December 10, 2024 • 50 mins
On episode two of the third season of the Between Bites podcast, Nina Compton and Larry Miller are joined by Chef Melissa Martin, owner of the Mosquito Supper Club in New Orleans.
Chef Melissa explains the foundational philosophy of the Mosquito Supper Club, emphasizing the connection to Cajun culture and the importance of using local, fresh ingredients sourced from Louisiana with the goal of preserving Cajun heritage and traditions.
Discussion shifts to Chef Melissa's two books, Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou and Bayou: Feasting Through the Seasons of a Cajun Life, as she aims to dispel common myths and stereotypes about Cajun life and cuisine.
Later we learn about Chef's new project on the West Bank of New Orleans where guests will be able to get a quick escape from the city life and experience a mix of hospitality and local culture while enjoying the beauty of the Mississippi River.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
All right, welcome back another edition between Bites with Nina
Compton and Larry Miller.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Nina, who are we chatting with today?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have amazing chef Melissa Martin.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yay chef, that's not all she does. She's at author, author, activist,
protector of Cajun history. Boss lady, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm trying to do all those things.
Speaker 5 (00:42):
You're doing them at a very.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
People ask me, now, are you a chef or you
were author? And I say, I'm just a curator of
things I like, and I'm a protector of things that
I like.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
You definitely do that.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, I mean your restaurant definitely encompasses that, and it
speaks when you walk any like this is. It's thoughtful
and it's I tell people when they comes to you know,
they have to go to this restaurant because there's nothing
like it.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
In the world. Thank you. If you could take this
and put.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
This in Chicago, it wouldn't feel the same.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No, it's hard to put Cajun restaurants other places. Definitely,
And I get asked all the time, especially Nashville's starting
with me hard right now. They really want a Cajun
Russian up there, but you just can't, you know, it
has to be close to the source. I mean, we've
already driven to Home, Louisiana today to pick up our oysters,
you know, and I usually do that, but my mom
(01:40):
and dad are driving with ice chests, and then they
meet us in Booty, Louisiana and we pick up the oysters,
and then tomorrow we get a live feed for the crab.
And so it's you just can't get that kind of
ingredients other places to make sure that the food tastes correct.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The fourtunate thing is you don't even have to buy
ice right now now, so called outside, just throw them
in the cooler and leave a leave a little it open.
The restaurant we are talking about right now, of course,
is Mosquito Supper Club. Yes, tell us about obviously, that's
one that was probably bouncing around your head in the
(02:17):
easy fun way of I want a restaurant that represents
the food I growing up and my interpretation of it. Now,
how did it turn into an actual restaurant?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
So whenever I started, I started as a pop up.
So I just wanted to cook for enough people that
if none of my employees showed up, I could do
it all by myself. So I chose twenty four people,
and I was like, I'm going to cook Cajun food
for twenty four people. And when I started, I would
have if somebody wanted to come eat and they couldn't
afford it, they wanted to come be for free, they
would come and help me do dishes in the back.
(02:50):
After the dinner, they would come and help me clean up.
So and then it just obviously evolved. And at first,
when I started cooking, I didn't even know if it
was going to be Cajun food. I just wanted to
do fresh, local, seasonal, you know. I just wanted to
go to a pharmist market and get whatever I could
cook and just cook like clean, minimal food. But then
(03:10):
I started thinking about Cajun food, and I was like, God,
where can you eat Cajun food with respectabl ingredients in
the city. And there wasn't a lot of options. I mean,
there certainly was Koshon, and there was a lot of
items on the Koshon menu that were very indicative of
food that I ate growing up. But the food that
we ate growing up is just slightly different, and just
(03:33):
like Creole food or Cajun food, or kind of anywhere
you go in the world, in these peasant places, the
best food is actually in people's houses. And so the big,
the big thing was to try to get this food
that I grew up eating on my mom's table, on
my grandmother's table, on my aunt's table, and bring it
(03:53):
into a restaurant and to try to hold true to
it as much as possible. And in the beginning we
did that all the time. And now we anchor the
menu on traditional items and then we put other items
that I just love to cook with traditional ingredients. Yes, well, I.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Remember when you gave me the oyster soup with them.
I still have the container because it's so it's so
you and you just preserve that and I love that
I remember.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
To back it up. This was a very special treat
that Melissa made one time, and when we picked it up,
we picked it up in the oyster, Yes, the empty
container that the oysters had originally come.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
In, Yeah, from Wilson Oysters. In the home and we
save all those containers and we use them around the house.
And then my mom puts her shrimp and when she
gets like, you know, my mom buys one hundred two
hundred three hundred punds strimp at the time. She puts
them in those Wilson containers that much puts them in
the fraser. Yes, they go through a lot of shrouds.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I grew.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, awesome, But.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, that was my grandm other soup. And my grandmother
was married to an oyster fisherman. Her dad was an
oyster fisherman, longline at oyster Fishermen and uh, and so
she went out in cold oysters and shucked oysters. And
so that soup is made with that little bitter liquid
that's in when you get a raw oyster, that little
bit of liquid. So as they're shucking, the oysters are
(05:21):
saving the liquids that's falling out until we have gallons
of it and we can make the soup with these
gallons of oyster water. And then she would also take
that oyster water and like cook rice in it, and
cook pasta in it, and use it pretty much for
anything that you need that sort of like seawater taste too.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
I love that. I want to bowl right now.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I will bring you some. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring
the guys from Saint Germaine's some because they gave me
all their old dishes and uh, and so I'll bring
you guys some Oh that's what it is. It's a
it's oyster soup season right now, Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It is.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
So you have two books out?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I do, Yes, it's surprising. For a second.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Wait, what one of the reasons I wanted to talk
to you the most? Now Nina has her first cookbook
coming out next spring.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
I know, I'm so excited and well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I don't know why I'm thinking. But one of the
things I smiled at when as I saw her, and
the amount of work is pretty unreal. It is put
into a at least cookbook, because that's all we've really seen.
But I'm like, oh, look, Melissa is doing another one,
and we're like, wow, she should write a book on
how to want to even come entertain the thought of
(06:36):
doing a second book. That you must have some kind
of system or there's something you love about the whole
idea of that putting it down and writing it, being bound.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
And I grew up in a family of six kids,
so I driving chaos. So making a cookbook is very chaotic,
you know, And I'm a very logistics person, organizer. I'm
not the best plater of foods, you know, like some
people have like a flair for plating food. That's not me,
you know, Like, but I'm very good at logistics and
(07:08):
organization and streamlining and that's kind of And then checklist.
I love a checklist, and so it's so great when
you have a checklist. It's like three years long, but
you have to, I guess, like Anne LaMotte says in
her book Bird to Bird with the cookbook, you gotta
just take it bird by bird, you know, And there's
points where it's just so overwhelming and you're like, what
(07:31):
why have I done this myself again? But then there's
some like you know, triumphs, and I guess whenever you're
checking off the checklist, it feels good. But it's no
easy feat. But I'm also a real introvert, and so
I like being by myself a lot, and I like
just you know, putting around my house and cleaning my
(07:51):
base boards and being creative and so that works for me.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
But you wrote it.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
I did write both the books, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Which is also extremely impressive.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Very impressive, because when I was doing my book, I'm like,
I'm not gonna write I have no clue what I'm
doing so I had somebody write it with me, and
as I read it, I'm like, there's no way I
could have done that.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
But you did that.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You could have no. No, it just starts with the
shitty first draft.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Get down.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
But just like when you're cooking, you know, when you're
trying to develop a recipe. You know, we all it
doesn't matter for professional chefts. We cook some things sometimes
and we feed it to our family and they're like,
that's delicious, and you're like, I'm glad you liked it
because I will never make it.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
That was not what I was intending. And it's cool.
It's sort of the same thing. You start with like
a shitty first draft, and then you sort of go
from there.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
So with the two books, let our listeners know what
they're in for, because I think Mosquito supper Club, the
initial book was talking about to buy you, and then
your second book also talks about to buy you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, so the first book it was kind of like like,
you know, if you think of like who, what, when, how,
it is very much like what, like like what is
Mosuito supper Club? Why? Why Mosquito supper Club? But what
does it actually mean to grow up in a fishing village.
What does it mean to be a shrimper or oyster
fisherman or crabber? What do you actually get paid? How
(09:23):
do you get paid? What like what kind of like
backbreaking work are you doing for this, like measly dollar
pound for shrimp? Why is it a dollar pound for shrimp?
How did they come up with the price for shrimp?
Sort of talked about all like the good, the bad,
the evil also enter the oil industry, and so like
(09:43):
how does this culture get changed so much? How is
it that we have a shrimp and petroleum festival and
you could be the queen of it right, you know,
And they're in trouble right now because none of the
shrimp was local this year at the festival. But that's
exciting that they're in trouble, you know, to like this
we're paying, Yeah, we're paying attention. And so I think
(10:04):
that it was very much like an introduction and it
was also dispelling myths because there's just so many myths
about being Cajun and groping bayou. And for me, one
of the biggest myths is are one of the biggest
things is that like we're poked fun at a lot.
You know, we're a fun culture to poke fun of.
You know, we have like The water Boy with Adam Sandler.
My friend just wrote a huge piece about how it's
(10:25):
not that bad. She's Cajun. And I wanted to show
it as a sophisticated culture that you know, evolved and
evolved with this food from places all over the world,
food that was shared, food that you know, evolved and
became what it is. If you go to like, you know,
(10:45):
say you're in the Basque country, like, you're not poking
fun at a bit, right, You're like, this is like
a culture that evolved and food that evolved locally. And
I think that it's really important to bring the sophisticated
aspect into it and also make people understand what does
it actually mean to like live the life fishermen, to
grow up in a tiny fishing village of two thousand
people and then all the food comes from women. Because
(11:10):
growing up I saw on TV all these like male
Cajun chefs and I was, you know, a little concerned
because my dad did not to make toast, you know,
And so I was like, Okay, So I think it's
really important to like, do.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You ever tell you a therapist that, yeah, a lot
that your dad can't make toast. I mean it just
seems like for a chef, there's you could dig in.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
This is a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We have one on the web MD.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
The other day, my therapist says, we never even got
to your childhood. We've been in three years. It's like
that's the rest. Oh great, this is gonna cost a
lot of money, but yeah, you know, it's really just
important to like give credit where credit is due. And
the fun thing about writing the first book is that
I educated my mother own so much stuff that she
(11:59):
didn't know about, you know, like where Ochre comes from,
you know, just like all the little things and not that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Not she didn't know a bad but you took for
granted as a part of it's just something else. They
don't have that in New York. No, they don't have.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
But also they're not teaching that in school. I mean,
like growing up in the Byo, they've left a lot
of education out. But one of the things is like
they're not telling you like, well, Oka came here, and
this is why it came right this Rice came here,
and this is why I came and you know, this
is from here all those things. I think it's just
so important, and it's really important to not only let
your own culture that doesn't know about it know, but
(12:34):
the whole world or anyone that picks up that book.
