It's New Orleans: Midnight Menu +1

Chef Richard Papier still remembers when Mexican food in New Orleans meant Taco Bell. And he s not that old. Chef Richard is changing how we experience Mexican dishes with authentic recipes from Mexico steeped in his fine dining training working alongside Emeril, Susan Spicer, Nathaniel Zymet, Donald Link and Guillermo Peters. Chef Richard s new Uptown restaurant on Magazine Street is a few thousand giant steps up from Nacho Mama s, the space it now occupies. Arana Taqueria y Cantina is the real deal Yucatan soaked flavors paired with the only imported Mexican craft beer in town and a range of fine tequilas. If you think the leap from Nacho Mama s to Arana is about the most incomparable comparison you could imagine, how about this one the leap from Cairo, Egypt to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. That s the trajectory Cal Zayed s life took. Cal is Arana s front of house face and a tequila sophisticate who turns drinking tequila into an art form. Cal can take you on a flight with the finest tequilas from Mexico or

Sarah Edwards is living the lives of 3 people. By day she is a barista at Hey Cafe on Magazine Street. Then she ll go hop on her pedicab and sweat out the caffeine in the French Quarter for a few hours. When most people would then crash out and sleep or drink the night away listening to music, Sarah is following her main love, with the man she s in love with. Sarah and Frankie Ostello are the co heart and soul of St Clair, a short bus food truck with a wood fired pizza oven. Frankie is the reason Sarah stayed in New Orleans. She was about to leave town, giving up on her dream of starting a wood fired pizza oven food truck when she ran up against the city s smothering food truck red tape. Sarah met Frankie at a party, discovered he already had a food truck and was dreaming about turning it into a wood fired pizza oven on wheels. They built the pizza oven together, fell in love along the way, and the rest is, well, an exciting future. Ray and Margo talk pizza, love, and bocce ball on this episode of Midnight Me

The Zen Temple is on the 4th floor of a Camp Street building in downtown New Orleans. The building used to be Cosimo Matassa s legendary recording studio. Today, below the Zen temple where the music temple once stood and the greatest of New Orleans music was recorded, the Zen Boogie has been handed on to the next generation Phil s Grill. Where once Cosimo built hits, like Earl King s Big Chief, track by track, now Phil builds some of the city s most popular and talked about burgers, ingredient by ingredient. Actually, Phil doesn t build them, you do. Phil s menu has an exhaustive list of ingredients that you can combine into some million plus combinations of burger. And they re awesome enough to make the Zen master, who lives on the 3rd floor of the Zen Boogie Burger building, come down and break his 30 years of vegetarianism to try one. True story. What goes with a burger That s not a Zen koan, that s a serious question with a simple answer beer. Phil s 1 guest, buddy and business colleague is Kirk Coco, fou

Paris, of course, is not in Latin America. Nor is it in North America. To Zella Palmer aka Zella Palmer Cuadra the blending of cultures, food, and music in New Orleans is unlike anywhere else in the US or in Europe and the simplest description that explains the blending is in culinary terms a gumbo and in cultural terms a Latin Paris. Zella herself is something of an internationalist and a personal and cultural gumbo. Born and raised in Chicago but with roots in New Orleans that go back generations, Zella discovered a love for Latin America and Cuba in particular and then discovered that all her loves combined not in Havana as she originally thought, but in New Orleans. In the 6 years that Zella has made New Orleans home she has taken the culture and academia by storm. She is the author of New Orleans con Sabor Latino The History and Passion of Latino Cooking, and Dillard University s Director of the Ray Charles Program in African American Material Culture. Who better to fill in the blanks about Zella s color

Jeremy Labadie is, in every sense, the Beer Buddha. Whether his Buddha like stature is God given or the result of consuming beer, whether his calm countenance is from a Zen like approach to life or a couple of cool brews, who really knows the truth about, well, anything Among the many surprising Buddha enlightening moments on this show are the revelations that Abita actually makes good beer despite the beer snob community thumbing it s collective nose at the conglomerate across the lake. And the claim that the Beer Buddha whose life is consumed with hops, malt, brewing, eating, writing and breathing beer could walk away from beer any time and never look back. Now that s a true Buddha. The Buddha s 1 guest is one of New Orleans most literate and entertaining journalists, Megan Braden Perry, aka Megan Capone. Megan is making her first solo outing tonight after giving birth to baby Franklin a mere 7 weeks ago. And she s making the most of the short lived freedom. A craft brew and a Monkey Hill Negroni put mom in

