SFA | Oral History | New Orleans Eats

When he got out of the Marine Corps in 1968, Milton Prudence meant to stop off in New Orleans to visit family before heading back home to New England to pursue a career in teaching. At the time, visiting his family meant visiting the kitchen at Galatoire’s, because that’s where most of them worked: his mother, his grandmother, his uncle, his cousins. Naturally he signed on, too, as a dishwasher; roughly two decades later, Mr. Prudence became Galatoire’s first African American executive chef.

While he and Galatoire’s parted ways in 2003, Mr. Prudence continues to cook many of that institution’s specialties at Tommy's Cuisine, a New Orleans-Italian restaurant in the Warehouse Arts District. Crabmeat au gratin, stuffed eggplant, and oysters Rockefeller share table space with veal Marsala, soft-shell crab linguine, and Italian rosemary chicken. Mr. Prudence takes pride in preserving both culinary traditions, saying, “It’s not something I take lightly…I have teachers that taught me this and for me to pass it on and—or even for me to do it, and do it to the point where people like it and can say nothing changed with it—that’s very important to me.”

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Milton Prudence talking about how he learned to cook. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

---

What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Milton Prudence
Location: Tommy’s Cuisine, New Orleans, LA
Date: July 19, 2006
Interviewer: Sara Roahen, writer and SFA member

---

Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 and I’m on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans at Tommy’s Cuisine with Chef Milton Prudence. So if I could just get you to state your name and your birth date and how you make your living?

Milton Prudence: Milton Prudence, July 10th, 1947. Executive chef at Tommy’s Cuisine.

Thank you. Let’s start by, where did you grow up?

Providence, Rhode Island.

And how did you come to New Orleans?

I got to New Orleans visiting relatives in 1968 and had just been released from the Marine Corps and was on my way back to New England when I stopped here and never left.

Sixty-eight and you had family down here?

Yes, I got a lot of family in New Orleans.

At what point did you start cooking?

I started cooking in December of ’68. I had an uncle that was employed at Galatoire’s Restaurant, and by me being undecided about going back to New England, my funds were running short, so I asked him about getting me a job there until I decided whether I wanted to leave or not. And that’s the beginning of my cooking career.

So you had you had an interest in cooking before then?

None, whatsoever—never thought about it.

In retrospect, did food play an important part in your childhood or your youth?

As much as my grandparents who raised me — both of them cooked and it was a little interest in it for, the fact is, they made my brothers (I had two brothers) and myself self-sufficient. They taught us how to cook some things. But say seriously to make a living at it, I never thought about it.

What were some of the things that you could make for yourself to survive on as a young person?

My grandfather is the first person that taught me how to cook grits, right. [Laughs] They were very Southern and my grandmother, she was a chicken and dumplings person and she taught me how to do that; fried chicken, very traditional Southern food.

And when you first got a job there what was your first post at Galatoire’s?

A dishwasher; uh-hm, I washed dishes for about three months and from there I started working the pantry. And from the pantry it was just going to the line and moving up. For the last 15 years I ran the kitchen.

Pantry is salads and at Galatoire’s it’s a combination of salads and desserts, and what you do is you not only have to learn how to make the salads, you have to learn how to make all the sauces that goes with the salads. At Galatoire’s we were a very extensive pantry.

Like the shrimp rémoulade?

Rémoulade, Crabmeat Maison, a lot of salads that we — at one time we had a salad for every big department store on Canal Street. Godchaux, Maison Blanche, Dinkelspiel, DH Holmes had a salad; everybody—every big department store had a salad named after them.

And so at a certain point you started enjoying yourself in the kitchen?

I started enjoying myself from the time I started the pantry. It — it was an interest with food. Like I told you it was something I didn’t expect because my inspiration was to be a school teacher, and after I started with the salads I liked it and my interest kept rising and I wanted to learn more.

Who taught you to cook there? Was it your uncle?