And so that was like the most important things in
the first book for me. The second book for me
is a little bit more like you know, like ether all.
You know, I wanted to kind of show whatever, I
wanted to invoke what it feels like for a year
(12:57):
in Louisiana. And so we start in Jamjanuary. We end
in December, but not seasonally because we don't have regular rituals,
so you can't write the seasonal cookbook. So we start
in January. So it's thematic throughout the year of how
kind of I feel in each time to the year.
So right now we're in a chapter I call love,
(13:18):
which is sort of the bittersweetness of the holidays. I
call it a metamorphosis of the soul. And when you
get out to the other side of January, you've become
a butterfly. Thank god, because it's Marti Gras and so
you know, so January is abundance, you know, and this
is really big time in New Orleans there's a certain
(13:40):
feeling that takes over your body, whether you want to
or not, whether you want to escape it. Because I'm
a big escaper of Marti Gras, but I still because
I did it my whole life growing up. I when
as I'm escaping, I'm feeling a little bit of fomo,
even though I know I know what's going to happen. Money,
I'm going to waste on gl litter if I say know.
(14:00):
And then we go from abundance to simplicity. This I
mean it runs in the Catholic holidays because I grew
up Catholic simplicity, and then from their warmth the summer
and warmth keeps going, you know, to grace and resilience
because I mean, I think we're finally out of hurricane season. Yes,
but it's sort of like that feeling of how you
(14:21):
feel throughout a year and then how you might cook
throughout that year because of what is in season, you know,
when that's how it sort of.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But I think that's also one of your special gifts
as a as an author, is to explain those feelings
through whatever the medium of food or the medium of
putting together a meal at home. From the book that's
a neat way to look at it as opposed to seasonal.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, and we really, my publisher artisan and my editor
took some really big chances, which I didn't like. A
couple of pieces I wrote and I was like, there's
no way they're going to make it into this book,
and did you know? And so I wrote about my nanny,
which is my godmother's funeral, and then I also wrote
about like the birth of my niece and so you know,
(15:10):
birth life kind of did you know, the whole thing,
and then and the book ends and the stories with
the beast called I know how this ends. And that's
just about you know, the by you and this life
in general, because I'm not aging backwards and you know,
the marsh is not growing. So yeah, we took some
chances on it. I've already I don't ever read reviews.
(15:33):
I appreciate that you do because I get to laugh.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
I can't, but I just I don't.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
But the other day I read some Amazon reviews of
by You, just just to see, and someone was so
angry with me that the chapters weren't like fish advertizers, soup,
you know whatever, and they were everybody does that. Yeah,
and they were so mad and they said a lot
of you know, choice words. And but what's funny about
(16:01):
that is that whenever I want to be like inspired
to cook something, I pretty much don't cook out of cookbooks.
But I love to look at them and I love
to see what other people are doing. And I did
cook out of Marcella Hazan's a lot so that I
can learn how she did her recipes before I did
my first book. But if I am going to pick
up a cookbook for inspiration, I always got already index
I never go to the chapter openers. I just got
(16:24):
already indexed. Yeah, like okay chicken, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
What can we do?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean, that's interesting. I've never thought of it that way,
but that's exactly how I do it too.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Well, I look at just a picture of the dish
like yours and the title. Yeah, it's like the crab
that you had at Mosquito Supper Club. That is a
beautiful picture, And I'm like, I want to know how
to make that. Yes, So, because those pictures are they
jump out at you. And I think your book is
definitely one that it's a page to it it because
(16:55):
it's so beautifully captured and the story is very very
close to your heart and you can feel that. And
I think that's why people love the restaurant and they
love you because it's very personal and it's you're documenting
the history of your childhood and your the way you
grew up, which a lot of people don't know that
(17:17):
because we take for granted that we have shrimp and
we have crab, and we have oysters, and not understanding
they have people behind that. It's not opening a container
of oysters and it's just mass produced. It is people
picking those things up.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yes, so thank you.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know, like when the crab starts
coming off the menu, it's because it's cold and crabbers
don't want to go out want to crab, you know,
and so there's a lotless crab on the menu. But yeah,
I mean I still on a first name basis with
like all the people I get my seafood from, and
you know, I hope that I can it can stay
(17:54):
that way, you know, into the future. But I certainly
like feel it in my god where I'm like, oh God,
how how can we keep sustaining this? You know, through
the trials that we experienced in South Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Well, it's we were watching the news yesterday and they
were talking about the sea turtles in.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
In Providence in the Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, that they it's because the water temperature is raising
that they go for the north to cool off and.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Now, but they don't know about the sudden weather changes.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So there's stock so they now they have to go
pick them up frozen on the beach. Yeah, because of
climate change.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So one day you may be pulling your oysters further
north and getting When you talked about the festival not
serving local shrimp, ironically, six years or so ago, we
passed along in the state that if you were serving
seafood from outside of Louisiana or Louisiana waters, that you
(18:55):
had to note it on your menu.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I haven't seen it on a single menu, no, no one.
I can taste. I can taste a difference for sure,
from the fishermen that we use and the sweetness, and
there's just something very special about the shrimp that we
get to have here and versus when I travel and
taste something else that is a premium product for their region.
(19:18):
It's just not as good as ours. No, the you
need that brackish water It's how hard is it for
you between some of the things that are just so
special as a flavor profile for us here in South Louisiana.
How tough is it traveling and tasting well?
Speaker 4 (19:35):
I mean, even the gumbo that I serve at Mosquito
is not as good as my mother's gumbo. My mother's gumbo,
she only gets shrimp from one by you, by You Boudreau,
and it's better. You know, it's little shrimp. It's really
really sweet. And then minds is a little bit different
because it's not from that by you. So we are
like crazy tasting shrimp.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
We know where the shrump, what water it comes from.
And what happens is when the shrimp leave these little
estuaries where it's like all this like lovely brackish water,
they go further and further out into the salt water
and they start to get bleached out. You know, it's
like in the you know, it's just like they lose
that sort of like really organic sweet taste. It's really
(20:17):
hard for me to order shrimp anywhere else, you know.
I'm so particular about it. I actually just hat at
a restaurant and the shrimp was cooked correctly. And I
was like, it was just shrimp cocktail, but it was.
It was cooked perfectly. And then I talked to the
chef later and he was like, yeah, I had to
change the method because they want us to do some
really bad things. But I just don't, you know, I
(20:40):
eat whatever. I mean, I'll try and if I'm in
Spain at gambas or whatever, I'll try it, but I
usually just pass it up and have whatever.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
You know, their.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Specialty is.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Sounds like fun.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
So you are also an avid baker, which I love
the this sweet potato rolls. Yes, everything tell me about that?
Was that from your mother, your grandmother?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
So interestingly enough, I learned how to cook from my
family as an adult. They never let us cook growing
up because my mother had six children, so she ran
the kitchen like a professional kitchen. And when they cooked
for bigger holidays, it was the first time I saw
like a really like productive line situation where they would
(21:30):
like go in for the holiday and they would make
like eighty pies. Like wow, my mom the other day
and it was nine in the morning, She's like, I
just made twenty pies, you know, And I was like
her and my dad and they made the tart a
la buy, which is like you know, the famous Christmas
cage and pie. And so what I saw my whole
life was production. I saw like a production kitchen. She
(21:52):
had six children. She needed to feed us, you know,
and so like when she woke us up in the
morning to go to school, I could already hear like
the metal spoon banging on the magna light. That was
kind of like the noises of my childhood, very comforting.
But she already had like all the food that we
were going to eat for dinner on the stove, because
it was all these long cooks and she was already
(22:13):
cooking it. So so the baking, although I was around it,
and I ate delicious stuff. And she still makes biscuits
every morning when I'm there.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Oh that's good, I know it is.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
And the biscuits that she makes, the seven up biscuits
are in the second book, so we've pertatd biscuits are
in the first book. But I just love baking, you know,
I was always drawn to it. I think I wind
it up more on the savory side. It was so
I could pay myself, so I could survive it, you know.
I think I became a chef too early so that
I could like take care of my child, you know,
(22:46):
whereas like you want to keep learning from people. But
you know, as a single mom, I was like, I
need to make I need to be able to support us.
And so, you know, I became a chef like when
I was really young, which is kind of it in
a way, like it's it's not like a final for you.
But the best part of being a cook is learning
(23:06):
from other people, you know, And so whenever you get
into this spot, then you're like, how else, how am
I going to keep learning from books or whatever? And
so when I started Mosquito, I would take the summers off.
I would close the restaurant for the summer and I
would go and cook somewhere else in the summer. So
I spent a summer as a pastry chef in Iceland
(23:28):
at a tiny little hotel on a one mile island
wow that had no cars, and so it was great,
and I did all their sourdough breads and I did
like traditional Icelandic desserts, and then I did some of
my own, like roles and things like that. So that
was super fun. And then the next summer I went
to like Galiano Island a little another little tiny island
with no cars. Some islanders have cars there and you
(23:50):
have to hitchhike to get to work and back. But
it's like by the law, they have to pick up
a hitchhiker if they can fit you in the car,
because that's how they keep the island and no cars
in it. And that's off of the because of Vancouver,
the golf islince. So again like got to go and
you know, make pastry there and learn from other people.
The guy had worked at Noma, you know, so learned
(24:12):
a lot about ferments and things like that. And yeah,
I just love it, you know, the the ovens a
fun things.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Yeah, so you have an exciting new project.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Oh god, yes, so it's crazy, it's like insane. So yes,
So I closed on a building on the West Bank
in New Orleans. One of the things as a business
owner as a chef is very exciting to own your
own building. I don't know what that's like because I
never have. I've rented the space that Mosquito's in, so
(24:46):
it's really exciting to think that everything I put into
the building kind of like a house when you rent
a house, your own a house. That you maybe will
be able to you know, you'll be able to enjoy,
but one day you'll sell it and it'll be yours.
