Author Archives: Robert

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”

If I could only choose one vegetable to eat for the rest of my life the choice would be easy. I like asparagus, but the only way I eat it is roasted. Carrots are nice, but not very versatile. If I never again had to eat broccoli or cauliflower for the rest of my life,Continue reading “The Simplicity of the Perfect Potato”

If someone were to put a contract hit out on me, it might be the easiest termination in hitman history. I’m not that hard to track down. Every morning I am in town I can be found at our breakfast joint sitting in the same seat, at the same table, at the same time, eatingContinue reading “My New Toaster”

This column is written in the afterglow of a special weekend. I just spent the past few days with my wife, daughter, and son— just the four of us— hanging out together in our apartment in New Orleans. We did, as we usually do, with most of our trips and planned most of our activitiesContinue reading “Not Just Another Dinner”

Mississippi is closed today. As I type a winter storm has just passed through the entire state leaving a blanket of snow and ice. The people in the northern part of the state have had it much worse up there than we have down here in South Mississippi. Though everything, for the most part, isContinue reading “Snowy Day”

There are two types of honeymoons. The relational kind that one experiences as a newlywed, full of bliss and joy, and the foodservice variety one endures as a new-restaurant owner filled with stress and obstacles. In each case— whether it’s a long-term marriage, or a long-lasting dining concept— one hopes that the result at theContinue reading “Restaurant Honeymoons”

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of the Beatles. Anyone who knows Beatles history knows that on July 28, 1968, the Fab Four took a break from recording “The White Album” and spent the entire day with two photographers traveling all over London on what is now referred to asContinue reading “A Mad Day Out”

Some of the restaurant world’s greatest food items have come from mistakes, near mistakes, the need to use by-products, and items that were— at one time or another— headed for the trash can. That chocolate lava cake dessert that was so hot in the late 1990s was actually a mistake made when a chef pulledContinue reading “Claws and Wings”