Paul Prudhomme, celebrity chef who promoted Cajun cuisine, dies at 75

NEW ORLEANS — Paul Prudhomme, the superstar chef who helped put Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole cuisines on the world’s table, has died at the age of 75. His death, after a short illness, was confirmed by a representative from K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, the restaurant Prudhomme founded in 1979.

Prudhomme published nine cookbooks, offered his own line of herbs and spices as well as seasoned and smoked meats and starred in several cooking videos and television programs. He is remembered as being outsize in every respect — in his appetites, enthusiasm, generosity of spirit and cooking ability. 

“He was such an innately talented cook,” Frank Brigsten, the owner of Brigsten’s restaurant, told The New Orleans Advocate. “He didn’t follow rules. He just chased flavor. It was incredible to watch him do it.” Prudhomme's last book, “Always Cooking,” was published in 2007.

Prudhomme specialized in the provincial, French-inflected dishes he grew up with —buttery crawfish étouffée made by Creole cooks for their white households, the rust-black roux used by Acadians as the basis for gumbos made with alligator (or whatever else was handy), dense jambalaya, flaky beignets, smoked andouille, the caramelized sweetness of corn maque choux, to name just a few.

He learned these dishes growing up the youngest of 10 boys and three girls in Opelousas, Lousiana. It was there that he learned the skills that helped usher in the slow food revolution.

“It took me years to understand that it was the use of local fresh products that was the single most important factor in good eating,” he wrote in the introduction to 1984’s “Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen.” “One of my strongest memories of my mother’s cooking is her use of only fresh ingredients. When we dug up potatoes, within two hours they’d be in the pot, cooked and eaten. I couldn’t seem to get a potato to taste like my mother’s until I realized that it wasn’t anything that was done in the kitchen — it was just the freshness of the potato that made it completely different. This principle carries over to all foods.”

He wrote “Louisiana Kitchen” after leaving his position as the executive chef of New Orleans’ famed Commander’s Palace — he was the first non-European to have that job — and opening K-Paul’s on Chartres Street in the French Quarter. Now a very nice part of town, back then the rent was only $50 a month. Prudhomme himself called it “a dump.” The restaurant took no reservations until expanding in 1996. Patrons were content to wait in line. In 1983 he was named restaurateur of the year by the Louisiana State Restaurant Association.

From there, he expanded into catering, finally authoring his first cookbook. Soon after, in 1984, New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne called him “the undisputed pontiff and grand panjandrum of the Cajun and Creole cookstove, that genial genius of massive girth.” Prudhomme’s once provincial dishes were now available to the world. Because of this, he was one of the first to popularize a regional cuisine, a trend that would expand greatly in the decades to come.

With his open smile and ready laugh, Prudhomme quickly became a media favorite, appearing on all major networks and going on to host several shows on PBS, becoming one of the first celebrity chefs. He maintained his fame through innovation: His blackened redfish recipe was so popular that it led the state to impose fishing limits, and he is credited with inventing the turducken.

In this sense, as an innovator and raconteur, Prudhomme was as uniquely American as his food, a mélange of Spanish, African, French, Italian and Native American influences. “Seven flags flew over New Orleans in the early days,” he wrote, “and each time a new nation took over, many members of the deposed government would leave the city; most of the cooks and other servants stayed behind.”

Thus a cuisine was born.

To some, this country is a melting pot; in New Orleans it is better recognized as a gumbo: a simple, sturdy base, enriched by the diversity of whatever goes into the stew.

With elegant simplicity, Commander’s Palace may have summed up Prudhomme’s legacy. “We’re very saddened to hear,” it tweeted after news of his death. “He was well loved.”