And so we found Me and my friend were kind
of having a rough week and so but we really
like real estate, so we go look at real estate
all the time. And so we were like, let's go
(25:09):
get funky on the West Bank. So we found this
property and we went and looked at it, and and
I had always imagined having, you know, like, and I
used this term really loosely, a little BlackBerry farms, you know,
just like somewhere where you could go and be away
from New Orleans, out of the city, but also get
good hospitality, good food, and get you know, just like
(25:31):
a quick break from the city. And so we found
this property, which is almost on four acres, it has
almost twenty live oak trees. It's on the Mississippi River,
and so we decided to buy it. And we wanted
to get it off the market as soon as possible
because so many because when it went on the market,
so many people were looking at it. And so we
(25:53):
leased it from the owner for the last three months.
So I've just been hanging out in the West Bank,
walking around these trees with my dogs and kind of
figuring out like what it feels like and what it
should be. I will tell you before we got it
off the market twice, Reinagan was there. What the first
(26:14):
time I saw him, I was like, I said, I
think that's Rainagan. And then I was like, you know what,
I'm not going to say it's Raynagan because it looks
like rain Agan, but it's somebody else, you know. I
was like, but I told my husband, I think that's Reinagan.
And then the second time when I saw him, I
(26:35):
was like, that is rain Agan in a maya place
in the flesh Rainagan. I was just like, God, I
wish I had my Nagan in your pocket. You know.
It's like the best thing out of Patrina.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
For those of you who don't know or may have
been following this podcast from when we were doing it
from Miami before, I'm kidding about it. Yeah, yeah, Reinagan
was the mayor that led us through a very difficult
time of Katrina while also figuring out other ways to
enrich himself. But anyway, it's just been released back into
(27:10):
society at large. So and he was he was working
there or he was eyeballing your future.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I don't know if he was eyeballing it, but he
was slowing down in front of the buildings, you know,
and then he and a group of people were walking
the properties. So we're like, we got to get this
off the market.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yes, is there going to be an overnight availability.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
There will be at some point.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
The city has really strenuous rules and so we have
to abide by all those. But yeah, it's going to
be a restaurant, bar and events space. So Mosquito Seppa
Club is really tiny. It'll be nice for us to
do bigger weddings, you know, just bigger events for people,
and but it'll be a tiny, little, you know, French
farmhouse on the West Bank, which is appropro because people
(28:00):
in the West Bank still speak French.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
So I love that. If anybody could do it, we
will see.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That is your conversation with French not very good at all.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
But when I'm.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
I whenever I go to France, I have a working
knowledge of basic things. When people slow down, I can
understand what they're saying. When people speak how they normally
speak really fast and angry, I get lost. But the
area that I spent a lot of time in Gascony
in the south of France. Everyone is so nice that
(28:34):
the farmers' markets, they're incredible. They help you at the bakeries.
So usually my like just basic working knowledge of like
how many big ats I have to bring back for
the event or how many things. People are super nice.
But yeah, my parents spoke French, and then my grandmother,
I mean that was like her very first language. So
(28:55):
but that French is very much you know, evolving out
of so there's not that many people that speak that French.
So when I do go down a kokuadree and do events,
I'm always excited to go hang out with the folks
that still sound like my you know, my grandparents and
interesting love when I'm in Gascony, Like I went to
(29:15):
a night market in Naraq, which is kind of like
just like a farmer's market, but all the farmers are
cooking their own foods. It's how I learned how they
do their steaks. They call them if you want it,
if you want it, like you know, like kind of
like black and blue sound. But everybody looked and sounded
like my grandparents and my aunts and uncles, and so
(29:37):
that was such a heartwarming thing. They have that really
like they're wes wat you know, and that reminds me
of my godfather's saying why Brenda, you know, and so
that like was I felt really present and really like,
you know, our history is definitely there.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Let's say God forbid for the rest of us, you
did not cook for a living, what would you be
doing right now?
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Well, like like second dream, I don't know, classical musician really,
you know, something where I could really be alone, you know,
like self deprecating, you know, studying music all the time.
I love classical music so much. My brother's a jazz pianist,
so he travels the world playing. I think it's like
(30:29):
a really beautiful life of making music. I think some
of like the greatest times of my younger time, like
in high school and middle school was like being in
the concert band. I really loved it and like it.
There's a feeling kind of like when the restaurant is working.
There's a beautiful dance when the restaurant is working, where
you can take a second and be like wow, all
(30:51):
these intricy pieces and you know, all this training, it's
like it's happening, you know. There's a bit of like
conducting that go on with it.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yes, and when you go everything you're doing is putting
it together, either as an individual or as a team.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To be judged by others, yeah, yeah, and the vulnerability.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yes, certainly. I mean I go to some restaurants and
I start to cry because everything is happening the way
it should be. I remember being a restaurant in Spain
and just and my husband's like, what is wrong with you?
And I'm like, no, you don't understand. This is so
hard because it's when you're at a restaurant that it
looks so simple when you realize how hard it is.
(31:33):
I'm like, what they're doing right now is so hard.
But this dance is so perfect, it's so beautiful, it's
so orchestrated. So I guess it would make sense that
I want to be in the want to be a
classical musician in my second life. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Favorite dish of all time? If you if you had
to have one dish. We were talking about this the
other day. Anything we said, if you had to have
one dish for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That's a hard one.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Oh, that's a hard.
Speaker 5 (31:59):
That's a hard one. What would it be?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
I mean, if it's if it's for the rest of
my life. I mean, it would probably just have to
be like soup, you know, like it would be like,
you know, like chicken soup are every day.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, the banana bread is the only right answer, can't
you get You get some vitamins and stuff, you get carbohydrates,
there's some energy in the nuts.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Mine would be rice and beans. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I was gonna say, see because I always say, like
if I have my prison meal, you know, my last
walk meal, that it's jumble eye of white beans and
like fried fish, you know. So, But then I think
about rice is like, you know, sometimes heavy. So I'm like,
I have to go with some something broadty.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
But you could always cut back on the portions. I
guess like more so you banana bread. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
I'm not ready to mar that's what you said. I
think you have to read tract.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I had a better reason than either of you for picking.
I had nutrition, I had.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Taste, fiber, eggs, sugar.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Here we go. I'm living forever. Baby.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
The your own banana bread. No does his own anything
or something? No.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I made it delicious. What started off supposedly we're going
to be enchiladas turned into enchilada.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Pie the other Yeah, it was good. I love enchiladas.
Would I would have eaten the enchilada pie. That's another
thing is people think that people who are shaps they
don't want to like cook for you, and they're always
so apologetic when you eat at their house and you're like, no,
you don't understand. It's annoying for me, just like I
(33:41):
will eat anything, like literally, just make anything. I'm hungry
all the time.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
That's the opposite. At our house. I'll get in there
or she'll say, you're going to make dinner tonight, no problem.
I'll get in there to the side, and then she
pushes me out of the way.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah, because he takes too long, and I'm like, arry,
if I'm hungry to eat now, not in two hours.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
I can hear things like I start smelling things. I'm
like no, no, no trying, no, no, no, it's too long,
Like it's not fair.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
You did what?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Oh no, let me just do it.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, the the grill or the pizza of it's like
I can start the fire and that's it. She pushes
me out of the way and everything else.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
It's really hard.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I'm not complaining anymore. All I got to do is
light the fire.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
That's all you need to do. And the dishes. That's
how a deal. Yes, I cook, he does the dishes.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
That's how it is in my house too.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
So any holiday.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Traditions, I mean, my mother cooks all the food. If
she's like bring something, I be like, I'm gonna bring
some rolls, and then I say can I bake them
off at your house? Say no, I'm not bringing them.
She's like, well, I don't know, it's going to be
in my oven lescent. And I'm like, oh god, Mom,
come on, how big is you strike from Turkey? We
(34:58):
don't need it. It's never good.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
How is the fridge in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (35:02):
It's not that big.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I meant it because we throw up a fridge and
it's just the two of us. How do you have
six children in a fridge? Did you drink powdered milk?
Grow Now, it's not just we only had three kids
and we still got stuck with powdered milk.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Yeah, No, I mean I think it was just because
the ingredients were like coming in and coming out. You know,
It's like we you know, she cooked all the food
from the first book, you know, and then we also,
like I tell the speople at Mosquito all the time, like,
wish your soup would have been the meal that's it,
but I'm giving you five or six other things, you know,
and so, and then we ate leftovers. You know, I
(35:37):
still love leftovers. When I go to my mom's house
and I open the fridge, I'm like, ooh, yeah, you know,
you go to the freezer. There's so many different levels
of leftovers, which is so delicious. But yeah, my mom
cooks everything. My mother still lives next door to her
three sisters, so I love that. Yeah, there used to
be more, but people have passed away, and her mom
used live next door to her, so it's super fun.
(35:59):
We go down to the buy you everyone's around feels
really communal, like when you were a kid, and my
mom cooks just some stupid amount of food, you know,
all by herself. My favorite are peas and rice dressing,
which someone started calling dirty rice. I think it was Popeyes.
I think Popeyes made of dirty rice, honestly, but peas
(36:22):
and dirty rice are like, actually, all our peas and
rist dressing is actually all I need, you know. But
there's another, like, you know, forty options.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So if you don't answer this question, then you're just
not telling the truth. But I understand if your mother's
still alive. No kid loved every single thing their mother.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Made already just said don't do the turkey.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Don't do the turkey. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Birds are I ate everything. I loved everything. When I
was a kid. They'd be like, what is your favorite food?
And I say cabbage. They'd say, you know, my cabbage
is really good. But but birds were like a little
bit hard baked birds for like the Cajun woman growing up,
because they were scared, they were not done, and so
at that point that they were scared, it wasn't done,
(37:09):
and it was done, they gave it another thirty forty
with no brine or anything. So we said growing up
that my mom always made baked chicken and green beans.