Leora Pearl Madden opened the Pearl Wine Co link1 in Mid City this year for no better reason than she simply loves wine. Turns out love is a pretty good guide to a successful business and, well, love. Leora fell in love with her plus one guest business broker Joel Duran link2 and the rest is the future... link1 http www.pearlwineco.com link2 http businessperformancereview.com

Aaron Vogel makes donuts and sliders and has chocolate milk on tap at his new unique Magazine Street eatery District Donuts Sliders Brew. But what Aaron s really doing is changing the world. An ex pastor, Aaron is deeply committed to making the world a better place. He has a business plan that spreads love, happiness, and human decency beyond his four walls to the neighborhood, cities and nations. It s not some cheesy business slogan like "changing the world one donut at a time," it s a real business plan that involves investing the profit from donuts in a social revolution. By the end of this show, if Aaron suggests moving to Ghana and opening Vogeltown, we d probably all be there drinking the chocolate milk koolaid. In a city of colorful kitchen characters, Aaron Vogel is the most quietly powerful charismatic guy you re going to meet. Aaron s 1 on this show is the equally dedicated Ben McLeish. Aaron and Ben met online, but not on Match.com. They found each other in the search for other New Orleans contribu

Nobody went to Ernie K Doe s legendary Mother In Law Lounge to actually lounge. Except Tee Eva Perry. Tee Eva was K Doe s back up singer and dancer, and best friend of K Doe s wife, Antoinette. Some of Tee Eva s fondest memories are of the nights every night of the week they weren t performing spent lounging around in the back room of the club with Ernie, Antoinette, and "Mom" Antoinette s mom . Revealing a little know fact about life behind the scenes in the world of the self styled "Emperor of the Universe," Tee Eva tells Margo and guest host Poppy Tooker that each of them had their own couch to lounge on in the lounge. Not that Tee Eva has spent much of her life lounging. She s mostly a ball of kinetic energy, making up batches of pies and pralines in her current Uptown corner street front kitchen, or delivering the live Tee Eva experience. This comes in the form of regaling a never ending stream of tourists seeking a taste of home cooking and baking they ve seen on TV with tales from the rivers and bayous

Chef Rob Bechtold loves his meat smoker so much he sleeps with it. Well, next to it. And gets up every half hour to tend to the flames. Apparently you can taste the love and dedication in every bite because Chef Rob and wife Emily s NOLA Smokehouse sells out of barbq every single day. Rob and Emily met on that romantic boulevard, Veterans Highway in Metairie, at the short lived take out for foodies Mecca, Foodies. Rob was a sous chef and Emily was making her first foray into pastries. Foodies came and went, Rob and Emily bounced around the New Orleans restaurant scene till Katrina bounced them out of town. Obsessed with coming back to New Orleans and opening a barbecue restaurant, Rob and Emily started out with a couple of pop ups before settling on their new home on Jackson Avenue near the river. Along the way Rob found his Buddhist path and his penchant for Bonsai. This is a true story of love, enlightenment, and smoked meat.

Emeril s Delmonico Chef de Cuisine Anthony Scanio looks like he s directing traffic at a busy intersection, but actually he s just sitting down with a beer to have an amiable chat with Ray and Margo. Animated Chef Anthony is a whirlwind of wonderful tales about Arabi, Italy, crabs, mrlitons, kids, Creole cooking, Disney World, Mardi Gras, meat, and the sheer joy of changing your entire life s path to follow your dream. Chef Anthony s 1 guest, Emeril s Delmonico Sous Chef Darren Chabert, is also blazing his own trail out of childhood St Roch. Like Chef Anthony, Darren decided after spending 13 years in the army that what he really should be doing is cooking. Darren brought along a charcuterie selection from Emeril s Delmonico. Chef Anthony ends the evening on a high note, treating everyone to homemade liquers, including the magical Elixir of the Seven Powers, and Ruclino, believe it or not a delicious alcoholic shot of arugula. If you ever need a shot of reassurance that following your dreams is not only possi

