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10
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
MARCH | APRIL 2016
the
Seafood
issue
Besh was raised, as the saying
goes, by a village. When he was
9-years-old, his father was hit
by a drunk driver while riding
a bicycle and became paralyzed
for life. So it was his grandfather
and his father’s friends who
took over the job of teaching young John how to work the waters,
how to love the land and how to piece together the concepts of
recreation, ecology and nutrition. It was, to be sure, a decidedly low-
tech, humble schooling.
“There were no fishing camps,” he recalls. “That would have been
high-falutin’. It was just: you leave your house, you go fish.” One
of his dad’s friends taught him how to shrimp. Another how to
fly fish. Another how to spear fish. Another how to hunt. They all
contributed to the young man’s knowledge, understanding and love
of the sport.
“I got to live all these different lives through my dad’s friends, all
having to do with hunting and fishing in south Louisiana marshes
— from Alligator Point all the way down to the Rigolets,” Besh
fondly recalls. “Some of the most memorable times in my life were
when we were camping out on the Chandeleur Islands and getting
eaten up by gnats and mosquitoes and scratching your ass off while
catching stringers of trout.”
All these years later, he is both reflective and nostalgic about his
youth, and cognizant of the specialness and entitlement that growing
up on Bayou Liberty afforded him. And about the delicate balance
that now holds between recreational and commercial fishing — and
the current state of our wetlands and environment.This is where John
Besh, the restaurateur, reconciles with John Besh, the sportsman.
“I got to grow up in a very naïve time,” he says. “The 1970s and
the early ‘80s, where we still got be kids. And I got to be a kid
learning who I was in the waters and in the marshes and in the
swamps. I didn’t always appreciate it then, but I think each day now,
I appreciate it more and more.”
It was as a kid, fishing the bayous and then hanging out by his
mother’s side in the kitchen afterward, when John separated from
his many siblings and became, in many ways, the chosen one among
his family. At least as far as food goes.
“I think they (his siblings) appreciated it, but they weren’t ignited
like I was,” he says. “It wasn’t something inherent in their nature that
they just ‘
had to cook
,’ whereas my parents knew at a young age: ‘You
should be a chef.’”
This family hunch was confirmed when Besh, at age 11, sought
out the legendary Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme at a book signing
to meet him and get his autograph. It was at the Bayou Lacombe
Crab Festival — along with the Pearl River Catfish Festival and the
Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival, an annual destination on the Besh
family calendar.
“Seeing this guy, literally bigger than life, the most important chef
in the world!” Besh fondly reminisces. “I could suddenly relate to
where it was that I came from.”
• • •
And so everything changed. He
went off to St. Stanislaus High
School in Bay St. Louis. He
joined the Marines and served
in Iraq during Desert Storm.
He enrolled in the Culinary
Institute of America and
graduated in 1992. Then his arc of success was blinding. He has
opened restaurants at the speed of light; his flagship bistro, August,
in downtown New Orleans, is considered one of the great eateries
in a great eating town.
He wrote his books. He won James Beard Awards. He appeared on
America’s Top Chef and The Next Iron Chef and, after Hurricane
Katrina, was one of the first guys back in town to cook for first
responders and victims of the flood.The New York Times, in a 2007
profile, stated: “His post-Katrina narrative has turned him into a
spokesman for his city’s culinary recovery.”
He grew a family. He grew a business empire. He grew in stature and
wealth and fame. But still …he fishes.That’s where the center of John
Besh holds together. Admittedly with more resources than before.
He’s got a couple fishing and hunting camps now across the Gulf
Coast. He’s got three boats, but only one big enough to have a
name:
Oui Chef
, a nod to the constant response of line cooks in
French restaurants who answer to the demands of the head chef by
saying, “Oui, Chef.” Yes, Chef. Yes, Sir.
But he’s still down home and humble and would rather fish close to
home on any given day that in some exotic angling location across
the globe.
“I’m not gonna drive somewhere and fight if the fish are right here,”
he says. “Certain times of the spring and a good portion of fall,
there’s nothing better than Lake Pontchartrain.The big trout, they
find their way into the deeper holes in the lake. And you can always
find redfish in the marsh. And there’s nothing like going out to
Delacroix or down to Plaquemine in the spring.”
For bait, he likes live shrimp or small croaker or lures made by his
favorite fishing mate,Deadly Dudley Vandenborre, a true Louisiana
fishing legend.They tie up off the bridges over Lake Pontchartrain
“Some of the most memorable times in my
life were when we were camping out on the
Chandeleur Islands and getting eaten up by
gnats and mosquitoes.”