The green beans were incredible, but you had to take
a bite of the chicken and then put the green
beans in your mouth too, so you could swallow.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
It's like eating sawdust.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Yes, but not.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Everything she made was delicious, amazing, the.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
We're good on time. Just one more thing I want
to get to. Perhaps the thing that made my heart
the warmest when I think about you was during a
very difficult time, whichever what hurricane was. This like, I
don't the effort that you made to support the folks
who were really I mean, we were hit hard here,
(37:59):
hit hard meaning not a lot of structural damage, no
power for ten days or whatever it was, and we
thought it was the end of the world. There were
folks down back down by the Bayou where you grew up,
that had it much worse than we did. Can you
describe a little bit how the process of you stepping
(38:20):
up and generating lots of cash for one thing to
get it in people's hands, how that came about, and
what that experience was like.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, first of all, I evacuated my parents. I told
my mother that if she didn't evacuate that I would
never listen to anything. She said again, that's how I
said it. I was like, you want me to listen
to your advice, you're going to evacuate. So it took
my parents and we went to Florida, and it was
really really difficult for her because her sister stayed, you know,
and so that was a pretty horrible thing. But we
(38:51):
were like, we cannot convince them to leave, but we
can take you guys out of here. So we took
them out and sort of watched the storm and Blue
Mountain Beach and stayed on the phone as much as
we could with her sisters and listened to them say
the roofs being peeled away, and listened to all the horror,
you know, which was, you know, quite a difficult time.
(39:13):
And then after the storm had passed, we went with
them to go back. So we took my parents back
to the bayou, and there was no roof, there was
no running water, there was no electricity. There was just
an obscene amount of damage. And one of the things
a lot of people don't know about Ida is that
areas that had never flooded before flooded because the floodgates
(39:35):
were closed too soon and they could no longer be opened.
And one when the hurricane switched tracks, it pinned water
in and a place that never have been never's been
flooded before. And not only pinned water in, but it
pushed water over the bayou and over the levee and
into the estuaries so and then just took every structure
with it on its way. So the levees, for you know,
(39:59):
miles were just covered with houses and boats and cars
and you name it and anyway. And so even though
there was like no roofs and no electricity and no
running water, they stayed and because that's just who they are.
And so when I was driving away, because I was like,
(40:19):
I cannot stay with them because I'm going to use
resources and I need to not use their resources. They
have a limited amount of water. Someone in the streets
has a swimming pool, and so that's how they used
like bathe themselves whatever. But also they had a freezer
full of food. So the freezer full of shramp and
all this food. So I knew they were gonna be okay.
They were gonna be able to feed themselves and feed
the people around them. So as far as like, you know,
(40:41):
their immediate family and the people that live around them,
they were going to be okay. Food wise. It was
just going to be hot and they were gonna be
sticky and dirty and all those things. Actually, the very
first thing I did when I got to my parents'
house because it was raining, is I pulled the the
gutters down and started making the marine cadgements because I
was like, we just had a torrential amount of rain.
(41:03):
You guys don't have know water, Like, what's wrong with
you people?
Speaker 5 (41:05):
You know?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
I was like putting buckets and anything I could find
because it was right, and I was like, we're gonna
start saving some water here. And so I left them
there and that was pretty horrible for me, and I
came to my house in New orleansers didn't have electricity,
and was like, I can't stay here because again I'm
using resources and my dogs are so hot. I thought
my dogs were going to die they because they pant
whenever they're trying to release heat or whatever. And so
(41:28):
I started driving. I had already told my family that
was still in the Florida Beach house that we were
going to have to move to another location, and so
we moved to Ashville, North Carolina, because that's where incidentally,
my brother and his wife lived, so that was like
the next place we could go. And while I was
driving there, I was talking to my friends who still
live on the Bayou. So Jonathan fora who's a huge presence,
(41:51):
and he has a not for profit called the Helio Foundation,
which he actually started to build neighborhoods in Bangladesh when
he was on the Peace Corps and he spent time
there and a whole neighborhood he worked with burned down.
So he started this not for profit to raise money
to put neighborhoods up. And so there was a not
for profit in place, and so I said, I cannot
(42:14):
be on the ground in the Bayou right now because
of the resource situation. It would be rude of me,
I said, But you guys are down on there. I said,
I'm going to start to go fundme and we're going
to raise money to put money in people's hands so
they can try to figure it out, because you know,
the A teams don't work, credit cards don't work, and
you still need things. And people didn't have houses. People
(42:34):
were putting tents.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Up, you know.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
And so I built the GoFundMe and we were driving
through Georgia and I hit like play, you know, and
I was like, God, what am I doing. I don't
want to ask people for money. It just makes me
feel so gross, and so I took it down and
then I said, oh, fuck it, ye and so and so,
you know, it was kind of just like fire after that.
And it was really exciting for me too, because you know,
(42:59):
I'm ocasion chef. Every once in a while you feel
a caricature of yourself, and you don't want to be
you know, you want to be doing good for your culture,
and every once in a while, because it is a business,
every once in a while you feel really weird about it.
And so that was this moment where I was like,
everything I've done, all the social presence, social media presence
that I've had to create, all of it is for
(43:20):
this reason right now, and this reason is the catapult
this GoFundMe to help the people that the story is from.
And so it made sense in my head. And then
I spent I probably didn't sleep for three months, and
I spent every single moment of my time running this
GoFundMe and organizing this crazy grassroots effort. And the people
(43:40):
in the hospitality industry were incredible. I mean, the guy
who owns man Alito would drive down and drive whatever
was needed, whether it's gasoline, I repropen insulin like diapers,
wipes like drive everything, and then he'd say does your
mom need something? I'd be like, should really owns some
vanilla waferst and so can you bring out like something
to cheer up? But everybody would go and stop and
(44:03):
see my parents and then you know, there was just
so many people helping in so many different ways. It
was quite incredible. And then we got a lot of
private donors too that sent cash that was specifically used
to take people's boats out the bayou that were capsized,
get those boats fixed, get them new trolls, get them
(44:23):
new crab traps, all those things, so those people could
immediately start working to not only clear the bayous and
clean the bayoused, but start working because we were in
shrimp season. These people still needed a place to live
their boats, and they needed to be able to you know,
sell their shrimp and feed their families. So and it
still sort of continues, so we still have funds coming
(44:44):
in that pretty much goes directly to shrimpers or crabbers
or fishermen, and then it also funds people who anybody
who needs food. So it became so big quickly that
we had to out like an armored guard to hand
cash out. And that was a moment where people thought
(45:05):
I was like shoving cash up my mom's chimney or something,
you know, and well, it's, uh, it became crazy.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
The crazy.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
The funny thing is I never saw the cat.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
It's like it gets deposited into a bank account and it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Gets You're not distributed, You don't whatever your story is,
that it was an incredibly uh incredibly great example of
leadership of somebody who a lot of times people will
tell us shut up and cook, shut up, bring me
my drink. But you didn't shut up, and you had
(45:42):
called you were vocal, and you helped a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, I really did. I really felt people on the body.
You had like paid it forward. And that was sort
of the thing I just kept saying over and over,
like Louisiana has paid it forward, not only an oil,
but we've paid it for forward and seafood and also
be in the ass of a lot of jokes. You know,
all the things and.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
A lot, but when you are the brunt of a
bunch of jokes a lot of times, you should take
that as a sign of pride. They're they're only saying
that because they want to be you. There's nobody in
the middle. I was gonna say, to the middle of Utah,
but they I can think of a documentary right anyway,
but there's nobody's making the little jokes. It's something they
(46:23):
admire so much.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
That the just and the reason why it worked is
because there are still people that I grew up with
that work in the non for profit sector who could
identify exactly who needed money and could bring it to
them and get aid for them in every single way.
I learned a lot about gasoline, Like big companies would
donate gasoline, like a big truck full of like, you know,
(46:46):
twenty thousand gallons of gas that they would say, I'm
donating this to you, But I had no where to
put the gas because I'd be on the phone with
gas stations and I'd be like, we need to dump
this gas so we can give it away. We can
put it in you know, gas of containers, and then
we can deliver it to people. So I had nobody
(47:07):
that would allow me to dump the gas in their
tanks to give it away because of liability, you know.
And so I mean, but one of the things like
the government does, and I know this is not to
make fun of the government podcast, however, is that they're like, come,
get your gas line up in your car, waste gas
with your AC on, and then we'll give you some gas,
(47:27):
you know. And so we were trying to figure out
how to like take the stupidity out the grassroots sort
of movement, and whenever. A lot of chefs in Asheville
called me after and they were like, call your representatives,
call this person, call this person, we need help. And
I had to be roll honest and say, nobody's coming.
Like they're gonna set up and they're gonna give out ice,
(47:49):
and they're gonna give out water, and maybe they'll give
out gasoline. I said, but you're gonna have to go
to that. I said, you guys need to form a
civilian army and you need to do it yourself. Because
fortunately that's just where we're at. And I stayed away
from it because I was like, it took me, like,
you know, years to recover from Ida, and and Kokuaji
will never be the same and Chaven will never be
(48:11):
the same. One of the big things that happen is
they close down all the schools and raise the schools,
and so now families can't you can't have a family
down there because if you you know, the schools that
I went to growing up, now you have to go
to home Louisiana to get to school, you know, and
you have to drive up pretty far distance.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
So that's unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That is well, thank you. Well we've got to have
something a little happier. Yeah, anyway, thank you for what
you did in the in that situation. What's next, Melissa.
So we've gone from Uptown to west Bank. We're selling
books all over the world.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
I hepe calling it Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
That would be fun, you know.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
For me, I'm always chasing happiness, you know, and so
I think for the West Bank, it's hanging out under
these beautiful oak trees and just trying to create space
for people. You know, I was thinking this morning, how
restaurants we not only have space to celebrate your wedding,
your anniversary, but I did someone's uh post funeral, after
the after the funeral, they all came and we cooked
(49:22):
for them. So, you know, celebrating creating space for people,
curating beautiful things together, writing stories, collecting stories, trying to
be happy fun, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Also, just I mean, this one's free. I'll give it
to you. Maybe plant some truffles under all those live oaks.
Could you imagine if the west Bank truffle tuts over
the culinary world. This is incredible.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
I'm going to give that to you, and if it
takes over, this is completely your business.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
I need your pigs to dig them up.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
But Nina and I have already decided you cannot have
more truffle dogs.
Speaker 5 (49:57):
Yeah, we've decided.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
We don't even have a truffle dog in I can
put trouble.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
You know, if anybody wants a dog, we're both we're
both over dogs. Yes, so in both houses.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
On that note, Pelicans fans, thank you very much Chef
for being with us.
