Hi.
Who's idea was this?
To go total Louisiana, just dig in and taste the culture.
I challenge people to find a bad meat.
It's hard to do in Louisiana.
Great googly moogly, that is just amazing.
I want some of that.
St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana's North Shore,
where land meets Gulf and Creole meets Southern Living.
There are layers to this cuisine,
and each layer tells a different story of life,
because here, food is life, and life is good.
This is going to be a four-episode type of a show.
We may never leave.
This culinary journey is about the culture and the people
that make the North Shore a great American food lover's destination.
I mean, they love food, they celebrate with food,
they mourn with food, it's just part of this culture.
Food is that common thread that we all share,
and there's so much that we celebrate with food,
and it's something that a great meal can move people.
It's our contribution to the world.
This is the Tammany taste, and my job is to taste it all.
I think I found my happy place.
I got five more minutes till I get gone,
and there ain't no change in the road I'm on.
You know, there's definitely a sense of something else in the air here,
and we're just weird,
and we're not the kind of chefs that want to leave our restaurant.
You know, we're not the kind of chefs that don't want to be cooking in the kitchen.
You know, so we're kind of like in there with the troops, side by side, still, for this day.
Here at La Provence, I think something that I've really fostered with my cooks
is almost like an apprenticeship program
where Chef Besh learned from Chef Chris and passed it on to me,
and now I'm passing it on to my cooks,
and so we have this depth of history and tradition in food and in farming also,
and so it all ties together passing it on to our next generation.
This is a place that I worked as a young man,
as a chef just starting to come up through the ranks,
and this is where I really learned how to love the customer
and how to put your soul into food.
Gallagher's Grill was named an open-table diner's choice restaurant in 2014,
but it harkens back to a time before web reservations,
where a town would have won maybe two great restaurants,
worthy of celebrating the grandparents' golden anniversary,
and also relax enough to handle an awkward first date.
Here, a party doesn't have to choose between steaks or fish.
We've got the largest selection of fresh fish on a daily basis,
I think, of anybody around here,
but on the other hand, our beef and steaks and veal and lamb are our biggest sellers,
so there's a lot to choose from.
Leave it to Louisiana to tie-dyed old reliable and make it pop with color and charm.
That's what happened when Liz Munson brought her New Orleans attitude
to Liz's where-yat diner in the heart of Old Mandeville.
With everything from shrimp and grits to Napoleon-fried green tomatoes,
Liz's menu is as long as a novel with something for everyone.
Seafood scramblers are for me.
What's in this bad boy?
Shrimp, jumbo lump primie, all my vegetables, pepper jack cheese,
and a Cajun holiday sauce.
See, this is what we do in Louisiana.
We share, even if we have cooties or not.
Do you have cooties?
What do you think the key to making world-famous seafood dishes is?
I think it's simple.
Because the star of the show is the seafood.
You don't need all the other jouge.
You just don't have to overthink it.
What's jouge?
You know, jouge.
I'm looking for the culinary definition of jouge.
I don't know.
I think I just came up with something.
If you want to know what Louisiana cooking is all about,
you know, really get a broad palette of Louisiana cooking.
Come to a festival, right?
Yeah, definitely.
Definitely come to one of the festivals, one of many.
Sometimes two and three a weekend.
And everybody's got a little something different.
And it's fun. It's fun.
And if cooking and eating isn't fun, there's no reason to do it, right?
No. If there ain't no fun in it, look at it.
Plenty of fun in it.
Plenty of fun in it.
Plenty of fun in it. Love it.
Well, as you know, Louisiana is quite famous for their food.
So our idea is to produce wines that complement Louisiana foods.
So a lot of our wines are designed and made with the idea of
complementing spicy types of Louisiana dishes.
This is a 20-style of pork that we do here at the vineyard.
You pick up the cranberries and the kind of fruitcake almost
in the front and dates, pecans on the back end.
It reminds me of my grandmother's house at Christmas.
Yeah, there was a lot of drinking at my house at Christmas.
I'm ready to jump in this thing.
Take your hand, go like this, turn around, get a scoop.
Show some of your color.
Show some of my color.
It's not as easy as it looks.
No, it's not.
You're looking good for your first time.
I only got 50 more years to go to learn how to do this.
All right, there we go.
Okay, and then the next step is the sprinkles.
What do I do with this?
There goes that sugar bars.
The thing we try to serve is a soda shop experience.
The same experience I had when I used to ride my bike down
Street to Waterbury's drugstore.
And I'm kind of the last generation that remembers that.
By recreating his childhood, Mr. Frank is passing it on
to future generations.
Mr. Frank, you said that you originally wanted to open a place
where people could just have birthday parties?
Birthday parties, yeah.
And we do birthday parties.
Every dish is a birthday party.
It's not my birthday, but I am celebrating.
This is the best birthday ever.
Here, let me get you some.
No, just give me some, no.
Just don't give me some.
It is to die for.
Mmm.
It's good.
If your regular problems are heaven, this is sin.
Yes.
You know what the best part about the North Shore is?
The farms.
We have all the farms over here.
We're real impressed with the food markets
and the availability of getting local produce.
I had a baby eight weeks ago, and I can't tell you how good it feels
to know that she's going to be eating the same stuff that I'm growing.
It makes me want to work harder to make it better if that's even possible.
I need to take one of these home to my wife and my babies.
