Paul Prudhomme

Few cooks have changed the way America eats as completely as Paul Prudhomme. The warm, round faced chef from Opelousas, Louisiana took the Cajun and Creole cooking of his childhood and turned it into a national obsession, igniting the blackened redfish craze of the 1980s and putting New Orleans firmly at the center of the American food map. From his small French Quarter restaurant, K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, he fed locals, travelers and legions of curious eaters who happily queued around the block for a taste of his gumbo, jambalaya and etouffee.

Prudhomme was the first American born executive chef at the storied Commander’s Palace, the author of eleven cookbooks, the star of five public television series, and the founder of Magic Seasoning Blends, whose jars of Blackened Redfish Magic still sit on grocery shelves in more than 30 countries. He died in 2015, yet every time a home cook reaches for a jar of Cajun seasoning or blackens a fillet in a screaming hot skillet, they are tasting his legacy.

TL;DR

• Paul Prudhomme (1940 to 2015) was the Louisiana chef who made Cajun and Creole food a national phenomenon in the 1980s.
• He was the first American born executive chef at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans, and later handed the role to a young Emeril Lagasse.
• With his wife Kay he opened K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in the French Quarter in 1979; it ran for an extraordinary 41 years.
• His blackened redfish became so popular that Louisiana had to restrict commercial fishing of the species.
• He founded Magic Seasoning Blends, wrote eleven cookbooks and starred in five public television cooking series.
• After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 his team cooked more than 6,000 free meals in ten days for relief workers and residents.

Paul Prudhomme key facts

Paul Prudhomme: career timeline

From a farm in Opelousas to the American table

Paul Prudhomme’s story begins about as far from celebrity as it is possible to get. Born in 1940 near Opelousas, the seat of St. Landry Parish in the heart of Cajun country, he was the youngest of 13 children of Eli Prudhomme, a farmer, and Hazel Reed, a wonderfully creative home cook. There was no culinary school in his future and none was needed: his mother’s kitchen was his academy. At her side he learned to coax deep flavor from whatever the farm and the seasons provided, a lesson in resourcefulness that would shape everything he later cooked.

He was in a hurry from the start. At just 17 he opened his first restaurant, a hamburger place in Opelousas called Big Daddy O’s Patio. The venture lasted only nine months, but the fire was lit. Prudhomme spent the following years on the road, selling magazines and working restaurant jobs across the country, tasting regional American cooking wherever he landed. Along the way he began mixing his own spice blends and giving little bags of them away to customers, an early glimpse of the seasoning empire to come.

In 1970 he came home to New Orleans as a sous chef at the Le Pavillon Hotel, and soon after became the opening chef at the Maison Dupuy. It was there that he met a waitress named Kay Hinrichs, who would become his wife, his business partner and one of the great driving forces of his career.

Commander’s Palace and a French Quarter revolution

In 1975 the Brennan family took a chance that changed American dining: they hired Prudhomme as executive chef of Commander’s Palace, the first American born chef ever to hold the post at the grand Garden District institution, which had previously looked to Europe for its kitchen leadership. Prudhomme repaid that faith magnificently, turning the restaurant into a world class destination and proving that Louisiana’s own cooking traditions could stand shoulder to shoulder with French haute cuisine.

Then, in July 1979, came the leap. Prudhomme and Kay opened K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen on Chartres Street in the French Quarter, its name a portmanteau of theirs. It was a modest 64 seat room where Paul ran the stoves and Kay ran the floor. For a while he tried to juggle both restaurants, but demand at K-Paul’s grew so intense that he committed to it full time, recommending a talented young chef named Emeril Lagasse to succeed him at Commander’s Palace. Few chefs can claim to have launched two legends at once.

The blackened redfish craze

In March 1980 Prudhomme originated the dish that made him famous from coast to coast. He dipped fillets of redfish in butter, dredged them in his own mix of cayenne and dried herbs, and seared them in a cast iron skillet heated until it smoked. Blackened redfish was born, and America simply could not get enough of it. Restaurants everywhere copied the technique, applying it to everything from chicken to steak, and the demand for redfish grew so overwhelming that Louisiana eventually restricted commercial fishing of the species to protect it. That same year France honored him as a Chevalier of the Ordre du Mérite Agricole for his work championing Cajun and Creole food.

Taking Louisiana to the world

Prudhomme’s fame soon outgrew the French Quarter. In the summer of 1985 he brought his crew to New York for a five week pop up where the lines sometimes stretched four blocks. Four years later he returned with a restaurant at 622 Broadway, where diners cheerfully waited up to two hours for a table. He wowed students at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in 1994, and in 2004 he flew to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay with 4,000 pounds of food and seasonings to cook for American troops. Wherever he went, he carried the flavors of south Louisiana with him.