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Go Pell, You're amazing. Pel Wait, wait, everybody,
All right, welcome back another edition between Bites with Nina
Compton and Larry Miller.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Nina, who are we chatting with today?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have amazing chef Melissa Martin.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yay chef, that's not all she does. She's at author, author, activist,
protector of Cajun history. Boss lady, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm trying to do all those things.
Speaker 5 (00:42):
You're doing them at a very.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
People ask me, now, are you a chef or you
were author? And I say, I'm just a curator of
things I like, and I'm a protector of things that
I like.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
You definitely do that.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, I mean your restaurant definitely encompasses that, and it
speaks when you walk any like this is. It's thoughtful
and it's I tell people when they comes to you know,
they have to go to this restaurant because there's nothing
like it.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
In the world. Thank you. If you could take this
and put.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
This in Chicago, it wouldn't feel the same.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
No, it's hard to put Cajun restaurants other places. Definitely,
And I get asked all the time, especially Nashville's starting
with me hard right now. They really want a Cajun
Russian up there, but you just can't, you know, it
has to be close to the source. I mean, we've
already driven to Home, Louisiana today to pick up our oysters,
you know, and I usually do that, but my mom
(01:40):
and dad are driving with ice chests, and then they
meet us in Booty, Louisiana and we pick up the oysters,
and then tomorrow we get a live feed for the crab.
And so it's you just can't get that kind of
ingredients other places to make sure that the food tastes correct.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
The fourtunate thing is you don't even have to buy
ice right now now, so called outside, just throw them
in the cooler and leave a leave a little it open.
The restaurant we are talking about right now, of course,
is Mosquito Supper Club. Yes, tell us about obviously, that's
one that was probably bouncing around your head in the
(02:17):
easy fun way of I want a restaurant that represents
the food I growing up and my interpretation of it. Now,
how did it turn into an actual restaurant?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
So whenever I started, I started as a pop up.
So I just wanted to cook for enough people that
if none of my employees showed up, I could do
it all by myself. So I chose twenty four people,
and I was like, I'm going to cook Cajun food
for twenty four people. And when I started, I would
have if somebody wanted to come eat and they couldn't
afford it, they wanted to come be for free, they
would come and help me do dishes in the back.
(02:50):
After the dinner, they would come and help me clean up.
So and then it just obviously evolved. And at first,
when I started cooking, I didn't even know if it
was going to be Cajun food. I just wanted to
do fresh, local, seasonal, you know. I just wanted to
go to a pharmist market and get whatever I could
cook and just cook like clean, minimal food. But then
(03:10):
I started thinking about Cajun food, and I was like, God,
where can you eat Cajun food with respectabl ingredients in
the city. And there wasn't a lot of options. I mean,
there certainly was Koshon, and there was a lot of
items on the Koshon menu that were very indicative of
food that I ate growing up. But the food that
we ate growing up is just slightly different, and just
(03:33):
like Creole food or Cajun food, or kind of anywhere
you go in the world, in these peasant places, the
best food is actually in people's houses. And so the big,
the big thing was to try to get this food
that I grew up eating on my mom's table, on
my grandmother's table, on my aunt's table, and bring it
(03:53):
into a restaurant and to try to hold true to
it as much as possible. And in the beginning we
did that all the time. And now we anchor the
menu on traditional items and then we put other items
that I just love to cook with traditional ingredients. Yes, well, I.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Remember when you gave me the oyster soup with them.
I still have the container because it's so it's so
you and you just preserve that and I love that
I remember.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
To back it up. This was a very special treat
that Melissa made one time, and when we picked it up,
we picked it up in the oyster, Yes, the empty
container that the oysters had originally come.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
In, Yeah, from Wilson Oysters. In the home and we
save all those containers and we use them around the house.
And then my mom puts her shrimp and when she
gets like, you know, my mom buys one hundred two
hundred three hundred punds strimp at the time. She puts
them in those Wilson containers that much puts them in
the fraser. Yes, they go through a lot of shrouds.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
I grew.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, awesome, But.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, that was my grandm other soup. And my grandmother
was married to an oyster fisherman. Her dad was an
oyster fisherman, longline at oyster Fishermen and uh, and so
she went out in cold oysters and shucked oysters. And
so that soup is made with that little bitter liquid
that's in when you get a raw oyster, that little
bit of liquid. So as they're shucking, the oysters are
(05:21):
saving the liquids that's falling out until we have gallons
of it and we can make the soup with these
gallons of oyster water. And then she would also take
that oyster water and like cook rice in it, and
cook pasta in it, and use it pretty much for
anything that you need that sort of like seawater taste too.
Speaker 5 (05:39):
I love that. I want to bowl right now.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
I will bring you some. I'm gonna I'm gonna bring
the guys from Saint Germaine's some because they gave me
all their old dishes and uh, and so I'll bring
you guys some Oh that's what it is. It's a
it's oyster soup season right now, Yes, it is.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It is.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
So you have two books out?
Speaker 4 (05:59):
I do, Yes, it's surprising. For a second.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Wait, what one of the reasons I wanted to talk
to you the most? Now Nina has her first cookbook
coming out next spring.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
I know, I'm so excited and well, thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
I don't know why I'm thinking. But one of the
things I smiled at when as I saw her, and
the amount of work is pretty unreal. It is put
into a at least cookbook, because that's all we've really seen.
But I'm like, oh, look, Melissa is doing another one,
and we're like, wow, she should write a book on
how to want to even come entertain the thought of
(06:36):
doing a second book. That you must have some kind
of system or there's something you love about the whole
idea of that putting it down and writing it, being bound.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
And I grew up in a family of six kids,
so I driving chaos. So making a cookbook is very chaotic,
you know, And I'm a very logistics person, organizer. I'm
not the best plater of foods, you know, like some
people have like a flair for plating food. That's not me,
you know, Like, but I'm very good at logistics and
(07:08):
organization and streamlining and that's kind of And then checklist.
I love a checklist, and so it's so great when
you have a checklist. It's like three years long, but
you have to, I guess, like Anne LaMotte says in
her book Bird to Bird with the cookbook, you gotta
just take it bird by bird, you know, And there's
points where it's just so overwhelming and you're like, what
(07:31):
why have I done this myself again? But then there's
some like you know, triumphs, and I guess whenever you're
checking off the checklist, it feels good. But it's no
easy feat. But I'm also a real introvert, and so
I like being by myself a lot, and I like
just you know, putting around my house and cleaning my
(07:51):
base boards and being creative and so that works for me.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
But you wrote it.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
I did write both the books, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Which is also extremely impressive.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Very impressive, because when I was doing my book, I'm like,
I'm not gonna write I have no clue what I'm
doing so I had somebody write it with me, and
as I read it, I'm like, there's no way I
could have done that.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
But you did that.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You could have no. No, it just starts with the
shitty first draft.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Get down.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
But just like when you're cooking, you know, when you're
trying to develop a recipe. You know, we all it
doesn't matter for professional chefts. We cook some things sometimes
and we feed it to our family and they're like,
that's delicious, and you're like, I'm glad you liked it
because I will never make it.
Speaker 5 (08:37):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
That was not what I was intending. And it's cool.
It's sort of the same thing. You start with like
a shitty first draft, and then you sort of go
from there.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
So with the two books, let our listeners know what
they're in for, because I think Mosquito supper Club, the
initial book was talking about to buy you, and then
your second book also talks about to buy you.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, so the first book it was kind of like like,
you know, if you think of like who, what, when, how,
it is very much like what, like like what is
Mosuito supper Club? Why? Why Mosquito supper Club? But what
does it actually mean to grow up in a fishing village.
What does it mean to be a shrimper or oyster
fisherman or crabber? What do you actually get paid? How
(09:23):
do you get paid? What like what kind of like
backbreaking work are you doing for this, like measly dollar
pound for shrimp? Why is it a dollar pound for shrimp?
How did they come up with the price for shrimp?
Sort of talked about all like the good, the bad,
the evil also enter the oil industry, and so like
(09:43):
how does this culture get changed so much? How is
it that we have a shrimp and petroleum festival and
you could be the queen of it right, you know,
And they're in trouble right now because none of the
shrimp was local this year at the festival. But that's
exciting that they're in trouble, you know, to like this
we're paying, Yeah, we're paying attention. And so I think
(10:04):
that it was very much like an introduction and it
was also dispelling myths because there's just so many myths
about being Cajun and groping bayou. And for me, one
of the biggest myths is are one of the biggest
things is that like we're poked fun at a lot.
You know, we're a fun culture to poke fun of.
You know, we have like The water Boy with Adam Sandler.
My friend just wrote a huge piece about how it's
(10:25):
not that bad. She's Cajun. And I wanted to show
it as a sophisticated culture that you know, evolved and
evolved with this food from places all over the world,
food that was shared, food that you know, evolved and
became what it is. If you go to like, you know,
(10:45):
say you're in the Basque country, like, you're not poking
fun at a bit, right, You're like, this is like
a culture that evolved and food that evolved locally. And
I think that it's really important to bring the sophisticated
aspect into it and also make people understand what does
it actually mean to like live the life fishermen, to
grow up in a tiny fishing village of two thousand
people and then all the food comes from women. Because
(11:10):
growing up I saw on TV all these like male
Cajun chefs and I was, you know, a little concerned
because my dad did not to make toast, you know,
And so I was like, Okay, So I think it's
really important to like, do.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
You ever tell you a therapist that, yeah, a lot
that your dad can't make toast. I mean it just
seems like for a chef, there's you could dig in.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
This is a whole other podcast.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We have one on the web MD.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
The other day, my therapist says, we never even got
to your childhood. We've been in three years. It's like
that's the rest. Oh great, this is gonna cost a
lot of money, but yeah, you know, it's really just
important to like give credit where credit is due. And
the fun thing about writing the first book is that
I educated my mother own so much stuff that she
(11:59):
didn't know about, you know, like where Ochre comes from,
you know, just like all the little things and not that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Not she didn't know a bad but you took for
granted as a part of it's just something else. They
don't have that in New York. No, they don't have.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
But also they're not teaching that in school. I mean,
like growing up in the Byo, they've left a lot
of education out. But one of the things is like
they're not telling you like, well, Oka came here, and
this is why it came right this Rice came here,
and this is why I came and you know, this
is from here all those things. I think it's just
so important, and it's really important to not only let
your own culture that doesn't know about it know, but
(12:34):
the whole world or anyone that picks up that book.