You are the kombucha girl?
That's what I've become, the kombucha girl at the Covington Farmer Market.
This community is my heart and soul, number one.
It's just such a unique community.
You look around at this market.
I mean, everybody is like a giant family out here every week.
I couldn't imagine another way to sell it.
Outside of Covington, there is a short time in the early sweetness of summer
where an escape to Blue Harvest Farms to pick blueberries
is a surest way to get back to nature.
There's so much. Dad's going to eat it.
So my daughter was two years old at the time.
The bushes were about her height.
And that first season when we had berries out in the field,
she just did what came natural.
And she started picking them and putting them in her mouth.
And at that point, I decided we were not going to be a conventional farm.
We were going to be an organic farm.
I was not going to spray anything that would potentially harm my daughter.
In Louisiana, food is a family affair, as the orzo salad proves.
This is actually my wife's recipe.
It's one of those dishes that I absolutely love.
I thought you said you couldn't cook.
I can't.
You just did this.
You did all the heavy lifting. I didn't do anything.
No, no, no. My father-in-law and my wife.
They did all the heavy lifting.
But that's food in Louisiana.
The families do all that heavy lifting and have been for generations.
And we're just enjoying all their handiwork.
And enjoy is a key word.
If you want Louisiana culture, you want crop.
How much are you boiling a day right now that crabs and crawfish are fresh?
Crab and a couple hundred pounds of crabs a day.
Crawfish is about a thousand pounds of boil today.
Oh, man. Louisiana eats good, don't they?
We have the best seafood in the country, if not in the world.
On the scenic banks of the Chifuncta is a riverfront tradition
that the locals head to when they desire the delicious delights
of the Louisiana culinary coast.
The seafood boat at Morton's, I christened the Titanic
because it's going down.
It might take a while, but it's going down.
Any journey to the savory side of St. Tammany
must have multiple stops at restaurants
that have put a Louisiana spin on international favorites.
For over 40 years at the North Shore Landmark selling duties,
Chef Sal in Pistano has been dishing up homemade Italian recipes
infused with authentic Creole influences.
We know to have good food in Louisiana,
all that spice, all the fresh seafood,
all the nice oyster, shrimp, social crab.
We're eating a thousand pound of crawfish in a party
and I tell people, they think I'm crazy and they don't believe that.
What are we cooking, Chef?
Today we're doing a bulgur base.
Do they use the word bulgur base?
No, they didn't.
They used stew or corpollion.
Today we're lucky enough to have some Louisiana shrimp,
some grouper out of the gul,
and Oxlot 9, we just kind of use whatever's in season
when we go with what's coming out of the gul,
what's fresh, and you can't go wrong.
Minutes into Mandeville, you can enjoy a brew with a view
at the Barley Oak.
Even without the waterfront property,
this is one of Louisiana's most epic pubs.
The only thing more spectacular than their local beer selection
and their impressive burgers and sandwiches
would be one of those Michael Bay movie sunsets on their porch.
Just down the streets is Rips on the Lake.
The name says it all.
Just escape outside, relax beneath ceiling fans,
and let your fork and knife do all the work.
How did you become the 14th largest small craft brewery in America?
What is happening here?
It's dumb luck.
No, it isn't.
We've got a great team.
We've got a great vision.
It's just been a passion.
That's what we have here.
We have a great team that loves what they're doing,
and their passion shows in our beer.
You can taste the passion.
I need to taste a little bit more passion here.
The passion can be tasted in the 20 distinct brews
of beta crafts every year,
plus the limited runs in single barrel productions.
When you love what you do,
there's no walls you won't break through.
There's not any risk you won't take.
I think I'm going to let you just go for the gusto
and go with Buqueray.
It's our Imperial IPA, 7.5% ABV.
Lots of mults, lots of hops.
We use a special technique called late hopping in that beer,
and what that does is it gives you the hop aroma,
the hop flavor, but none of that palate-wrecking bitterness
that you get in a lot of Imperial IPAs.
What I like about this is,
this is not really a tasting-sized serving.
You're giving me a regular one.
You're going to have to dump most of this out, okay?
No, I'm not.
I am not dumping this out.
I like traveling.
It's why I play music.
It's why I play all over the country.
And one of the things I love doing is going to different places
and drinking the different flavors,
just like eating the food.
The beer is the same way.
Do you put a little rock and roll
in each of these beers you design?
Oh, yeah, of course.
I'm a big fan of what we do.
I like being small.
I like being regional.
It's something I'm very proud of, you know?
All of our beers on their own.
They stand their ground.
They're all great beers.
I have a lot of eating here to do that.
Yes, you do, because we have homemade desserts, too.
Call you all.
I'm going to need a bigger vehicle.
You know, our motto at KG's is
come in as a customer and leave as a friend.
People will be talking from table to table.
Everybody knows everybody by the end of the night.
Off-key, or on, sunshine or gray skies.
You are family at Cathie's.
And a place is waiting for you at the table.
This is Louisiana Sunshine.
It's the warmth of a great meal.
It's the glow of being with friends,
even if you don't know their names.
And the brightness of enjoying each moment, of each bite.
This is Louisiana Sunshine.
And there is so much more to it.
And it's the warmth of being with friends,
even if you don't know their names.
And the brightness of enjoying each moment, of each bite.
And there is so much more I need to taste.
