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This year marks my 40th year in the restaurant business. I got into this business after flunking out of college in 1981. Though I have always worked. I mowed lawns until I got my first, real, full-time job at 15 as a radio station disc jockey. When it came time to declare a major forContinue reading “The Next Generation”

It’s graduation season. Granted, this year’s high school seniors have experienced an extremely weird junior and senior year. But the conclusion of this once-in-100-years craziness is nearing an end. It seems that is this part of the world we are, once again, hosting graduation ceremonies with caps, gowns, cords, and commencement addresses. The world mightContinue reading “To the Mississippi Graduates of 2021”

NEW ORLEANS— This city is, unquestionably, one of the top five restaurant cities in America. I would imagine that if one were to poll national food critics New Orleans would be listed among the top three. To my taste— and I’ve eaten extensively in most of America’s top restaurant cities— New Orleans is number one.Continue reading “RSJ’s New Orleans Restaurant Recommendations 2021”

As I head into my 60th year, I am amazed as I look back on life and reflect on the different stages along my journey. I have always been blessed with a good memory, so my early childhood years, teen years, high school years, and twenties hold a lot of fond recollections, despite some majorContinue reading “Daddy-Daughter Breakfast”

I am a bonafide breakfast person. I was born a breakfast person, all through my early school years I was a breakfast person, and I am a breakfast person today. Even in my sleeping-late-because-I-partied-all-night-late-teen-and-early-twenties years I was a breakfast person. Granted, during that period I was eating breakfast at 3:00 a.m. before I passed out,Continue reading “The King of All Breakfast Foods (In honor of the Queen of Pancakes)”

This past Sunday was the first Easter Sunday in which I have missed attending a church service in a long time. My family and I were in New Orleans moving our daughter into her new apartment. We could have hit up a couple of Catholic churches near our apartment, but we spent time together andContinue reading “Feeding Methodists”

One year ago today, my life seemed to be at a complete standstill. The global pandemic was shifting into second gear, my city and state were shut down except for essential businesses, and the six restaurants and two bars I had spent 32 years of my life building were all closed. The situation was direContinue reading “Help Is on the Way”

Last week I received the sad news that Barbara Thomas, of Barbara’s Home Cookin’ in Franklin, Tennessee, passed away. Thomas opened the popular meat-and-three café in the formerly quiet suburb of Nashville in the late 1990s but sold her interest a couple of years ago. Thomas was a native of New Augusta, Mississippi, but claimedContinue reading “Culinary Carpe Diem and Bread, the King and Queen of All Carbs”

Bar owner Neal Bodenheimer is an intrepid trailblazer. It takes courage and nerve to go into an uncharted New Orleans neighborhood devoid of restaurants, taverns, retail, and foot traffic and open a new business. The fact that he opened one of the premier cocktail bars in the country is even more impressive. In 2009, inContinue reading “Visionaries and Pies”