Restaurateur Ella Brennan, dubbed “Queen of Creole Cuisine” by People magazine, and Chef Anne Kearney, chef and proprietor of Peristyle in New Orleans, will grace the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute’s seventh annual Lafcadio Hearn Award dinner, scheduled for March 29 at 6 p.m.Brennan, who will be honored at the award dinner, began her career at age 19 in 1944 and currently owns Commander’s Palace of New Orleans and Las Vegas, Cafe Adelaide of New Orleans and Brennan’s Restaurant of Houston. According to Robert Harrington, dean of the culinary institute, Brennan has made a huge contribution to the restaurant industry, and Harrington is familiar with a great number of very talented chefs whom Brennan has mentored.
“From a direct culinary perspective,” Harrington said, “there have been so many talented chefs who have worked at (Brennan’s) Commander’s Palace over the years and come out of that environment to really promote Louisiana and the culinary history, heritage and food.”
A proteg of Brennan, Kearney, will work with University culinary students and faculty to prepare the award dinner. Kearney, the young chef who opened Peristyle in April of 1995, received the prestigious “Southeast Regional Best Chef” by the James Beard Foundation for 2002. Since opening her restaurant, Kearney has received numerous other awards for her philosophy: “Have respect for the food and proper preparation from start to finish.”
Kearney’s dinner menu includes a Louisiana oyster-fennel soup; an appetizer of pan-seared Gulf drum with goat cheese gnocchi, roasted asparagus, oven-dried Louisiana tomatoes, nicoise olives and saffron fumet; an entree of crispy duck confit, Sarlat potatoes, fava beans and wilted Louisiana greens with a rich demi-glaze reduction; and Bittersweet Plantation Dairy Creole Cream Cheese cheesecake on a shortbread cookie crust served with lemon curd for dessert.
According to Harrington, the culinary institute’s Lafcadio Hearn Award dinner has been an event every spring semester for the past several years. He said one main purpose for the event is to identify and honor an individual who has made a significant contribution to the food service industry or the culinary field during his or her lifetime and add that person to the Hall of Fame at Nicholls. Another purpose, Harrington said, is to bring in chefs from different parts of the country to work with the culinary institute’s students in the dinner’s preparation. The chef can meet with those students for seminars to discuss different techniques.
According to Harrington, the event is named for Lafcadio Hearn, a writer living in New Orleans in the 1880s and the first person to document Creole recipes. A main mission of the culinary institute is to make sure it assists in promoting the unique culinary heritage of Louisiana, a part of which involves honoring those individuals such as Hearn who have made such a contribution.
“We usually do two events in the spring, the Lafcadio Hearn Award dinner and the Chef John Folse & Company NSU Scholarship dinner, and they’ve always been about a month apart,” Harrington said. “We’ve decided to combine the two events, so all of the proceeds from the events will go to scholarships for Nicholls students.”
Tickets for the event are $100 for individuals and $700 for parties of eight. For reservations, the University culinary institute may be contacted at (985) 449-7100 or (985) 449-7091. Seating is limited and the reservation deadline is March 24 at 12 p.m.
