NEW YORK/NEW ORLEANS – Each year, Esquire magazine releases it’s Best New Restaurants list. This list, the magazine shares, is a comprehensive list of new eateries from coast to coast. The new dining destinations are highlighted with the help of the food writers and Food & Drink Editor Jeff Gordinier. This year, the team identified 33 new “good-time” spots.
While there are new and exciting eateries popping up all over New Orleans on a regular basis, the Crescent City was only mentioned for in an accompanying group of awards
Emeril’s was given the “Comeback of the Year” award.
The feature stated:
If you peer through the large glass window separating the kitchen from the dining room at Emeril’s, one of the crown jewels of Louisiana, you’ll see E.J. Lagasse, the twenty-two-year-old chef, in crisp whites. Off to the side, you might see Lagasse père, Emeril, without a station of his own, gazing affectionately at his son. It is rare for anybody to abdicate power, and rarer still for a chef to locate a familial path to succession. But the ambitious young Lagasse, who was mentored by Eric Ripert of New York’s Le Bernardin, has swept through Dad’s restaurant like a brisk wind. His tasting menu bespeaks a self-assuredness that often comes with youth, but you’ll also notice the sort of rigor and technical élan that usually accumulate over decades. Old favorites like a barbecue-shrimp tartlet and a sliver of smoked-salmon cheesecake have been alchemized into even more delicious versions of their predecessors. New dishes—like a circle of sweet Grand Isle shrimp between a mound of caviar and white remoulade, or a perfect boudin in a silky creole jus gras that’s suffused with foie gras—burst with the promise of a new era. —J.D.S.
E.J. and Emeril made history recently receiving two of the Michelin Stars awarded to New Orleans this year. Seems the father/son duo’s momentum isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
To see all of the restaurants that made Esquire’s best list, click here.
