — Cajun traditions, he has maximalized the bread service. The cart rolls up with the subtlety of a Rolls-Royce Phantom. A waiter plunks a massive loaf of steaming-hot cornbread on my table, then proceeds to carve a baseball-sized scoop of butter from a 20-pound block. “You can never have too much,” he says, rather convincingly.
I’m wiping butter from my chin and brushing crumbs from my lap when the salmon cheesecake — another reinvention — arrives, this version an elfin slice of cheesy custard layered with salty, smoky fish and a pristine slather of caviar. With some ingenuity, it could be worn as jewelry. It tastes so… romantic.
E.J. got his first honorary chef’s coat when he was six months old. He started working in his father’s various kitchens in earnest at age 12 or 13, “doing real knife work and shadowing my dad and the others,” he says. He spent most of his teenage years after school on the line.
For several years after culinary college, he worked through a succession of the world’s best kitchens, including Café Boulud and Le Bernardin in New York, Core in London and Frantzén in Stockholm. Somewhere along the way, he got the hairbrained idea to reinvent oyster stew.
Oyster stew is to New Orleans what creamy clam chowder is to New England. But how, exactly, does a chef serve something so decadent in a seven- or 10-course tasting menu without putting the customer under the table?
His solution was to swap the classic roux for a light cream infused with sorrel and Herbsaint liqueur (the city’s version of absinthe, used to flavor Sazeracs), then add tapioca pearls to lightly thicken it. Instead of bacon, he fattens it with seared duck liver. I fish my spoon into this “stew” of boba, and it comes back with the plumpest of oysters. It is wildly, incomprehensibly delicious. Far lesser dishes have launched chefs into stardom. It is instantly iconic. Modern. Unexpected. It’s the very essence of New Orleans, then and now. (Three months later, I’m still thinking about it.)
And the hits keep coming: ethereal boudin sausage and chicken-liver mousse, stunning trout almondine, fork-tender strip loin of domestic beef and a cloudlike take on banana cream pie — another rebellious rewrite of a once-untouchable family recipe.
Asked and answered.
This isn’t merely the start of a new era for Emeril’s. It’s a new day for New Orleans — which was already having a moment. This is one of the most exciting restaurants in America right now.
Emeril’s, 800 Tchoupitoulas Street, emerilsrestaurant.com. Dinner from $225; wine pairings $175 to $800. À la carte snack menu from $15, served strictly at the adjacent wine
bar.
