To know and understand New Orleans Chef John Besh, all you need do is read this most telling description of him that was written two years after Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the cherished city that he has called home most of his life.
In the New York Times then, my friend and colleague, Kim Severson, summed up Besh as the “ex-Marine who rode into the flooded city with a gun, a boat and a bag of beans and fed New Orleans until it could feed itself.”
Four years after Katrina rained untold devastation upon his beloved New Orleans, Besh is still its savior. Wherever he travels, the 41-year-old chef, who exudes an irresistible Southern warmth that makes strangers feel they’ve known him all their life, can’t help but be a cheerleader for New Orleans’ past, present, and future.
When Katrina hit, Besh had just bought out his investor in his flagship Restaurant August in New Orleans. He was up to his toque in debt, and feared he would lose everything.
Like the city itself, though, he persevered, excavating himself from that murky uncertainty to a place of hope and possibility.
Now, he is poised to open his sixth restaurant in Louisiana. He’s also written a new cookbook, “My New Orleans: The Cookbook” (Andrews McMeel). A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to Cafe Reconcile, a New Orleans non-profit dedicated to providing at-risk youth the skills needed to enter the hospitality and restaurant industries.
You can meet Besh this week, when he’ll be in the Bay Area to sign copies of his book. He’ll appear at a free event at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oct. 14. He’ll do a cooking demo, noon to 1 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Ferry Building in San Francisco, which will be followed by a dinner event that night at Left Bank restaurant in Larkspur at 6 p.m.
I had a chance to chat with him by phone last week about the past few tumultuous, yet ultimately rejuvenating years.
Q: Your new cookbook is almost a love story about New Orleans. What compelled you to write this book in this way?
A: The last thing I wanted to do was create another chef-y cookbook. In this day and age, we’re so caught up in fancy restaurants. But the most important thing is that everyone comes from somewhere and everyone has a story. And this is my somewhere and my story.
When you understand the story and where the food comes from, you can cook it with more authenticity and soul. If we’re not careful, we will lose the last little places that have their own true cuisine. I felt that especially after Katrina, when Republicans let us down, when politicians all over let us down, and we were just left on our own. It prompted me to think more about the validity of these great traditions. New Orleans is a city of good values. It values people, it values good times, and it values tradition.
Q: You evacuated the city, then came back right after Katrina hit?
A: My family evacuated. I have a wife whom every man would dream of having. She’s smart, strong, and takes care of the family, which allowed me to be relatively independent.
They left two days before Katrina hit, and went to North Carolina. I was here, helping to get my father out of town. He’s up in age and paralyzed (after being hit by a drunk driver 32 years ago). After we made sure our employees were taken care of, it was just myself and my partner in Dominica restaurant, who came back into the city a few days later.
Q: Did your Marines training come in handy for what awaited you in New Orleans?
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