This Chef Is the Youngest Ever to Run a 2-Michelin-Star Restaurant

[upbeat music]

Emeril's is a fine dining restaurant

based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

My dad, Emeril, who a lot of people know

from the Emeril Live days and yelling, Bam!

We've had a restaurant in New Orleans for 35 years.

I'm the chef owner here, I'm 22,

and just a couple months ago,

we got two stars from Michelin,

and it happened to make me the youngest person

to ever lead a two-star kitchen.

There are people that have been here from the beginning,

and there are people that have been here two weeks,

but they all have this great sense of responsibility

and this great sense of intention

behind everything that they do.

To see those people that have been here 30, 35 years,

the way that they've embraced

all the things happening in this restaurant,

and the excitement that they get

when they show up every single day,

I mean, if that doesn't make you want to get up early

in the morning and come to work, I don't know what does.

[bright upbeat music]

[upbeat guitar music]

Hi, my name's EJ Lagasse.

I'm the chef co-owner here at Emeril's

in New Orleans, Louisiana.

It's about 10:00 AM, and we got a lot to do,

so let's get started.

So this is it. It's 12 tables.

There you can see, the kitchen,

in all the views of the guests.

They get to see us dressing the food there.

All the guests come back on a tour of the kitchen

at the beginning of the experience.

Kinda wanted to show off some of the ingredients.

This is the kitchen.

Over on this side, you see the pastry.

This becomes the canape section later in the day,

and then at the end of the night,

it becomes the mignardise section.

Then we have the garde manger section there.

This is the stove.

Two main sections, so we have a meat line and a fish line.

So it's 10:20.

I'm setting up for foie gras,

which is one of my first tasks in the day.

It's for oyster stew,

which is the signature dish here at the restaurant

and has been for many years.

We use a really rigid brigade system here

when you have a restaurant like this

where there's like a 15, 16-course tasting menu,

so we got a large team.

It's like 24, 28 people in the kitchen

between the day team and the night team.

This is Hudson Valley grade A foie gras.

I think it's the best that you can get.

So you could kind of see

that it's a little bit flexible there, kinda malleable,

so you're just gonna separate it out there,

and then we're just gonna start making some nice portions.

We'll give them all the same size,

obviously, for even cooking.

In a restaurant like ours

and just the format of our dining room,

it's a lot of two tops,

so you try to get a lot of things that match in pairs.

We use the trim of the foie gras

in a couple of different things.

It's mounted into one of our signature sauces here,

a Creole jus gras, which is served with our boudin course,

and then we, in the wine bar, utilize it

to make a foie gras torchon,

and just because it's the wintertime here,

we're also using it in a canape right now

for the snack that guests get

when they get back into the kitchen.

Foie gras's done.

Our executive sous chef Riley

and our chef de cuisine Emily and I are gonna get together

and talk about some admin stuff

and a new dish we're working on.

[upbeat jazzy music]

We're gonna get some coffee on the way,

and so normally we have cold brew

and things like that throughout the day.

We do send our guests home with cafe au lait,

which is just coffee and milk,

and Chef Emily and I sometimes steal some of this, so.

Oh, you went hot today.

I did, yeah. Ooh.

Okay, let's talk about the sweet bread a little bit.

I'm gonna reach out to our friend Mr. Noel

as far as crawfish, 'cause it's the only person

that I know has them right now.

Yep. Other than that,

it's either gonna be Pistol for frozen or Fortune.

And I still think we should go the route

you were doing last year with the live peel

and then the steam. Yeah.

I think that's probably the most efficient,

and then we get the shells.

Yeah, I also think we need to look

at how we're poaching them again,

'cause I know we were doing it court bouillon and all that,

but they still weren't as flavorful

as I think we can get them.

This sweet bread feels like we have a plan,

there's all the things coming in season for it,

and as we've been saying to the front of house team,

I think that this is the moment where we get in every year

where we're sat in the spring, there's actually an abundance

of so many different things available to us

that are distinctly from within a hundred miles from here

that we can really change things

as we want to. Yeah.

Pistol.

Whoa.

Hey, there's the guy. Whoa, whoa.

Hollywood.

[Riley] Mr. Louisiana.

Pistol is here.

Pistol, say hi.

