I get bombarded with pitches and press releases every day, and I often flip through them quickly. But last week, I actually yelped with joy when I spotted one announcement. As a professor, I love seeing my students succeed. As a woman in business, I love to see other women grow and achieve. That’s what just happened in New Orleans.
Meg Bickford Takes The Toque At Commander’s Palace
As part of her culinary studies, Meg Bickford served a six month internship at Paul Bocuse’s famed restaurant in Lyon, France. But, she wasn’t allowed to speak to him, reflecting the military-like regime in a French kitchen.
Instead, Meg and the restaurant’s other interns were only allowed to communicate with Bocuse’s sous chef. If the sous found their questions worthy, he would relay them to the maestro.
“It was awesome to see that,” Meg recalls. But not in a good way.
She goes on, “I didn’t ever want to be that chef. I didn’t want people to be in fear of me. I didn’t want to close my door on everybody.”
Now, Meg is the chef at the top — and her door is definitely open.
Last week, she was named the executive chef at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, one of the country’s most famous restaurants. (You heard from its co-proprietor, Ti Martin, a few weeks ago.)
Meg joins a pantheon of all-star chefs, men and women, who have worked in the Commander’s kitchen.
The two most recognizable are probably Emeril Lagasse and Paul Prudhomme, but Commander’s is also on the resumes of restaurant owners Frank Brigtsen, Mary B. Sonnier and Anne Kearney, whose food I have all enjoyed.
Meg has gotten to the top with extraordinary speed. She is just 34, and is also the mother of a three-year-old.
(You can hear Meg talking about what it was like to cook during her pregnancy in this delightful interview with New Orleans broadcaster Poppy Tooker.)
She and her husband, also in the food business, have found ways to juggle two careers and spend quality time with their little one — something lots of us who had working mothers can identify with, including her employer.
“I’m a product of that,” says Ti, whose mother was the fabled Ella Brennan. “I was always running around restaurants. We just worked it out.”
Creating A Management Style
In her 12-year career, Meg has spent two stints at Commander’s and been the chef in charge at Cafe Adelaide, a more casual hotel restaurant owned by Ti and her cousin Lally Brennan, which closed in 2018.
Speaking with her and Martin, it was clear that she had given tremendous thought to the kind of workplace that she wants to create at Commander’s, where she was second-in-command to departing chef Tory McPhail. (He’s going to stick around a while to help her until he moves to Montana.)
“I’ve been so fortunate to have that many people (to work with), get to know all those people, see different management styles, see different approaches to situations, get different perspectives,” she says.
“You get to pick and choose what you like about someone’s management style and create your own.”
As a leader, she keeps a close watch on new restaurant employees to gauge their aptitude and curiosity.
“Your skill set doesn’t need to be as high as our best cook, but it’s the way you move your body, understanding how a kitchen works, not being timid, being ready to taste the food,” she says.
“It’s not perfect knife skills. It’s not all that experience. We can teach things.”
At the same time, she knows her staff is assessing her, too.
“In any leadership position, it’s important to prove to the people that you’re leading that they can be led by you. That they can trust you, and that your intentions are good,” she says. “Sometimes you feel like you have to work a little harder. There’s a lot to prove.”
A Roller-Coaster Ride
As I wrote in my earlier story, COVID-19 has meant a reset for Commander’s as well as the rest of the industry.
And, while nobody could have seen the pandemic coming, the coincidence of a shakeup in the restaurant world and the appointment of a new executive chef are fortuitous.
“The last six months has been a roller coaster for everyone,” Meg says. “It has been very challenging, but a heck of a whole lot of silver lining for me, professionally and personally.”
The hardest day was having to call her Commander’s co-workers and tell them they were being laid off, she said.
But with the remaining crew, “There’s been an incredible amount of camaraderie and focus on rebuilding whatever we could. There was a lot of brainstorming and great ideas, a lot of not so great ideas,” she says. “Who knew we could be entrepreneurs?”
She believes that Ti and Lally made her the executive chef at Cafe Adelaide because they had bigger plans for her.
“It was great experience for me to have at a younger age. I learned a lot of lessons, a lot about myself, and what it meant to be a leader.”
Her predecessor has been a mentor since her very first day at Commander’s entering her stage — the French word for apprenticeship. During that time, she rotated through the kitchen, working alongside cooks and chefs in their various duties.