And so that was like the most important things in
the first book for me. The second book for me
is a little bit more like you know, like ether all.
You know, I wanted to kind of show whatever, I
wanted to invoke what it feels like for a year
(12:57):
in Louisiana. And so we start in Jamjanuary. We end
in December, but not seasonally because we don't have regular rituals,
so you can't write the seasonal cookbook. So we start
in January. So it's thematic throughout the year of how
kind of I feel in each time to the year.
So right now we're in a chapter I call love,
(13:18):
which is sort of the bittersweetness of the holidays. I
call it a metamorphosis of the soul. And when you
get out to the other side of January, you've become
a butterfly. Thank god, because it's Marti Gras and so
you know, so January is abundance, you know, and this
is really big time in New Orleans there's a certain
(13:40):
feeling that takes over your body, whether you want to
or not, whether you want to escape it. Because I'm
a big escaper of Marti Gras, but I still because
I did it my whole life growing up. I when
as I'm escaping, I'm feeling a little bit of fomo,
even though I know I know what's going to happen. Money,
I'm going to waste on gl litter if I say know.
(14:00):
And then we go from abundance to simplicity. This I
mean it runs in the Catholic holidays because I grew
up Catholic simplicity, and then from their warmth the summer
and warmth keeps going, you know, to grace and resilience
because I mean, I think we're finally out of hurricane season. Yes,
but it's sort of like that feeling of how you
(14:21):
feel throughout a year and then how you might cook
throughout that year because of what is in season, you know,
when that's how it sort of.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But I think that's also one of your special gifts
as a as an author, is to explain those feelings
through whatever the medium of food or the medium of
putting together a meal at home. From the book that's
a neat way to look at it as opposed to seasonal.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, and we really, my publisher artisan and my editor
took some really big chances, which I didn't like. A
couple of pieces I wrote and I was like, there's
no way they're going to make it into this book,
and did you know? And so I wrote about my nanny,
which is my godmother's funeral, and then I also wrote
about like the birth of my niece and so you know,
(15:10):
birth life kind of did you know, the whole thing,
and then and the book ends and the stories with
the beast called I know how this ends. And that's
just about you know, the by you and this life
in general, because I'm not aging backwards and you know,
the marsh is not growing. So yeah, we took some
chances on it. I've already I don't ever read reviews.
(15:33):
I appreciate that you do because I get to laugh.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
I can't, but I just I don't.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
But the other day I read some Amazon reviews of
by You, just just to see, and someone was so
angry with me that the chapters weren't like fish advertizers, soup,
you know whatever, and they were everybody does that. Yeah,
and they were so mad and they said a lot
of you know, choice words. And but what's funny about
(16:01):
that is that whenever I want to be like inspired
to cook something, I pretty much don't cook out of cookbooks.
But I love to look at them and I love
to see what other people are doing. And I did
cook out of Marcella Hazan's a lot so that I
can learn how she did her recipes before I did
my first book. But if I am going to pick
up a cookbook for inspiration, I always got already index
I never go to the chapter openers. I just got
(16:24):
already indexed. Yeah, like okay chicken, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
What can we do?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
I mean, that's interesting. I've never thought of it that way,
but that's exactly how I do it too.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Well, I look at just a picture of the dish
like yours and the title. Yeah, it's like the crab
that you had at Mosquito Supper Club. That is a
beautiful picture, And I'm like, I want to know how
to make that. Yes, So, because those pictures are they
jump out at you. And I think your book is
definitely one that it's a page to it it because
(16:55):
it's so beautifully captured and the story is very very
close to your heart and you can feel that. And
I think that's why people love the restaurant and they
love you because it's very personal and it's you're documenting
the history of your childhood and your the way you
grew up, which a lot of people don't know that
(17:17):
because we take for granted that we have shrimp and
we have crab, and we have oysters, and not understanding
they have people behind that. It's not opening a container
of oysters and it's just mass produced. It is people
picking those things up.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yes, so thank you.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know, like when the crab starts
coming off the menu, it's because it's cold and crabbers
don't want to go out want to crab, you know,
and so there's a lotless crab on the menu. But yeah,
I mean I still on a first name basis with
like all the people I get my seafood from, and
you know, I hope that I can it can stay
(17:54):
that way, you know, into the future. But I certainly
like feel it in my god where I'm like, oh God,
how how can we keep sustaining this? You know, through
the trials that we experienced in South Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Well, it's we were watching the news yesterday and they
were talking about the sea turtles in.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
In Providence in the Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, that they it's because the water temperature is raising
that they go for the north to cool off and.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Now, but they don't know about the sudden weather changes.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
So there's stock so they now they have to go
pick them up frozen on the beach. Yeah, because of
climate change.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So one day you may be pulling your oysters further
north and getting When you talked about the festival not
serving local shrimp, ironically, six years or so ago, we
passed along in the state that if you were serving
seafood from outside of Louisiana or Louisiana waters, that you
(18:55):
had to note it on your menu.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
I haven't seen it on a single menu, no, no one.
I can taste. I can taste a difference for sure,
from the fishermen that we use and the sweetness, and
there's just something very special about the shrimp that we
get to have here and versus when I travel and
taste something else that is a premium product for their region.
(19:18):
It's just not as good as ours. No, the you
need that brackish water It's how hard is it for
you between some of the things that are just so
special as a flavor profile for us here in South Louisiana.
How tough is it traveling and tasting well?
Speaker 4 (19:35):
I mean, even the gumbo that I serve at Mosquito
is not as good as my mother's gumbo. My mother's gumbo,
she only gets shrimp from one by you, by You Boudreau,
and it's better. You know, it's little shrimp. It's really
really sweet. And then minds is a little bit different
because it's not from that by you. So we are
like crazy tasting shrimp.
Speaker 5 (19:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
We know where the shrump, what water it comes from.
And what happens is when the shrimp leave these little
estuaries where it's like all this like lovely brackish water,
they go further and further out into the salt water
and they start to get bleached out. You know, it's
like in the you know, it's just like they lose
that sort of like really organic sweet taste. It's really
(20:17):
hard for me to order shrimp anywhere else, you know.
I'm so particular about it. I actually just hat at
a restaurant and the shrimp was cooked correctly. And I
was like, it was just shrimp cocktail, but it was.
It was cooked perfectly. And then I talked to the
chef later and he was like, yeah, I had to
change the method because they want us to do some
really bad things. But I just don't, you know, I
(20:40):
eat whatever. I mean, I'll try and if I'm in
Spain at gambas or whatever, I'll try it, but I
usually just pass it up and have whatever.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
You know, their.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
Specialty is.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Sounds like fun.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
So you are also an avid baker, which I love
the this sweet potato rolls. Yes, everything tell me about that?
Was that from your mother, your grandmother?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
So interestingly enough, I learned how to cook from my
family as an adult. They never let us cook growing
up because my mother had six children, so she ran
the kitchen like a professional kitchen. And when they cooked
for bigger holidays, it was the first time I saw
like a really like productive line situation where they would
(21:30):
like go in for the holiday and they would make
like eighty pies. Like wow, my mom the other day
and it was nine in the morning, She's like, I
just made twenty pies, you know, And I was like
her and my dad and they made the tart a
la buy, which is like you know, the famous Christmas
cage and pie. And so what I saw my whole
life was production. I saw like a production kitchen. She
(21:52):
had six children. She needed to feed us, you know,
and so like when she woke us up in the
morning to go to school, I could already hear like
the metal spoon banging on the magna light. That was
kind of like the noises of my childhood, very comforting.
But she already had like all the food that we
were going to eat for dinner on the stove, because
it was all these long cooks and she was already
(22:13):
cooking it. So so the baking, although I was around it,
and I ate delicious stuff. And she still makes biscuits
every morning when I'm there.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
Oh that's good, I know it is.
Speaker 4 (22:24):
And the biscuits that she makes, the seven up biscuits
are in the second book, so we've pertatd biscuits are
in the first book. But I just love baking, you know,
I was always drawn to it. I think I wind
it up more on the savory side. It was so
I could pay myself, so I could survive it, you know.
I think I became a chef too early so that
I could like take care of my child, you know,
(22:46):
whereas like you want to keep learning from people. But
you know, as a single mom, I was like, I
need to make I need to be able to support us.
And so, you know, I became a chef like when
I was really young, which is kind of it in
a way, like it's it's not like a final for you.
But the best part of being a cook is learning
(23:06):
from other people, you know, And so whenever you get
into this spot, then you're like, how else, how am
I going to keep learning from books or whatever? And
so when I started Mosquito, I would take the summers off.
I would close the restaurant for the summer and I
would go and cook somewhere else in the summer. So
I spent a summer as a pastry chef in Iceland
(23:28):
at a tiny little hotel on a one mile island
wow that had no cars, and so it was great,
and I did all their sourdough breads and I did
like traditional Icelandic desserts, and then I did some of
my own, like roles and things like that. So that
was super fun. And then the next summer I went
to like Galiano Island a little another little tiny island
with no cars. Some islanders have cars there and you
(23:50):
have to hitchhike to get to work and back. But
it's like by the law, they have to pick up
a hitchhiker if they can fit you in the car,
because that's how they keep the island and no cars
in it. And that's off of the because of Vancouver,
the golf islince. So again like got to go and
you know, make pastry there and learn from other people.
The guy had worked at Noma, you know, so learned
(24:12):
a lot about ferments and things like that. And yeah,
I just love it, you know, the the ovens a
fun things.
Speaker 5 (24:20):
Yeah, so you have an exciting new project.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
Oh god, yes, so it's crazy, it's like insane. So yes,
So I closed on a building on the West Bank
in New Orleans. One of the things as a business
owner as a chef is very exciting to own your
own building. I don't know what that's like because I
never have. I've rented the space that Mosquito's in, so
(24:46):
it's really exciting to think that everything I put into
the building kind of like a house when you rent
a house, your own a house. That you maybe will
be able to you know, you'll be able to enjoy,
but one day you'll sell it and it'll be yours.