A generous heart: feeding New Orleans after Katrina

Nothing revealed Prudhomme’s character quite like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. With his restaurant temporarily closed, he set up at a relief center and cooked for free for the military personnel and residents holding the French Quarter together; at one point his team turned out more than 6,000 meals in ten days. K-Paul’s reopened that October, one of the early beacons of the city’s culinary recovery, and in 2006 Bon Appétit magazine honored him with its Humanitarian Award. For a man whose catchphrase was “Good cooking, good eating, good loving!”, feeding his neighbors in their hardest hour was simply the natural thing to do.

Magic in a bottle and on the screen

So many guests begged for his seasoning secrets that Prudhomme eventually bottled them. His company, Magic Seasoning Blends, grew from hand mixed bags in the restaurant into a 120,000 square foot facility in Harahan, Louisiana, shipping Blackened Redfish Magic and dozens of other blends to more than 30 countries. The brand continues to thrive today, still guided by his mission of making bold, balanced flavor easy for home cooks.

Television carried his gospel even further. Beginning with Fork in the Road in 1995, he filmed five full cooking series for New Orleans public broadcaster WYES, finishing with Always Cooking in 2007, and his syndicated short segments, The Magic of Chef Paul, brought his grin and his skillet into news broadcasts across the country. His 1984 book Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen became a classic of American food writing and was recognized with the IACP Culinary Classic Book Award in 1989.

Restaurants

Awards and honours

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See Paul in action in this video.

Signature dishes

Blackened redfish is the dish history will remember him by: butter dipped fillets crusted with cayenne and herbs, seared in a white hot cast iron skillet until a dark, spicy crust forms. But Prudhomme’s table ran far deeper. His gumbo and jambalaya set the standard that countless American restaurants still chase, his etouffee showed how elegant Cajun country cooking could be, and he is credited with introducing the turducken, the gloriously excessive chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, to the American Thanksgiving. Underpinning it all were his seasoning blends, balanced layers of pepper, herbs and spice that made his food taste bigger than anyone else’s.

Cookbooks

Paul is the author of books including Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen (1984), The Prudhomme Family Cookbook (1987), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Seasoned America (1991), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Fork in the Road (1993), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Pure Magic (1995), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Fiery Foods That I Love (1995), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Kitchen Expedition (1997), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Tastes (2000), Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Always Cooking (2007).

Personal life

Prudhomme was a proud son of Cajun country all his life. Named after Saint Paul by the family’s priest, he playfully adopted the nickname Gene Autry Prudhomme as a boy, after his cowboy hero. His second wife Kay Hinrichs was his partner in everything at K-Paul’s until her death on December 31, 1993, and in 2010 he found happiness again when he married Lori Bennett. He was also a generous teacher: Aarón Sánchez, later a celebrated chef and television personality, moved from New York at 16 to apprentice in his kitchen, and cooks across America grew up on his shows and his catchphrase, “Good cooking, good eating, good loving!”

Death and legacy

Paul Prudhomme died in New Orleans on October 8, 2015, after a brief illness, at the age of 75. The tributes that poured in from across the food world testified to how completely he had changed American cooking. His personal library of nearly 600 cookbooks and food science volumes was donated to the culinary library affiliated with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, where it continues to inspire new generations. K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen carried his flame in the French Quarter until 2020, closing after a remarkable 41 year run, and Magic Seasoning Blends still ships his flavors around the globe. Every blackened fillet served anywhere in the world is, in its way, a small tribute to the farm boy from Opelousas.

Paul in context

Paul Prudhomme is one of many chefs and food personalities profiled on Pickup Table 4, alongside Emeril Lagasse and Anne Burrell.

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Paul Prudhomme FAQ

What was Paul Prudhomme famous for?
Paul Prudhomme was the chef who brought Cajun and Creole cooking to national attention in the 1980s. He ran K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New Orleans, created the blackened redfish craze, wrote eleven cookbooks and founded the spice company Magic Seasoning Blends.

Who invented blackened redfish?
Paul Prudhomme originated blackened redfish in March 1980 at K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, searing butter dipped, spice crusted fillets in a smoking hot cast iron skillet. The dish became so popular that Louisiana restricted commercial redfish fishing to protect the species.

Did Paul Prudhomme create the turducken?
Prudhomme is credited with introducing the turducken, a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey, to American cuisine, and it has since become a beloved Thanksgiving tradition.

What happened to K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen?
K-Paul’s closed permanently in July 2020 after an extraordinary 41 year run in the French Quarter, and the restaurant’s name was respectfully retired. It remains one of the most influential American restaurants of its era.

Are Paul Prudhomme’s seasonings still sold?
Yes. Magic Seasoning Blends operates from a 120,000 square foot facility in Harahan, Louisiana, and its products, including Blackened Redfish Magic, are sold across the U.S. and in more than 30 countries.

Did Paul Prudhomme attend culinary school?
No. He learned to cook at his mother’s side on the family farm near Opelousas and refined his craft through decades of restaurant work, becoming living proof that great cooking can be learned at home.

Sources and further reading

This profile draws on reputable references including Wikipedia, 64 Parishes, Magic Seasoning Blends, NPR, NBC News.