Emeril Lagasse Restaurant at Island View Casino
GULFPORT - Celebrity chefs
Celebrity chefs are a new trend on the Coast, with three now lending their name and cachet to Coast restaurants:
• Luke Palladino opened Bragozzo at Isle of Capri in October.
• Todd English will open Olives at Beau Rivage in December.
• Emeril Lagasse will open New Orleans Fish House on the Gulf Coast at Island View Casino in spring 2007.
Emeril Lagasse understands the healing power of good food and plans to heap it on the Coast by opening one of his signature restaurants in Gulfport.
He is the third celebrity chef - and arguably the most famous yet - to announce plans for a casino restaurant since the rebirth of the gambling industry. Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House on the Gulf Coast will open next spring at the Island View Casino. With a home in Pass Christian and a wife from Gulfport, the Coast was his haven before Hurricane Katrina, not a place to do business.
“In a million years - before the storm - I would never have said I would operate a restaurant on the Gulf Coast,” he said. “I just wasn’t interested. My father-in-law is in real estate. I had many opportunities to do this type of thing. I chose not to do it. After the storm and after being there many, many times, my wife, Alden, and I and my team in New Orleans felt we wanted to make a commitment to the Gulf Coast.”
Lagasse and Rick Carter, a co-owner of the casino, will officially announce the partnership this afternoon. The restaurant will reside in a new 9,000-square-foot structure currently under construction on the southwest corner of the casino property. Carter asked Kent Loveless, who is Lagasse’s father-in-law, to approach the chef. Carter and Terry Green, who had operated the no-frills Copa Casino before the hurricane, had something to prove when they bought the property of their bigger competitor Grand Casino Gulfport.
“When we were starting up this project, I knew that we needed something special to get the people’s attention down here that we were a really different player,” Carter said. “Not only did we upgrade the property to better than it was previously, we knew we had to do something special. Our plans all along were to have an upscale restaurant. Instead of us running it, I thought it would be wonderful to get Emeril.”
Although Emeril’s New Orleans Fish House will be a sister restaurant to an establishment with the same name in Las Vegas, the Gulfport property will be closer to the ingredients -and reflect that with the menu. Lagasse is a partner in a farm cooperative in McComb so he can have control over the quality of produce and poultry.
“We’re going to bring a lot of that wonderful stuff into the restaurant,” he said. “If it’s shrimp season, if it’s trout season, if it’s redfish, if it’s oysters, we’re going to do a lot of things with those products. We will play off of Mississippi.”
The design process is ongoing, but the restaurant should have about 175 seats and at least 40 at the bar. There also are plans for a chef’s table, where guests by special arrangement can watch the action and talk to the chef in charge.
“There is absolutely going to be a chef’s table, a very special one at that, which we’re really excited about,” Lagasse said.
In addition to the chef’s table, there will be a food-bar kitchen with a less formal atmosphere than the private dining.
Entrees will range in price from $24 to $32. The restaurant will initially open only for dinner and later offer lunches, but not until Lagasse is satisfied the staff is fully trained and capable of delivering top-notch food and service.
“When we determine who the chef will be in Gulfport, we will actually bring that chef in and work with me, the culinary director and assistant culinary director,” Lagasse said. “We will work and develop the menu. We don’t believe in using customers as guinea pigs.”
Lagasse plans to hire a minimum of 80 employees from the area and bring in a dozen “Emerilized” employees for the first six months. A good portion of those are actually from the Coast, he said.
He and Alden Lagasse had renovated a house in Pass Christian and moved into it July 4, only to have it destroyed less than two months later.
“We’re just waiting for the infrastructure to come back,” he said. “We’re absolutely going to rebuild. What, we don’t really quite know yet. We had a wonderful place there.”
Lagasse, however famous for his New Orleans cuisine, is actually from Massachusetts. A talented musician, he was offered a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music and instead opted to become a chef. He earned a degree from Johnson and Wales University and later traveled to Paris and Lyon to learn classic French cuisine. He worked at restaurants in New York, Boston and Philadelphia before coming to New Orleans, where he was executive chef at Commander’s Palace.
His culinary talent earned him respect and honors, but his television personality on the Food Channel made him a household name.
Today, he has nine restaurants: three in New Orleans, two in Las Vegas, two in Orlando, one in Atlanta and one in Miami. New Orleans continues to be his base of operations, but Lagasse said he’s anxious to start the cooking on the Coast.
“I wish it was going to happen tomorrow,” he said.
New Orleans Fish House
Here are some of the details of the New Orleans Fish House on the Gulf Coast, which will open in spring 2007 at the Island View Casino in Gulfport:
Capacity - 175 seats in the dining room; at least 40 at the bar.
Amenities - A chef’s table, where guests by special arrangement can watch the action and talk to the chef in charge.
Not dressed for dinner? - In addition to the chef’s table, there will be a food-bar kitchen with a less formal atmosphere than the private dining.
Price range - Entrees will range from $24 to $32.
Hours of operation - The restaurant initially will open only for dinner. Lagasse said lunch will be added later.
Employees - About 100, including a dozen from Lagasse’s other restaurants who will help train and serve.
Source: Sun Herald