And so we found Me and my friend were kind
of having a rough week and so but we really
like real estate, so we go look at real estate
all the time. And so we were like, let's go
(25:09):
get funky on the West Bank. So we found this
property and we went and looked at it, and and
I had always imagined having, you know, like, and I
used this term really loosely, a little BlackBerry farms, you know,
just like somewhere where you could go and be away
from New Orleans, out of the city, but also get
good hospitality, good food, and get you know, just like
(25:31):
a quick break from the city. And so we found
this property, which is almost on four acres, it has
almost twenty live oak trees. It's on the Mississippi River,
and so we decided to buy it. And we wanted
to get it off the market as soon as possible
because so many because when it went on the market,
so many people were looking at it. And so we
(25:53):
leased it from the owner for the last three months.
So I've just been hanging out in the West Bank,
walking around these trees with my dogs and kind of
figuring out like what it feels like and what it
should be. I will tell you before we got it
off the market twice, Reinagan was there. What the first
(26:14):
time I saw him, I was like, I said, I
think that's Rainagan. And then I was like, you know what,
I'm not going to say it's Raynagan because it looks
like rain Agan, but it's somebody else, you know. I
was like, but I told my husband, I think that's Reinagan.
And then the second time when I saw him, I
(26:35):
was like, that is rain Agan in a maya place
in the flesh Rainagan. I was just like, God, I
wish I had my Nagan in your pocket. You know.
It's like the best thing out of Patrina.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
For those of you who don't know or may have
been following this podcast from when we were doing it
from Miami before, I'm kidding about it. Yeah, yeah, Reinagan
was the mayor that led us through a very difficult
time of Katrina while also figuring out other ways to
enrich himself. But anyway, it's just been released back into
(27:10):
society at large. So and he was he was working
there or he was eyeballing your future.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
I don't know if he was eyeballing it, but he
was slowing down in front of the buildings, you know,
and then he and a group of people were walking
the properties. So we're like, we got to get this
off the market.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Yes, is there going to be an overnight availability.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
There will be at some point.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
You know.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
The city has really strenuous rules and so we have
to abide by all those. But yeah, it's going to
be a restaurant, bar and events space. So Mosquito Seppa
Club is really tiny. It'll be nice for us to
do bigger weddings, you know, just bigger events for people,
and but it'll be a tiny, little, you know, French
farmhouse on the West Bank, which is appropro because people
(28:00):
in the West Bank still speak French.
Speaker 5 (28:02):
So I love that. If anybody could do it, we
will see.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That is your conversation with French not very good at all.
Speaker 5 (28:10):
But when I'm.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
I whenever I go to France, I have a working
knowledge of basic things. When people slow down, I can
understand what they're saying. When people speak how they normally
speak really fast and angry, I get lost. But the
area that I spent a lot of time in Gascony
in the south of France. Everyone is so nice that
(28:34):
the farmers' markets, they're incredible. They help you at the bakeries.
So usually my like just basic working knowledge of like
how many big ats I have to bring back for
the event or how many things. People are super nice.
But yeah, my parents spoke French, and then my grandmother,
I mean that was like her very first language. So
(28:55):
but that French is very much you know, evolving out
of so there's not that many people that speak that French.
So when I do go down a kokuadree and do events,
I'm always excited to go hang out with the folks
that still sound like my you know, my grandparents and
interesting love when I'm in Gascony, Like I went to
(29:15):
a night market in Naraq, which is kind of like
just like a farmer's market, but all the farmers are
cooking their own foods. It's how I learned how they
do their steaks. They call them if you want it,
if you want it, like you know, like kind of
like black and blue sound. But everybody looked and sounded
like my grandparents and my aunts and uncles, and so
(29:37):
that was such a heartwarming thing. They have that really
like they're wes wat you know, and that reminds me
of my godfather's saying why Brenda, you know, and so
that like was I felt really present and really like,
you know, our history is definitely there.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Let's say God forbid for the rest of us, you
did not cook for a living, what would you be
doing right now?
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Well, like like second dream, I don't know, classical musician really,
you know, something where I could really be alone, you know,
like self deprecating, you know, studying music all the time.
I love classical music so much. My brother's a jazz pianist,
so he travels the world playing. I think it's like
(30:29):
a really beautiful life of making music. I think some
of like the greatest times of my younger time, like
in high school and middle school was like being in
the concert band. I really loved it and like it.
There's a feeling kind of like when the restaurant is working.
There's a beautiful dance when the restaurant is working, where
you can take a second and be like wow, all
(30:51):
these intricy pieces and you know, all this training, it's
like it's happening, you know. There's a bit of like
conducting that go on with it.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yes, and when you go everything you're doing is putting
it together, either as an individual or as a team.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To be judged by others, yeah, yeah, and the vulnerability.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Yes, certainly. I mean I go to some restaurants and
I start to cry because everything is happening the way
it should be. I remember being a restaurant in Spain
and just and my husband's like, what is wrong with you?
And I'm like, no, you don't understand. This is so
hard because it's when you're at a restaurant that it
looks so simple when you realize how hard it is.
(31:33):
I'm like, what they're doing right now is so hard.
But this dance is so perfect, it's so beautiful, it's
so orchestrated. So I guess it would make sense that
I want to be in the want to be a
classical musician in my second life. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Favorite dish of all time? If you if you had
to have one dish. We were talking about this the
other day. Anything we said, if you had to have
one dish for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That's a hard one.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Oh, that's a hard.
Speaker 5 (31:59):
That's a hard one. What would it be?
Speaker 4 (32:01):
I mean, if it's if it's for the rest of
my life. I mean, it would probably just have to
be like soup, you know, like it would be like,
you know, like chicken soup are every day.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yeah, the banana bread is the only right answer, can't
you get You get some vitamins and stuff, you get carbohydrates,
there's some energy in the nuts.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Mine would be rice and beans. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
I was gonna say, see because I always say, like
if I have my prison meal, you know, my last
walk meal, that it's jumble eye of white beans and
like fried fish, you know. So, But then I think
about rice is like, you know, sometimes heavy. So I'm like,
I have to go with some something broadty.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
But you could always cut back on the portions. I
guess like more so you banana bread. I don't know.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
I'm not ready to mar that's what you said. I
think you have to read tract.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I had a better reason than either of you for picking.
I had nutrition, I had.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Taste, fiber, eggs, sugar.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Here we go. I'm living forever. Baby.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
The your own banana bread. No does his own anything
or something? No.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I made it delicious. What started off supposedly we're going
to be enchiladas turned into enchilada.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Pie the other Yeah, it was good. I love enchiladas.
Would I would have eaten the enchilada pie. That's another
thing is people think that people who are shaps they
don't want to like cook for you, and they're always
so apologetic when you eat at their house and you're like, no,
you don't understand. It's annoying for me, just like I
(33:41):
will eat anything, like literally, just make anything. I'm hungry
all the time.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
That's the opposite. At our house. I'll get in there
or she'll say, you're going to make dinner tonight, no problem.
I'll get in there to the side, and then she
pushes me out of the way.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah, because he takes too long, and I'm like, arry,
if I'm hungry to eat now, not in two hours.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
I can hear things like I start smelling things. I'm
like no, no, no trying, no, no, no, it's too long,
Like it's not fair.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
You did what?
Speaker 4 (34:10):
Oh no, let me just do it.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, the the grill or the pizza of it's like
I can start the fire and that's it. She pushes
me out of the way and everything else.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
It's really hard.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I'm not complaining anymore. All I got to do is
light the fire.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
That's all you need to do. And the dishes. That's
how a deal. Yes, I cook, he does the dishes.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
That's how it is in my house too.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
So any holiday.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Traditions, I mean, my mother cooks all the food. If
she's like bring something, I be like, I'm gonna bring
some rolls, and then I say can I bake them
off at your house? Say no, I'm not bringing them.
She's like, well, I don't know, it's going to be
in my oven lescent. And I'm like, oh god, Mom,
come on, how big is you strike from Turkey? We
(34:58):
don't need it. It's never good.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
How is the fridge in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (35:02):
It's not that big.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I meant it because we throw up a fridge and
it's just the two of us. How do you have
six children in a fridge? Did you drink powdered milk?
Grow Now, it's not just we only had three kids
and we still got stuck with powdered milk.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Yeah, No, I mean I think it was just because
the ingredients were like coming in and coming out. You know,
It's like we you know, she cooked all the food
from the first book, you know, and then we also,
like I tell the speople at Mosquito all the time, like,
wish your soup would have been the meal that's it,
but I'm giving you five or six other things, you know,
and so, and then we ate leftovers. You know, I
(35:37):
still love leftovers. When I go to my mom's house
and I open the fridge, I'm like, ooh, yeah, you know,
you go to the freezer. There's so many different levels
of leftovers, which is so delicious. But yeah, my mom
cooks everything. My mother still lives next door to her
three sisters, so I love that. Yeah, there used to
be more, but people have passed away, and her mom
used live next door to her, so it's super fun.
(35:59):
We go down to the buy you everyone's around feels
really communal, like when you were a kid, and my
mom cooks just some stupid amount of food, you know,
all by herself. My favorite are peas and rice dressing,
which someone started calling dirty rice. I think it was Popeyes.
I think Popeyes made of dirty rice, honestly, but peas
(36:22):
and dirty rice are like, actually, all our peas and
rist dressing is actually all I need, you know. But
there's another, like, you know, forty options.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So if you don't answer this question, then you're just
not telling the truth. But I understand if your mother's
still alive. No kid loved every single thing their mother.
Speaker 4 (36:40):
Made already just said don't do the turkey.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Don't do the turkey. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Birds are I ate everything. I loved everything. When I
was a kid. They'd be like, what is your favorite food?
And I say cabbage. They'd say, you know, my cabbage
is really good. But but birds were like a little
bit hard baked birds for like the Cajun woman growing up,
because they were scared, they were not done, and so
at that point that they were scared, it wasn't done,
(37:09):
and it was done, they gave it another thirty forty
with no brine or anything. So we said growing up
that my mom always made baked chicken and green beans.
