Paul Prudhomme Dead at 75

Paul Prudhomme, a pioneer in popularizing American regional cuisines and the first celebrity chef of the modern American culinary age, died Thursday, Oct. 8 at the age of 75.

Prudhomme was the 13th child of a Cajun family from Opelousas, La., and learned to cook, garden, and slaughter barnyard animals from his mother as a child. He chose a cooking career at a young age and was hired as the first non-European chef at the iconic Commander’s Palace restaurant in New Orleans in 1975. He soon persuaded owners Dick and Ella Brennan to feature some of the dishes of his Cajun heritage on the Commander’s menu. His creations caused quite a stir, and Prudhomme’s star began to rise.

In 1979, Prudhomme and his future wife, K Hinrichs, opened K-Paul’s restaurant in the French Quarter and it soon became famous for blackened redfish and many other of Prudhomme’s signature dishes. Rave reviews from the likes of New York Times critic Craig Claiborne inspired intrepid diners to wait in long lines in the sweltering heat for a seat at K-Paul’s community tables where they would receive a gold star on their foreheads from the servers at the completion of their meals.

Over 35 years, Prudhomme mentored a couple of generations of New Orleans cooks, most notably Emeril Legasse and Frank Brigsten. During the Eighties and Nineties, Prudhomme built an empire from that one restaurant. He staged pop-ups in both New York and San Francisco to popularize Cajun cooking, made cooking videos, wrote a dozen cookbooks, and created a signature line of seasonings and prepared foods. He was a popular guest chef at food festivals around the country and appeared as one of the featured chefs at the Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival in 1996.

Perhaps Prudhomme’s greatest impact on the American culinary scene was his introduction and promotion of an authentic American regional cuisine that was based on seasonal, locally-sourced ingredients 30 years before such things became trendy. Funeral mass will be celebrated at St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter on Monday, Oct. 12 and the burial will be private.