Revisiting restaurants covered years ago to see what’s changed, or what’s deliciously stayed the same.
“I think the most obvious changes are not at the restaurant itself, but the city in general,” says Frank Brigtsen, chef and co-owner of Brigtsen’s Restaurant. “I say that is because of the altered perspective in the way that people might view Brigtsen’s.
Marking the restaurant’s 40th anniversary, this year Frank was recently hailed by Food & Wine Magazine as “a leader in the New Orleans culinary scene, preserving the rich history and flavors of Creole cooking,” but his cuisine was viewed through a different lens when the Riverbend restaurant first opened.
Food critic Gene Bourg had no lack of praise for Brigtsen’s when it opened, granting it a nigh unattainable five beans and gushing about every morsel to pass through his lips from a dish of blackened prime rib of “unassailable quality” with a “marvelous” herbal crust to a “spectacularly good” banana ice cream. But the young chef was astonished to read Bourg’s claim that Louisiana cooking was “redefined” at Brigtsen’s.
“I was like whoa, wait. What? Is that what I’m doing? I’m just doing what I do,” Frank laughs. “Now, 40 years later, I’m viewed more as the traditionalist who carries the torch for classic Creole cuisine, but I’m still doing the same thing.”
Doing what he does, Brigtsen reflects that the demographics of New Orleans has changed a lot over the years, but most notably after Hurricane Katrina, an event which quite literally ripped hundreds of thousands of longtime residents from their homes, never to return. “This vacuum was filled by people from elsewhere and it changed the complexion of our population,” says Frank.
This major upheaval in our city’s culture was, in part, what inspired Brigtsen to begin teaching at Nicholls State University in Thibodeaux – where he spent 17 years teaching a culinary course on Creole and Acadian food – and he began offering classes at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) in 2011 when the high school established its culinary school. “I recognized then that I was indeed a traditionalist. I want to preserve Creole/Cajun cuisine and teach what I know, what Paul Prudhomme taught me.”
While many of the dishes at Brigtsen’s are an obvious homage to Creole cuisine, and the recipes and techniques of his mentor, Frank confides that his creative dishes are often the product of circumstance. “I had some leftover duck and I wanted to do something different with it and I decided to make a duck calas, served it with an orange, Creole mustard sauce,” explains Frank. “Calas are on my menu everyday in one form or another. We serve shrimp calas with our BBQ shrimp and we have an appetizer of crawfish calas during crawfish season.”
Calas are fried rice fritters or doughnuts which were sold from covered baskets carried by Creole women and free people of color in the French Quarter in the 17th and 18th century. “I love having calas on the menu, because every time someone asks what they are, we get to tell the story,” says Frank. “The historical significance of that is powerful to me.”
Running an economical, sustainable kitchen with little or no waste was instilled in Brigtsen long before he began cooking with Prudhomme. One such story he likes to tell is how his father insisted on French bread with every meal, but by the end of the week, there would be stale heels of bread stashed on top of the refrigerator. “If there was enough, on Sunday nights my mother would make bread pudding. It was a special dish for us!”
Over a decade ago the menu at Brigtsen’s offered dishes like crab and corn bisque, smoked Muscovy duck with andouille cornbread, and banana bread pudding with a pecan praline sauce. Today Frank’s menu features shrimp remoulade with guacamole and deviled eggs, roast duck with a tart dried cherry sauce and dirty rice, and figgy bread pudding with dreamsicle sauce. He loves to change things up to coincide with what’s in season or to incorporate flavors from different cuisines, but he never fails to fall back on the classics.
“I like to keep one foot firmly rooted in the past and one foot looking forward and that’s really a joyful stance,” says Frank. “You don’t shut anything out and you embrace what’s coming, what’s in season, and what’s available. Have fun with it, create, and yet still make the gumbo and the trout meunière.”
Most recently, Frank announced his new cookbook titled Color of Flavor, set to be released this month. A self-published edition, the new cookbook is a departure from the two, Stay at Home limited edition electronic cookbooks the chef released during the pandemic shutdowns. Color of Flavor features gorgeous photos captured by Romney Caruso, and was created in partnership with Richard Thomas, President of Blue Runner Foods
“We’ve been friends forever. He [Richard Thomas] came up to me one night a year ago and said Frank, do you want to write a cookbook? And I said yes!”
*Article originally published in the June 2026 issue of Where Y’at Magazine