The green beans were incredible, but you had to take
a bite of the chicken and then put the green
beans in your mouth too, so you could swallow.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
It's like eating sawdust.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Yes, but not.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Everything she made was delicious, amazing, the.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
We're good on time. Just one more thing I want
to get to. Perhaps the thing that made my heart
the warmest when I think about you was during a
very difficult time, whichever what hurricane was. This like, I
don't the effort that you made to support the folks
who were really I mean, we were hit hard here,
(37:59):
hit hard meaning not a lot of structural damage, no
power for ten days or whatever it was, and we
thought it was the end of the world. There were
folks down back down by the Bayou where you grew up,
that had it much worse than we did. Can you
describe a little bit how the process of you stepping
(38:20):
up and generating lots of cash for one thing to
get it in people's hands, how that came about, and
what that experience was like.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
Well, first of all, I evacuated my parents. I told
my mother that if she didn't evacuate that I would
never listen to anything. She said again, that's how I
said it. I was like, you want me to listen
to your advice, you're going to evacuate. So it took
my parents and we went to Florida, and it was
really really difficult for her because her sister stayed, you know,
and so that was a pretty horrible thing. But we
(38:51):
were like, we cannot convince them to leave, but we
can take you guys out of here. So we took
them out and sort of watched the storm and Blue
Mountain Beach and stayed on the phone as much as
we could with her sisters and listened to them say
the roofs being peeled away, and listened to all the horror,
you know, which was, you know, quite a difficult time.
(39:13):
And then after the storm had passed, we went with
them to go back. So we took my parents back
to the bayou, and there was no roof, there was
no running water, there was no electricity. There was just
an obscene amount of damage. And one of the things
a lot of people don't know about Ida is that
areas that had never flooded before flooded because the floodgates
(39:35):
were closed too soon and they could no longer be opened.
And one when the hurricane switched tracks, it pinned water
in and a place that never have been never's been
flooded before. And not only pinned water in, but it
pushed water over the bayou and over the levee and
into the estuaries so and then just took every structure
with it on its way. So the levees, for you know,
(39:59):
miles were just covered with houses and boats and cars
and you name it and anyway. And so even though
there was like no roofs and no electricity and no
running water, they stayed and because that's just who they are.
And so when I was driving away, because I was like,
(40:19):
I cannot stay with them because I'm going to use
resources and I need to not use their resources. They
have a limited amount of water. Someone in the streets
has a swimming pool, and so that's how they used
like bathe themselves whatever. But also they had a freezer
full of food. So the freezer full of shramp and
all this food. So I knew they were gonna be okay.
They were gonna be able to feed themselves and feed
the people around them. So as far as like, you know,
(40:41):
their immediate family and the people that live around them,
they were going to be okay. Food wise. It was
just going to be hot and they were gonna be
sticky and dirty and all those things. Actually, the very
first thing I did when I got to my parents'
house because it was raining, is I pulled the the
gutters down and started making the marine cadgements because I
was like, we just had a torrential amount of rain.
(41:03):
You guys don't have know water, Like, what's wrong with
you people?
Speaker 5 (41:05):
You know?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
I was like putting buckets and anything I could find
because it was right, and I was like, we're gonna
start saving some water here. And so I left them
there and that was pretty horrible for me, and I
came to my house in New orleansers didn't have electricity,
and was like, I can't stay here because again I'm
using resources and my dogs are so hot. I thought
my dogs were going to die they because they pant
whenever they're trying to release heat or whatever. And so
(41:28):
I started driving. I had already told my family that
was still in the Florida Beach house that we were
going to have to move to another location, and so
we moved to Ashville, North Carolina, because that's where incidentally,
my brother and his wife lived, so that was like
the next place we could go. And while I was
driving there, I was talking to my friends who still
live on the Bayou. So Jonathan fora who's a huge presence,
(41:51):
and he has a not for profit called the Helio Foundation,
which he actually started to build neighborhoods in Bangladesh when
he was on the Peace Corps and he spent time
there and a whole neighborhood he worked with burned down.
So he started this not for profit to raise money
to put neighborhoods up. And so there was a not
for profit in place, and so I said, I cannot
(42:14):
be on the ground in the Bayou right now because
of the resource situation. It would be rude of me,
I said, But you guys are down on there. I said,
I'm going to start to go fundme and we're going
to raise money to put money in people's hands so
they can try to figure it out, because you know,
the A teams don't work, credit cards don't work, and
you still need things. And people didn't have houses. People
(42:34):
were putting tents.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Up, you know.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
And so I built the GoFundMe and we were driving
through Georgia and I hit like play, you know, and
I was like, God, what am I doing. I don't
want to ask people for money. It just makes me
feel so gross, and so I took it down and
then I said, oh, fuck it, ye and so and so,
you know, it was kind of just like fire after that.
And it was really exciting for me too, because you know,
(42:59):
I'm ocasion chef. Every once in a while you feel
a caricature of yourself, and you don't want to be
you know, you want to be doing good for your culture,
and every once in a while, because it is a business,
every once in a while you feel really weird about it.
And so that was this moment where I was like,
everything I've done, all the social presence, social media presence
that I've had to create, all of it is for
(43:20):
this reason right now, and this reason is the catapult
this GoFundMe to help the people that the story is from.
And so it made sense in my head. And then
I spent I probably didn't sleep for three months, and
I spent every single moment of my time running this
GoFundMe and organizing this crazy grassroots effort. And the people
(43:40):
in the hospitality industry were incredible. I mean, the guy
who owns man Alito would drive down and drive whatever
was needed, whether it's gasoline, I repropen insulin like diapers,
wipes like drive everything, and then he'd say does your
mom need something? I'd be like, should really owns some
vanilla waferst and so can you bring out like something
to cheer up? But everybody would go and stop and
(44:03):
see my parents and then you know, there was just
so many people helping in so many different ways. It
was quite incredible. And then we got a lot of
private donors too that sent cash that was specifically used
to take people's boats out the bayou that were capsized,
get those boats fixed, get them new trolls, get them
(44:23):
new crab traps, all those things, so those people could
immediately start working to not only clear the bayous and
clean the bayoused, but start working because we were in
shrimp season. These people still needed a place to live
their boats, and they needed to be able to you know,
sell their shrimp and feed their families. So and it
still sort of continues, so we still have funds coming
(44:44):
in that pretty much goes directly to shrimpers or crabbers
or fishermen, and then it also funds people who anybody
who needs food. So it became so big quickly that
we had to out like an armored guard to hand
cash out. And that was a moment where people thought
(45:05):
I was like shoving cash up my mom's chimney or something,
you know, and well, it's, uh, it became crazy.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
The crazy.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
The funny thing is I never saw the cat.
Speaker 5 (45:15):
You know.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
It's like it gets deposited into a bank account and it.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Gets You're not distributed, You don't whatever your story is,
that it was an incredibly uh incredibly great example of
leadership of somebody who a lot of times people will
tell us shut up and cook, shut up, bring me
my drink. But you didn't shut up, and you had
(45:42):
called you were vocal, and you helped a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, I really did. I really felt people on the body.
You had like paid it forward. And that was sort
of the thing I just kept saying over and over,
like Louisiana has paid it forward, not only an oil,
but we've paid it for forward and seafood and also
be in the ass of a lot of jokes. You know,
all the things and.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
A lot, but when you are the brunt of a
bunch of jokes a lot of times, you should take
that as a sign of pride. They're they're only saying
that because they want to be you. There's nobody in
the middle. I was gonna say, to the middle of Utah,
but they I can think of a documentary right anyway,
but there's nobody's making the little jokes. It's something they
(46:23):
admire so much.
Speaker 4 (46:24):
That the just and the reason why it worked is
because there are still people that I grew up with
that work in the non for profit sector who could
identify exactly who needed money and could bring it to
them and get aid for them in every single way.
I learned a lot about gasoline, Like big companies would
donate gasoline, like a big truck full of like, you know,
(46:46):
twenty thousand gallons of gas that they would say, I'm
donating this to you, But I had no where to
put the gas because I'd be on the phone with
gas stations and I'd be like, we need to dump
this gas so we can give it away. We can
put it in you know, gas of containers, and then
we can deliver it to people. So I had nobody
(47:07):
that would allow me to dump the gas in their
tanks to give it away because of liability, you know.
And so I mean, but one of the things like
the government does, and I know this is not to
make fun of the government podcast, however, is that they're like, come,
get your gas line up in your car, waste gas
with your AC on, and then we'll give you some gas,
(47:27):
you know. And so we were trying to figure out
how to like take the stupidity out the grassroots sort
of movement, and whenever. A lot of chefs in Asheville
called me after and they were like, call your representatives,
call this person, call this person, we need help. And
I had to be roll honest and say, nobody's coming.
Like they're gonna set up and they're gonna give out ice,
(47:49):
and they're gonna give out water, and maybe they'll give
out gasoline. I said, but you're gonna have to go
to that. I said, you guys need to form a
civilian army and you need to do it yourself. Because
fortunately that's just where we're at. And I stayed away
from it because I was like, it took me, like,
you know, years to recover from Ida, and and Kokuaji
will never be the same and Chaven will never be
(48:11):
the same. One of the big things that happen is
they close down all the schools and raise the schools,
and so now families can't you can't have a family
down there because if you you know, the schools that
I went to growing up, now you have to go
to home Louisiana to get to school, you know, and
you have to drive up pretty far distance.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
So that's unfortunate.
Speaker 4 (48:33):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That is well, thank you. Well we've got to have
something a little happier. Yeah, anyway, thank you for what
you did in the in that situation. What's next, Melissa.
So we've gone from Uptown to west Bank. We're selling
books all over the world.
Speaker 4 (48:52):
I hepe calling it Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
That would be fun, you know.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
For me, I'm always chasing happiness, you know, and so
I think for the West Bank, it's hanging out under
these beautiful oak trees and just trying to create space
for people. You know, I was thinking this morning, how
restaurants we not only have space to celebrate your wedding,
your anniversary, but I did someone's uh post funeral, after
the after the funeral, they all came and we cooked
(49:22):
for them. So, you know, celebrating creating space for people,
curating beautiful things together, writing stories, collecting stories, trying to
be happy fun, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
Also, just I mean, this one's free. I'll give it
to you. Maybe plant some truffles under all those live oaks.
Could you imagine if the west Bank truffle tuts over
the culinary world. This is incredible.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
I'm going to give that to you, and if it
takes over, this is completely your business.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
I need your pigs to dig them up.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
But Nina and I have already decided you cannot have
more truffle dogs.
Speaker 5 (49:57):
Yeah, we've decided.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
We don't even have a truffle dog in I can
put trouble.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
You know, if anybody wants a dog, we're both we're
both over dogs. Yes, so in both houses.
Speaker 2 (50:09):
On that note, Pelicans fans, thank you very much Chef
for being with us.
Speaker 5 (50:13):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Go Pell, You're amazing. Pel Wait, wait, everybody,
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