Hello. [EJ laughs]

He's our shrimp guy.

Just shrimp, big deal here in Louisiana.

His truck's outside,

so we're gonna go take a look at the delivery.

[upbeat music]

Yeah.

Oh, lemme see 'em. Let me see 'em.

These are beautiful Louisiana shrimp,

nine to 12 to the pound,

straight outta Grand Isle, Louisiana.

Get 'em pretty much every day.

The sweetest shrimp on the planet.

Nothing like it.

Nothing like it. Nothing like it.

Oh, look at this over the shoulder.

Shrimp cowboy, man.

Come on, give it a press up.

Thanks, buddy.

You bring the crawfish Saturday.

Saturday. 'Cause we're testing

a dish with them.

Are you bringing Saturday?

Yeah, let me call him right now, make sure.

Just let me know, I preferred Saturday,

but if it has to be tomorrow, it's tomorrow.

Just one regular normal sack.

Normal sack. Okay.

Pretty much our main farmer, Allen, is here.

He's got pigs for us today,

but he brings a plethora of stuff throughout the year.

Hi, guys. Hey man, good to see you.

This is the great Allen Snelling.

Allen here and I've been working together

probably three and a half years now.

We really wanted to have somebody

that would raise animals for us.

How long would you need to school up another cycle of quail

if we decided to go quail instead of lamb?

I need-

Eight weeks? I need five weeks.

Five weeks? Yeah.

That's pretty good.

Five weeks quail.

Probably.

If you're able to do it,

I think that we were leaning yesterday

when we were talking about development in general,

we were leaning towards quail instead of lamb this year

to try something different.

A lot of guests are asking for quails.

Thanks, bud, well look, let me sign that thing for you

and we got a lot of stuff to do,

so we'll go get back to it. Okay. All right.

[mellow music]

It's about 2:00 now, and things are really starting

to get going here in the kitchen.

We are three and a half hours away from service starting,

so we're gonna check in over here on the meat entremet.

We got Brandon. Brandon has got some collard greens going.

We have some sauteed onions as well as some lovely bacon.

We just sauteed it in some oil, some garlic,

got a little bit of maple verjus in here,

and we're just gonna saute these down.

So this is for the boudin course.

Next to the boudin, we do this little choux farcis,

stuffed cabbage basically,

but we fill it with collard greens.

A boudin is a Louisiana style sausage.

I mean, there's many styles of it,

but for us here, it's a wet short grain rice

added in with all parts of the pig

that you saw from Allen earlier.

Moving on next door, it's Chef Charlie here. Chef.

Portioning some of the Wagyu for us, the A5 Miyazaki.

It's a supplement on our menu,

so definitely not one of the things from New Orleans,

but something we like to have for the guests,

and we try to bring it back a little bit to New Orleans.

It's done with a traditional daube glace,

which is a presse that we make with short rib and foie gras

and n'duja and all these things together.

We're gonna go this way over to the fish section.

Matty. Chef, how you doing?

Matt's making one of my favorite things here on the menu.

It's Herbsaint cream.

I got some trinity,

and once I sweat some of the liquid out,

I'm gonna go in with some Herbsaint liqueur,

and then we're just gonna cook the alcohol out,

and we'll go in with about a gallon of cream.

Trinity, the holy trinity, some refer to it

as the mirepoix of New Orleans,

but we use celery, onion and poblano,

because poblano, we feel is just a little bit more flavorful

than green bell peppers, so.

What Matt put in here is Herbsaint.

This is from New Orleans.

It's an anise liqueur, smells of fennel and licorice,

and it is vibrant, vibrant green,

so you see how it deglazed in the pan,

and you can see, turns the onions kind of green.

Oh my god, that smells so good.

I wish smellovision was invented for moments like this.

We've got what is the garde manger section.

Declan here is starting to get on some brunoise

for his shallots, but he's also building the cheesecake.

It's the first dish that was ever put on an Emeril's menu,

and it's also the first thing

that everybody gets in the tasting menu.

So it's very simple, it's brisee-style French pastry crust,

and then it's filled with two layers,

Creole cream cheese bavarois,

and then a smoked salmon mousseline on top,

and then a lot of caviar.

And onto the canape section, we got Alex and Daniela here,

and they are getting rolling to prep some spring rolls.