Actually the whole line did. My uncle, of course he took a special interest in me learning. Oh I think my first influence was the head chef at the time. His name was Charlie Plough. Charlie opened the sauté station in the morning. He done most of the sauces and he saw that I took an interest so he taught me. And my uncle made Rockefeller; at the time we had Bienville, though they don’t make Bienville any longer. He made mayonnaise; at that time mayonnaise was made in-house. Now they buy it, but those are the things that my uncle taught me because that’s what his job was. But all of the cooks contributed really to my learning, you know, and if they were doing something that I didn’t know how — they were a good group of people to teach you, you know. Then later on about 1970 we had a chef come over from France and he ran Christian’s. What’s his name — Roland Huet.

And at that point, before Mr. Huet came along, were there any other French people in the kitchen when you first started?

No, no, it wasn’t. Before I got there they had a few that had retired, but in my stay we didn’t – no, it was no one with a French background.

And when you were cooking it, did you feel like you were cooking French food or New Orleans food?

It’s a combination really. Galatoire’s was not traditional French. It was more of New Orleans French and it’s — most of the recipes — original recipes from the time when they opened. So basically it was all handed down; now they have a very extensive menu, but as the guard changed the recipes never changed. You just, you learned Galatoire’s way and that’s what you passed onto the next person — Galatoire’s way. Even today where a lot of people use machines to do stuff, Galatoire’s is still doing it by hand because that’s the way that we was taught. Like Hollandaise; we was taught to make it in a pot in a double broiler where a lot of people use machinery today ‘cause it’s easier, but you know I like my way better. [Laughs]

Well I guess that leads to another question I had which is, you know I’ve heard a lot and read a lot about how Galatoire’s recipes are handed down from 100 years ago, and I’ve wondered whether it’s possible to make your own imprint, whether you can use creativity within that structure.

From gumbo, your soups, certain sauces — is you. And any executive chef that takes over there that part of it becomes you; the main, the main body of it is still Galatoire’s. Now I learned — Charlie Plough was the one that really taught me how to make soups. They got a soup that it’s — they even make it today. It’s oyster artichoke soup and Charlie got it from Warren LeRuth. Warren LeRuth eventually went to the West Bank and opened up his restaurant, but I learned it from Charlie. But still each individual chef has his own touches. Turtle soup, oyster artichoke soup, we have a soup of the day — those things became — and Marchand de Vin, certain other sauces, they became mine. Crawfish etouffée, that became mine, but like our basic béchemel sauces, strictly Galatoire’s, and you’ve got to go by their book. So you know you do have yourself to put into it.

And when you say you had to go by the book I’m wondering if there was an actual book or if it was all oral.

No, I had actually a book for every recipe that Galatoire’s had and 85-percent of them you have to follow. I mean consistency has everybody on the same page and that’s where recipes come in. I was made to follow them and I made other people follow them. We got to do it this way you know. What we took pride in was say someone who ate there 50 years ago and when they’d come in to eat they’d say, well this tastes just like it did at that time. And it’s because we tried to do it the same way — the same amount of ingredients — everything the same way, and we took pride in that.

It was in 1997 I think that they, the Galatoire’s family and management, officially named you the chef of Galatoire’s…

It was really before that. What happened — Galatoire’s never publicly let anyone know who their chef was. It was just in-house; you knew what you were and that was sufficient, but they wasn’t a family that really promoted their chef positions. In ’97 it became fashionable — everybody was putting their chefs out there, so it really was the time that changed, so they just changed with it, but it wasn’t really something that was new. Like I said, it was something that I had been doing for years already but different media wanted a title, so there it was, you know.

Did it ever bother you that it wasn’t public?

No, because of the fact that I was going to different functions and I was recognized as such, you know. We would do the Zoo-To-Do every year; we would go to the Food Exposition every year, and you know I was doing demonstrations, and I mean anybody who really followed the restaurant saw my face, and I’ve never been a person really to have this ego that I wanted the world to know me. I’m more low-key anyway; so no, it didn’t bother me at all.