“Chef Tory saw something in me and I’m glad he did,” she said. Tory jokes that he has been “right there behind me to push me straight into the fire.”
Keeping The Menu Contemporary
But beyond encouragement, Tory has offered her opportunities to learn, dropping piles of newspaper and magazine clippings on her desk, encouraging her to incorporate unusual local ingredients into the dishes on Commander’s menu.
Even though traditional dishes like turtle soup and bread pudding are signatures at Commander’s, Tory made a practice of changing the menu according to the seasons. Meg says she’s going to continue that, too.
For instance, for her first new menu offering last week, Meg introduced Dirty Duck Confit, a dish that featured locally grown pumpkin.
You might expect to see that in Paris, where pumpkin is commonly used in French kitchens, but as it turns out, pumpkin is also a Louisiana specialty.
“We have to keep pushing forward. We have to keep evolving,” she says. “We’ve worked really hard to make this restaurant as great as it can be. We have tall goals to reach here and we push ourselves to do that.”
I asked her about her personal goals, whether she wanted to write her own cookbook, for example. Before she could answer, Ti interrupted.
“This is day three. Maybe do the cookbook on day four,” she said.
When we stopped laughing, Meg went on, “I’m incredibly humbled and honored. I’m not going to revel in this too long. I need to focus on being chef at Commander’s.”
CulinaryWoman Of The Week
The first time I ate at Gabrielle Restaurant in New Orleans in 2018, I felt like I was at someone’s house for supper. That wasn’t what I was expecting: I was dining by myself, and I was used to fading into the background to watch everyone else.
Not on this evening: the staff all talked to me, other diners talked to me, we shared restaurant recommendations, and I left wanting to return the next night.
That’s the wonderful atmosphere that Mary B. Sonnier has created at Gabrielle, which originally opened in 1992. It has been quite a journey: Gabrielle took years to re-open after Katrina. It’s survived another recent dining room flood, and now it is wrestling with the pandemic and the restrictions imposed by the city and state.
But baby, if you can, you’ve got to eat there. I’ve been back since my first visit with friends, and had just as good a time as that first evening. If you like duck, this is the place, especially in July, when they hold Duck Fest. (This year, it was to-go.)
I wrote about their watermelon salad with crispy duck legs for The Takeout and Mary’s husband Greg, who helms the kitchen, does a splendid job with it.
Don’t miss the desserts, either. I love ice cream and they make their own. I had some peach ice cream in season that made me want another dish.
Mary was dear friends with legendary chef Leah Chase, who you can see in the photo above. Their restaurants were around the corner from each other and Mrs. Chase came to the re-opening of Gabrielle in 2017 to wish the Sonniers well.
To me, Mary represents a role model of what is possible for women in culinary: working in great kitchens, creating your own welcoming space and filling it with friends and family. I’m so glad to know her and delighted that she is our CulinaryWoman of the Week.
I can’t wait to get back to New Orleans and see all these great ladies and eat.
The Culinary Celebrity Who Made Us Rethink Dining
By John Birdsall
People who are newer to the food world may only know James Beard for the foundation or the awards contest that bear his name.
But in the second half of the 20th century, he was among the most influential figures in the food world, and a New York City celebrity. He also was a gay man who did not feel comfortable living openly, for fear of being shunned.
John Birdsall’s new book, The Man Who Ate Too Much, traces Beard’s double life. Its roots are in the gay community’s festive parties of the 1930s.
But, fearing he would be ostracized for his lifestyle, Beard transformed himself into an arbiter of food trends and food writers whose endorsement could guarantee success.
The Man Who Ate Too Much will give you a great depiction of what the world was like before food television took hold and turned chefs into reality TV competitors.
I never met Beard, but I ate regularly at his favorite restaurant, The Coach House, during my early years in New York.
The Coach House wasn’t haute cuisine. It was simply a comforting restaurant to get a good meal and a great glass of wine. We had our favorite waiter, who always managed to bring us a little something from the house to try.
I wonder whether there is a James Beard today — a single person who can inspire food trends, and collect a flock of followers. I doubt it: the culinary world has become too diffuse, and I hope more inclusive than it was during his era.
But, the book is well worth reading. You can hear an interview with John on my friend Dan Pashman’s podcast, The Sporkful.
This week’s link goes to the Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, which is one of my favorite haunts, and only a short walk from Commander’s Palace.
They’ll be happy to have your business and sign up for their newsletter, too.
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