Shout out Pho Tau Bay on Tulane Ave.

One of the best Vietnamese spots in town,

and we are addicted to their spring rolls.

We get 'em multiple times a week here at the restaurant.

I do wanna introduce a special somebody.

This is Chief, who has been here.

Chief, when did you start? You remember your start date?

I'm not sure, but it was like '97.

So that predates me on planet Earth.

We are sort of into the pastry section.

Hold on a second. We've just pulled king cakes out.

Incredible. It is Mardi Gras here right now.

We're about to start dressing those.

It's a brioche dough with the cream cheese filling inside.

We use little bit rum and citrus with it.

It's a classic flavor using for the king cake usually.

So we do a little take-home bag.

If you remember when I was drinking my coffee earlier,

I was talking about the coffee that we give to the guests.

Well, this is sort of the other treat

that we give them in the bag,

and the hope is that they pop the coffee in the fridge

and they keep the king cake on the counter

and can enjoy both the next morning.

This is Mr. V.

Day one. One of the originals.

Thank you. Good to meet y'all.

It's 2:15.

I'm gonna go do our front of house manager meeting

and talk about what service is gonna look like tonight.

Let's go do that.

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We are in now our private dining room.

Every day, our general manager, Brandon,

Brandon Groh the great,

and our wine director, Aaron Benjamin,

we get together and talk a little bit

about how service is gonna go.

We're gonna go through the guests

that are coming in tonight.

Most important thing for us obviously is allergies

or any sort of changes that we have to make to menus.

Very nice, straightforward shift.

18 tables, five relays.

The only allergy we're aware of

is going to be an oyster allergy,

and that's gonna be on second turn.

And that oyster allergy,

we'll do a sub trinity tapioca for that, no oyster.

I do have two bloggers as well.

He has written a few articles about New Orleans already,

but never about Emeril's. Okay.

But he's been to all the classics of the city.

Okay, let's show him some love

and make sure we explain po' boys and everything and that.

A little bit of champagne as well?

I think champagne's fine on that. We can do a splash.

The 8:00, the end of the first turn,

that is gonna be our oyster aversion.

Yep, I see that.

Trinity tapioca. No big deal.

And they are coming in from England, so across the pond.

Here for us, specifically.

See if we can get them closer to the window.

I'd love to let them see it a little bit more,

especially since they're friends

with a lot of the industry guys,

and I'm sure interested in kitchens in that regard.

You got any wine stuff for us, man?

Actually, very large news,

we just secured some very incredible Japanese wine.

Very rare. I know nothing about this.

Three cases coming into the US in total.

We have one case.

Very, very rare. Very coveted.

I'm very excited. Man, that is so cool.

I'm very excited about that.

All right guys, well, thanks so much.

Really appreciate it.

It is 2:45.

We're all a little bit hungry, been here for a minute now,

so we're gonna go get some food.

[upbeat music]

It's like 3:15. We're back from family meal.

Everybody's here now.

Just really at this point in the day,

what my day comes down to,

what Chef Emily's day comes down to,

Chef Riley's day comes down to,

is bouncing around anybody that needs any assistance,

just making sure that everybody's there for service.

I'm gonna check in with Matt again.

He's got his Herbsaint sauce that's been going down,

and he's also just started doing the trout portioning.

We get Mississippi trout, and on the pickup,

I'll sear it, throw in some butter, get a nice brown on it.

Once I send the fish to the pass,

I'll take that brown butter,

I'll sweat out some shallots, some capers, some almonds,

and then I'll cool down the pan with some lemon juice,

and then I'll finish with parsley

and send that trout sauce to the pass.

Trout almondine is one of those things in New Orleans

that you can't go without.

It happens to be my favorite fish course

of any of the New Orleans style fish dishes.

Oh, thanks.

Thank you. Yep, good.

Some more coffee.

So that's the cafe au lait that you saw earlier,

but that's the batch for tonight

for the guests to take home, but we're just checking

to make sure there's not too much sugar or anything in it,

make sure there's enough chicory steeped into it.

Chicory is a very classic thing for New Orleans.

It was a way that they used to stretch their coffee rations,

if you will, back in the day,

so it's found its way in

and really is part of that New Orleans culture

of coffee and beignets.

