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Growing Up with Great Food

The grande dame of New Orleans' first family of food remembers the flavors of her childhood

by Ella Brennan

As children growing up in New Orleans, we had an extraordinary culinary experience, and we didn't even know it. We thought everybody else in the world had a mother who was just as good a cook as ours. She was a wonderful cook. And with six children around the table, meals were always a happy time. She spoiled us with good food.

My mother was an intuitive cook, like many women and men here in New Orleans. I remember following her around as a child. She had magic in her hands. Now I say that all great cooks have magic in their hands, and she certainly did. There was nothing complicated about this, believe me. It was the simplest thing she could do.

She didn't have to prepare for weeks or go to the grocery' store with a list. She had a pantry that she kept stocked. And meats, poultry, seafood, the freshest vegetables and fruits anyone could ever want— these were part of our lives as kids, right along with the people who prepared them for us at the little markets or delivered them to our door. Sometimes it's the people I remember even more than the food—but that's okay because who can separate them, anyway?

John, Dome, and Dick Brennan (standing, from left) and Ella and Adelaide Brennan (seated), founders of Commander's Palace.

My mother had a butcher, Mr. Manale, who brought her meat. She had a fish person. The vegetable man, Mr. Tony, came to the front door. The banana man, the milkman, the coffee man—they all came right to our house back then, and they were my mother's friends.

As kids, we got to know them. Mr. Tony used to drive us to school on occasion. These people would always be in the kitchen, having a cup of coffee, having a glass of iced tea. Our house was food-oriented, but we didn't realize it until many years later.

There was a bakery across the street from our school. When my brother Dick was little, I had to go pick him up after his classes. And we'd be throwing the bread back and forth between us all the way home because it was so hot.

My mother's brothers used to fish and hunt all the time. They would always bring back the things they'd caught for her to prepare. I can still hear them whistling as they came through the door, bringing my mother the freshest redfish imaginable. I decided long ago that there's no better dish on earth than my mother's baked redfish with Creole sauce. It was a very light sauce: fresh tomatoes, onions, and green peppers, served with white rice. We were Irish, not French, but my mother was New Orleans.

When we first got into the restaurant business, we were very fortunate to have some wonderful people to help us out. They were all much older than we were, and these kitchen guys adopted us. We spent hours just sitting with them learning. We shared books with them, and they shared books with us.

From its beginning, Creole cuisine has been experimental. It evolved with French settlers modifying their traditional recipes to the produce of the New World. Based on adaptation and innovation, it has been a cuisine of intuition, with recipes often not written down and no hard-and-fast rules. Sometimes in New Orleans there are as many recipes for a dish as there are cooks.

The Brennan family, whose members— gathered here for Christmas—have founded many of New Orleans' best-loved restaurants.

All this has been true at Commander's Palace since we started here. Truth is, I don't like working with people who aren't growing. I don't want to work with people who are satisfied being where they are. I say if it's not broken, let's break it. There's always a better way.

The good New Orleans restaurateur takes and pulls this creative energy out of people. We Brennans didn't know we had it in us, but people pulled it out of us, and here we are. Now we try to pull it out of others. We try to get people to soar.