Emeril’s

**If you search "emeril lagasse" on YouTube,** you will find evidence of the loud, bulldog-puppy-faced man you remember. The live audiences he cooked in front of cheered when he added "about a 100 cloves" (more or less) of minced garlic to a smoked tomato sauce he built right in front of them. He had a live band. They hooted and hollered (literally) when he added hot sauce to anything.

And in addition to his iconic BAM, not to be confused with the Brooklyn Academy of Music which is not a catchphrase but a building, he would repeatedly encourage folks to "kick it up a notch" with their use of salt and seasonings.

Besides Disneyland, Emeril provided my other informative impression of New Orleans growing up. It's almost hard to believe that he owns an actual restaurant there because he is such an icon on the TV, imagine finding out that Chef Boyardee was actually real. Wait... he was??! Therefore, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that his restaurant would be as BAM as he is. However, Emeril's today is not the same Emeril's of yesterday. It is now spearheaded by his son EJ (Emeril fucks) who revamped it for the tastes of the World's Best/Michelin crowd – indeed it recently received two stars. There are certain things that you have to do if you own a Michelin-starred/World's Best restaurant: you have to serve food of an expected caliber that's usually very expensive and 1-2 bites big, you need to have servers that fold your napkins every time you get up from the table and say things like "may I take your hat sir?", you need to have an extensive wine program filled with bottles that most people will never drink, and, arguably most egregious of all, you have to tell a story. One would think that each of these things on their own would not be very BAM, so how BAM can new Emeril's really be?

To get to the dining room, you first have to open the door to walk into the bar. After checking in with the hostess, a man will open a different door for you that opens into a tall, dark room. At the end of the room are floor-to-ceiling windows that lend a view into a pristine, shiny kitchen. Tan leather booths that could seat six or eight if y'all can really squeeze actually seat two. Your free-standing table, perhaps next to where the cheese or butter cart is stashed sometimes, is only separated from the sidewalk by a pane of tinted glass. The area is also well-lit with tasteful overhead lighting that serve as warm spotlights. "Photography is encouraged," Chef Kyle, I believe (hot, fucks), may tell you on a guided sojourn back to the kitchen. In front of you is a refrigerated display case filled with ingredients (crawfish, quail, true A5 wagyu from Japan (for a supplement)) that are explained to you from left to right, like how you read a book. This all happens within the first 10-15 minutes after you sit down, giving you an idea of how the meal is going to go while getting all the explanation out of the way. It is also where you will find your first bite, the rest of which you will find back at your table.

Summer truffles make their only appearance here and are used to balance out a Comté cheese tart's intensity. A shot of gumbo is intense with shellfish stock. And a miniature shrimp po' boy is not a take on a po'boy, it is simply a tiny po' boy, same French loaf and all. A spring roll the size of a fingernail tastes just like a better version of the spring rolls you would get at your most convenient Vietnamese place, and the bartender's elevated take on a Hurricane is made with all-natural ingredients but tastes just like a Hurricane – which tastes like Kool-Aid fermented with Jolly Ranchers.

Clockwise from the top: Comté tarts, tuna tartare situation, spring rolls

Po’ boys in the front, gumbo in the back (in the little bowl that looks like it has holes in it but it actually does not)

Not until now, when we're fully hooked, does the server approach with food menus. Of course we're going to opt for supplements. Of course we seriously considered the premium wine pairing that's more expensive than the dinner before opting with the regular pairing. What more ingenious way to upsell than to give guests a taste of what they're going to get before they get it?

The somm will walk you through both the standard and the premium wine pairing selected from the expansive wine collection – some of which survived Katrina. He may suggest a bottle for the second half of the pairing instead of two different glasses as per your desires. It turns out he lived in the Bay for a while and worked at every restaurant there. The bathroom plays "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and the toilet stall has no toilet seat covers. This is all to say that a Chinese ambassador and your Bible-thumping grandma would both equally feel at home.

Two hours have passed. The cream cheese tart arrives and tastes exactly like a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Oysters with tapioca are kicked up a notch from Keller's by being poached in Herbsaint (a traditional Creole dish) and served with foie; oysters on the half-shell are served with a miniature bottle of Cristal champagne.

Note the 1:1 cream cheese and lox ratio; incredible

I don't need to tell you the rest of the meal had no misses. I don't need to tell you the Syrah the somm served us was juicy and vibrant even though it had been aged for five years and was sitting on a rack for years, its label peeled away, or that one of the cheeses is "negroni-flavored," or that the palette cleanser before the banana cream pie is a puck of finely shaved ice called a "sno-ball," served with a Pepto Bismol-like substance proudly procured from the best sno-ball vendor in town. But what really sticks out is the effortlessness of it all. Service at a Michelin-starred place can feel performative and detached; food can be technically perfect but lack je ne sais quoi, like you can taste the meticulous weighing-to-the-grams of each component. But here, you won't notice servers refilling your water glasses, but they will also not pretend like they can't hear what you're talking about, sometimes chiming into your conversation as they see fit. Food is precise but isn't fussy, low brow ingredients are not included as heady nods but genuinely from the heart. The food is a lot but not too much, stories are told but not over told. A dinner here can last far longer than a drive from LA to Vegas or a flight from Miami to New York, and much of that time is spent leaving you alone, letting you be in the moment.

Watching Emeril, you may think that BAM's food would really be in your face BAM BAM BAM, but it's actually rather harmonious in the French/Creole sort of way. Emeril became a name alongside Wolfgang Puck and Daniel Boulud; the old guard of celebrity chefs were and still are very much at the center of their restaurants but not the "tortured geniuses" we all think of today. Eric Ripert recently posted the meal he had at Emeril's and I was almost surprised to see he was served the same meal us nobodies were (though probably different wine). Emeril's is for the people, and that is the biggest BAM of all.

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