Literally that quick, yeah, yeah.

It just comes through and make sure we're all good,

and back to it.

Keep letting that come down.

We might have to adjust the seasoning

before you [indistinct]. Oui, chef. Yes, chef.

A lot of what Chef Emily and I end up doing

throughout the day is sort of hopping in

where help is needed.

Today, that help happens to be in the canape section.

Canapes are the small bites at the start of the meal

in a lot of fine dining restaurants,

and we've got a lot of them, so we're gonna help out there.

Give me a rundown of everything

you don't have right now between you.

Don't have tuna sliced. Okay.

It's in the blast ready to go.

Yep. From there,

we are compressing the cucumber,

I'm building gumbo cups, I'm cutting po' boy bread,

we are seasoning our onion hacher right now.

Okay, incredible. I'm gonna get on the tuna.

This is just some gulf tuna, bluefin.

Gonna be portioning this. We have a tuna sandwich.

It's basically in between two crispy sheets of nori

with avocado and cucumber on top,

dressed in a white shoyu vinegarette,

so yeah, just gonna portion some of that.

[Interviewer] Chef, when did those stars

appear on your sleeve?

We actually had it done for the day

that everything happened.

We were hoping for the best,

and we were talking to our guy that supplies our coats,

and we were like, It'd be a really cool thing if,

the day that it happened, if you watch the ceremony, my man,

then if you can have some coats done for the next day.

And he was like, Yeah.

And we were sitting having a meeting in the private room,

and then he walked in the door and was like, I got 'em.

I told you I was gonna be able to do it if it happened,

so here they are.

So in a couple minutes now,

the team's gonna get scrubbing down,

the whole kitchen's gonna get cleaned top to bottom.

[upbeat jazzy music]

Just cutting the pass lights on.

We are steamrolling towards 4:45 right now.

Two things are gonna happen simultaneously.

Here in about two minutes,

we're gonna go out into the dining room,

both chef Emily and I,

and brief the front of house staff on any of the changes,

any of the things that they need to know for the day,

and simultaneously while that's happening,

all of the testers are gonna come up,

little bits and pieces of every single dish,

and the sous chefs, Chef Emily and myself will all taste it

and make any last-minute adjustments

that we need to make before we go into service,

really the last chance for us to check everything.

If anybody in a suit still has their replacement button

for said suit, I would greatly appreciate it.

The dry cleaners broke one of the buttons on my suits.

If we can get some help from maybe the kitchen team three,

I'd love to get them promoted off table nine,

but that is the only table we really have available.

They're flying in from across the pond.

They do not eat oysters.

We shall overcome.

Trinity tapioca with-

Enoki mushroom po' boy.

We were having our meeting this morning,

and Pistol showed up, Pistol Pete,

and has confirmed that we're gonna be getting our first sack

of crawfish for the testers on Saturday morning,

so expect that sweet bread change coming up very, very soon.

We have plenty of black truffle;

received a delivery this morning.

I know that we were at the end

of the black truffle last night.

Okay, just wanna remind everybody,

five shaves of that on said thing.

That's it from me, though.

Have a great service, guys. Thank you very much.

[Staff Members] Thank you, Chef.

Chef Riley has basically a checklist

that just goes ingredient by ingredient,

but this really is our last chance

to make any tweaks or any adjustments,

and you'll see that come basically off here.

We have a section for notes.

It's a nice bite today.

Oh, how did I not say that today at some point?

[Riley] Tuna can use little bit of salt.

There's too much creole seasoning on the barbecue shrimp.

A little bit of Worcestershire, a little bit of salt,

and potentially a little more butter.

[Emily] That's [beep] definitely not right.

Em, we can't use this.

I don't know if somebody dipped it

in just the citric acid or what.

Approaching now on 5:15.

Couple of things we were gonna adjust,

but nothing that is too, too crazy.

I'm gonna show you sort of the last little thing of the day.

Daniela and some of the other team members

have picked out some of the best of the stuff

and just separated it out to the side

so that we can display that for the guest.

So as I said at the beginning of the day,

this is sort of the first thing that the guests see

and the ice and the display of all the produce,

but this is the last thing that you're gonna see today,

so thanks so much, we appreciate it,

and hope to see you around.

Cheers.