What s the difference between God and a Goddess The former is everywhere and the latter is in one place at a time, right NOLA Food Goddess Lori Gaudin comes mighty close to challenging that definition. Ray and Margo do their best to list all Lorin s culinary exploits from blogs to cookbooks, podcasts, TV shows, social media, and radio programs, but the list of achievements pales like vanilla against the colorful conversation about Lorin s life. From disparate childhood influences to daring early forays into love and food, from the Paris of South, New Orleans, to the real deal Parisian cooking school, from omnivore eating to the tyranny of Celiac disease and her attendant blog about it, My Stupid Stomach, Lorin Gaudin s fearless tell all defines what makes a Goddess. Kim Ranjbar and Lorin have been buddies since their early post Katrina experiences threw them together. Kim tells the story behind her wildly popular column Weekend Cheat Sheet, in which she chronicles her weekly indulgences in her one day a week

Krista Pendergraft May is co owner of Cowbell. Not only was Krista brave enough to open a restaurant practically on the railroad tracks and the foot of the levee at what was then the worst part of Oak Street by miles she is also fearless enough to be a guest on a food podcast she had not only never heard of, but never heard. Nor had anybody, not even the hosts of the show, Ray and Margo. That s because this very night Krista showed up with her equally take no prisoners 1 Kim Vu, there has been no Midnight Menu 1. Yes, it s Wayback Week at Midnight Menu 1. This is the magical night that started it all the very first episode of Midnight Menu 1. What a way to kick off a dynasty. Well, that may be a little strong, but this is the show that definitely sets the tone for what s to come. Conversation ranges from the Heimlich Maneuver to Olympic volleyball. Do you recognize Krista s 1, Kim Vu When Kim moved to New Orleans from Alaska Kim decimated the Vietnamese population of the great state of Alaska by 50 . Fame was

We invited one of New Orleans top chefs on the show, and got two. Chef Dan Esses from Three Muses is Ray and Margo s guest. Although in this picture it looks like Chef Dan is holding Margo s hand across the table and Ray s holding her other hand under the table, what s actually going on is even more interesting. But not as interesting as it s about to get. When Dan invited Chef Nathaniel Zimet from Boucherie as his 1 guest on this show, nobody could have predicted the walk they were about to take down the Memory Lane of Hell as they recall their early experiences as starting out chefs together in what has to be one of the worst run kitchens in the history of New Orleans dining. If you listen to Midnight Menu 1 to get a taste of what really goes in the NOLA culinary world and in the minds and hearts of its personalities, you re going to be enraptured listening to these chefs talk about what they went through to get to where they are today. When they started out, Chef Dan and Chef Nathaniel didn t know each oth

Having 5 girls under 6 is no picnic, especially when 4 of them are quadruplets. How many more life changing events would you like after that How about the non quadruplet daughter is diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis That s what happened to Alicia Murphy. Alicia s husband and her 1 guest on tonight s show is Matt Murphy, owner and chef at Irish pub and restaurant, Irish House. So when their daughter wasn t responding well to traditional medication, Alicia turned to long nights of research and days experimenting with diet. From that dedication a new diet began to rule the Murphy household and will soon creep its way on to the Irish House menu too, but that s a story for a little later that Matt announces for the first time, on this show. Seeing a phenomenal success in their daughter s quality of life, Alicia and Matt started eating healthy too. The result Matt lost 35 pounds and Alicia opened a bakery and healthy food store on Magazine Street which she has called Fare Food Apothecary. What began as a