And well right now I’ll say for the record we’re at Tommy’s Cuisine, where you’re the chef now. Did you come immediately to Tommy’s when you left or was there a transition?

I left in June of 2003. At the time my stay at Galatoire’s was — had came to an end. I’m not happy to say it wasn’t a favorable end. And I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went to Atlanta for about three weeks. When I came back Tommy wanted to see me. So Tommy at the time was building this restaurant and they was just about almost completed. We opened it the 17th of August in 2003. And I assumed my position at that time here.

You were looking for job prospects in Atlanta?

Yeah, and it was outside of cooking ‘cause at the time after I left Galatoire’s I was — mentally I was sort of burned and I didn’t know…since it wasn’t a happy breakup I didn’t really know if I even wanted to do this again. I had a brother that lived in Atlanta. I stayed with him like I said three weeks. I looked at different prospects; some of them was favorable but it just wasn’t home, you know. [Laughs] It really wasn’t home and I started to miss cooking, so that’s why I came back.

And had you had much experience cooking Italian food?

Very little, but in 35 years I learned cooking because if you can cook it doesn’t take long to pick up anybody’s menu and the things that Tommy was doing he went over them with me. I knew I could do them, and it’s just the idea of getting it the way that he wanted, and that didn’t take long to do. So no, it’s no problem in learning different foods.

And so here now at Tommy’s you do a pretty much all-Italian menu and then you have specials. And the specials are a lot of Galatoire’s like dishes.

I would say 80-percent of them are Galatoire’s dishes, right. What happened, when we first started the special station it was going to be something that on a weekly or — it got to the point we was going to say on a monthly basis we would change it. Some of the selections that I chose sold so well we couldn’t change them, and it built into where we had a little menu for the special station. And now the special station has its own menu and we can't really incorporate much in it because it’s full. [Laughs]

And what are those dishes — the standards here, the specials?

Crabmeat Sardou, we have crab au gratin, we have a filet with Brabant potatoes and asparagus. We have done stuffed eggplants — actually anything that someone requests I can do it on the station if it’s within reason and we have the ingredients. So it’s nothing for a Galatoire’s customer to come here and request something and they can get it if it’s in the line of something that we’re doing.

I read in an article when I was doing research that you not only had an uncle who worked in the kitchen at Galatoire’s but other relatives too.

[Laughs] My grandmother worked there, my mother worked there, my brother worked there [Laughs] My mother washed dishes; my grandmother washed dishes. Like I said my uncle was a cook. I had a brother that worked pantry. That’s the one I told you about living in Atlanta. He’s a businessman now in Atlanta. I had a cousin, he worked there; he’s in Alaska working for the government of Alaska. It’s like a lot of the younger members of the family, a lot of them was in college; they would work there in the evenings.

Do you have any cooks working for you now that also came from Galatoire’s?

I have two; I had three — the storm took one away from me. I have a kid by the name of Kenny Harvey. Kenny started working at Galatoire’s — he was 13 years-old — as a dishwasher. At 18 years-old I made him a cook. Right now he’s 39 and he’s very good.

Do you have any thoughts on what it means to you to be a guardian of the culinary tradition?

From the background that I have and, like I said, the food that I do it’s at least 100 years-old, and if I teach and pass it on it might make it another 100 years. So that’s, that’s something that I’m proud of because I’m doing something that someone else created that a lot of people enjoy and I’m able to still make them enjoy it.

Do you think about that when you’re cooking ever?

Yes, I do because of the fact, like I said, it’s not something I take lightly. Not only family members, but I have teachers that taught me this and for me to pass it on and — or even for me to do it, and do it to the point where people like it and can say nothing changed with it — that’s very important to me because it’s like keeping something going, you know, and it’s been my life now. [Laughs] You know it’s more than half my life, and whatever I got left I probably will still be doing it, so it’s been my life.

---

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

home | events | about the SFA | join us | contact/member services