The moreish chicken liver pâté at Aaron Burgau’s flagship, Uptown restaurant traces back to a time when he was the sous under chef/owner Gerard Maras at the fondly remembered restaurant Gerard’s Downtown.
Only a few blocks from Audubon Park, a century-old, corner store building plays host to Patois, a snug, neighborhood bistro launched nearly two decades ago by Chef Aaron Burgau and (then) partners Leon and Pierre Touzet. When it opened, one local food writer said it was bound to do well as it is “close enough to Clancy’s to catch its overflow,” but Patois has, rather quickly, garnered its own devoted following.
Among Creole-style dishes of pecan-crusted Gulf fish, seasonally-inspired gumbos and the restaurant’s version of dirty rice made with farro, French influences shine through from meaty slices of rabbit terrine and smoked fish dip blended with crème fraîche to a classic liver pâté neatly capped in clarified butter.
The vernacular of Patois’ menu partly hearkens to a time when Burgau worked at Gerard’s Downtown, a restaurant on Lafayette Square owned and operated by esteemed local chef Gerard Maras.
A sous chef at Commander’s Palace and longtime executive chef at Mr. B’s Bist ro, you may remember Maras from PBS’ Great Chefs television series, preparing his version of the New Orleans classic BBQ shrimp, a recipe that remains the French Quarter restaurant’s signature dish to this day.
“Most people don’t know he invented that dish,” says Burgau. “He created that emulsion for their creamy bbq shrimp.”
While you can’t discount the influence of James Beard award-winner Susan Spicer (Bayona, Rosedale), it was his time with Maras that emphasized Burgau’s skill with French charcuterie from sausages and terrines to pâté.
“A lot of our dishes [at Patois] remind me of him,” says Burgau. “He’s influenced a lot of people.”
At one time, the kitchen at Gerard’s Downtown housed a veritable who’s who list talented chefs, from John Harris (Lilette), Alex Harrell (The Southern Hotel) and Anton Schulte (Bistro Daisy), to Slade and Allison Vines-Rushing (Brennan’s, MiLa) and Tory and Dave Solazzo (Del Porto).
“It was kind of a dream team,” says Maras. “I used to call it the Zen kitchen, everybody talked in a normal voice and I had a lot of good people there.”
The chef powerhouse, including Aaron Burgau, learned a lot in their brief time at Gerard’s, from making pâtés, sausages and pickles, to preparing trickier dishes like galantines – a lavish French dish of skillfully deboned poultry stuffed with forcemeat, rolled and pressed into a cylindrical shape and poached. “Aaron kept a lot of that going [at Patois], the country-style, French pâtés and terrines,” says Maras. “I’m not sure he goes as far as the galantine, but I wanted to show everyone how to make them, because they’re fun and different.”
Though Gerard’s Downtown was only open for a few years in the late 90s, many people still fondly remember the cuisine, not the least of which was the lagniappe duck pâté that always accompanied the complimentary bread service.
“[The pâté] was made with apples, Cognac, Madeira and a lot of butter. It’s based on a Michel Guérard recipe, so it’s not something I invented. I’ve always been a big fan of his,” says Maras. Michel Robert-Guérard was a famous Parisian-born chef and author known as one of the fathers of nouvelle cuisine.
Like Maras, Burgau and his chefs at Patois pride themselves on using locally-sourced ingredients, much of which comes from Inland Foods, a distributor committed to supporting sustainable produce and quality meats from nearby farms. “He’s using a lot of good farm products like I used to, a lot of ingredients local to the area,” says Maras.
While ingredients change with the season, the most recent iteration of chicken liver pâté at Patois includes an infusion of brandy, apples capped with duck fat. Served in a small glass ramekin, the pâté is served with a tiny dish of berry-rich jam (blueberries, strawberries, blackberries), whole grain mustard, house made bread-and-butter pickles and fried Saltine crackers, a Depression-era snack that’s seeing a recent resurgence in fine dining restaurants.
On any given weekend, locals, neighbors and visitors in-the-know pack the small dining room – and flow out onto the sidewalk – on the corner of Laurel and Webster streets, sipping well-made cocktails and sharing dishes of tender gnocchi tossed with Louisiana crawfish and English peas in a creamy velouté or crisp duck confit atop a bed of Vietnamese-inspired slaw dressed in peach nước chấm. Yet with all its popularity, Patois seems to elude the limelight.
“I don’t care about [Patois] being a fancy restaurant, getting all kinds of press and publicity,” explains Burgau, an attitude he shares with Maras. “You know what I want to be? I want to be Clancy’s . . . give me Brigtsen’s, give me Lilette.” While Burgau doesn’t believe his restaurant has reached that level of devotion, I (and fans like me) think Patois is already in that number.
*Article originally published in the July 2026 issue of Where Y’at Magazine