Kelly Boffone started out baking at Maurice s in Metairie when she was 18. It was the ideal job starting at 4am meant she could stay all night partying and go straight to work. Little did young partying Kelly know that she would turn out to be a naturally super talented baker and after graduating from John Folse s cooking school end up being head pastry chef at Emeril s. Having reached the top of the mountain early in life, Kelly decided to channel her "God given gifts" into serving her community. And that s how she came to open The Peacebaker, a dedicated Gluten free bakery, certified Kosher, dairy free, vegan, allergy friendly bakery making cakes, cupcakes, pastries, brownies, cookies, king cakes and more. And by the way, The Peacebaker ships and delivers, anywhere thanks, Dad . If you visit The Peacebaker on Veterans Boulevard at the Veterans exit of the I 10 right by Tiffin Inn you ll meet Sarah Hairston. Sarah is the face of the bakery and on this show she s Kelly s 1. Sarah started at The Peacebaker for

Dr. Gourmet has a day job as a doctor and professor of medicine at Tulane University. And a side gig as a gourmet doctor at Tulane s revolutionary Goldring Institute for Culinary Medicine. Emmy Award winning Dr Gourmet, aka Timothy Harlan, started out working in restaurants at age 11. He opened his own French Bistro in his early 20 s, and when his wife s ill health drove him to find out more about medicine he went to med school. A number of twists and turns led Tim to Tulane University, and what used to be called a reassuring bedside manner at a time when a doctor actually sat, and much less beside your bed led Tim to media and online celebrity as Dr Gourmet, a handsome and reassuring voice of scientific reason and kitchen smarts in the cluttered media food world. The Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine is literally a revolution in the medical approach to food. Not a fad driven class at cooking school, this is a scientifically driven course at a leading medical school. The center is dedicated to teaching bo

Addie K. Martin is a self described "Swamp Cajun." As opposed to the "inland Cajuns" with the cochon propensities, Addie s Golden Meadow Cajuns are shrimpers and fishers. After graduating from the King of Cajun s Cooking School, aka Chef John Folse s Culinary Institute, Addie went on to work in restaurants till Katrina blew her plans in a different direction. She created advertisements at Peter Mayer for a bunch of years before returning to her passion for food. Addie stirred everything she d learned around the creative tables at the ad agency into her love of food and created Culicurious, a food blog and web based recipe development hub that centers on a healthy and seasonal kitchen table, and fun n hearty home dining experience. Somewhere in this time line, along came Twitter. The predictable next sentence in this tale would be how Addie was cleverly able to apply her ad agency smarts to Twitter to find a new market, but she actually used it to find a husband, Jeremy Martin. If you ve never heard anyone hap

Chef David Bridges is so high energy that he makes Midnight Menu 1 co host Ray look practically normal. David s career has been a wild ride, from life on a Lear jet catering to the rich and famous to his current prestigious gig at one of New Orleans finest restaurants, Upperline. At one point David had a restaurant in Shreveport Louisiana which was known for its fine food until it became even more widely known as the place Chef David came out of the kitchen to kick out actor Tom Cruise. As you can imagine from these pictures, David tells this story in a way that no mere reporting could capture. Regular listeners to Midnight Menu 1 might notice something wrong with these photos. There is no 1 the mystery guest the guest brings with them. Every guest that is except Chef David. A little lack of pre planning is not going to get in his way though Chef David plays the part of both himself and his sous chef, Pedro. This is one of the wackiest Midnight Menu 1 shows we ve made. Chef David Bridges is an amazingly talen

Most college kids eat cheap or bad but that didn t stop wannabe food writer Daniel Schumacher penning a food column in his student paper. Daniel went on to become a professional food writer in New York, Birmingham Alabama, and now in New Orleans as editor of Louisiana Cookin . Daniel describes what it s like writing about food. It s a fascinating procedure that most of us have never thought about, involving the doubly hedonistic pursuit of eating followed by the pleasure of reliving the pleasurable experience so you can describe it. It s an elegant and passionate combination of all the senses and intelllect. Daniel makes being a foodie intellectual about the most romantic gig out there. By the end of this conversation you ll be dashing for your keyboard to describe lunch. Daniel also takes us into the unknown world of the magazine publishers Test Kitchen. Daniel works with a full time staff of 8 whose daily job it is to take recipes from well known contributors chefs and other foodies and translate them from