Reprinted from ...
WHAT'S FOR
BREA.KF AST?
By JAMES A. MAXWELL
A merica's most
quoted magazine--read
by millions of
POST ~ INFLUENTIALS
© 1958 The Curtis Publishing Company
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On a base of creamed ------
spinach, place 2 artichoke
bottoms. Fill these with poached
eggs and cover all with hollandaise sauce.
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f?};;/~u(Je
Saute together Y2 bunch of finely chopped shallots and
two chopped green peppers. Add 1 tablespoon of flour
and blend in a cup and a half of white wine. Add
1 small can chopped pimentos, 1 tablespoon of capers,
including juice, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce,
and 2 chopped cloves of garlic. Saute 2 fillets
of pompano, cover with sauce and serve. Serves two.
What's for Breakfast?
This New Orleans restaurant
specializes in sumptuous morning mealsserved
until midnight-with 19th-century bounty.
Here are some of its recipes.
By JAMES A. MAXWELL
Photograph by George Lazarnick
Cfda/e' P/J~ta/o/
~ 10 oz. brandy
1Q to 12 cloves
Peel of 2 oranges
2 oz. curasao
4" stick cinnamon
Peel of 2 lemQ!!.s
10 lumps sugar
1 quart black coffee
Make small slices of the lemon and orange peels.
Add cloves and cinnamon stick to the bowl and stir them,
then add the cura<:;ao, followed by the 10 oz. of brandy.
Now the mixture is ready to be flamed, so light the
bowl and then pour in the quart of coffee slowly.
Serve while hot. Makes 10 demitasse-size servings.
"R unning a top restaurant in New Orleans
must be among the most personally satisfying
jobs in the world," a native of that city said to
me recently as we were finishing dinner at
Brennan's, one of the famous establishments in
the French Quarter.
Ella Brennan Martin, the manager of the
place, who had joined us for coffee, smiled
gloomily. "I wish 1 could get some decentsized
oysters," she said. "Right now they're no
bigger than quarters."
"Take Ella, for example," my companion
said. "Not only does her business enjoy international
fame, but she's a heroine in her home
town. She could, if she chose, speak disparagingly
of the Mardi Gras, hate Dixieland
jazz or even vote Republican, and the local
population would still look upon her as an
outstanding citizen. The best restaurants in this
city aren't just places to eat, they're cultural
insti tu tions."
,'.
':::' .. ,(-::) ... ~ .. /.~\
a n:anad fl7oak'fl ~
Cut 2 bananas into 4 lengthwise .
stdps each. Bmwn 4 tablespoons of
butter with %: cup brown sugar and %:
teaspoon cinnamon. When the sugar has melted and the
mixture begins to thicken, place bananas in the pan
and cook until soft. Just before serving, add 1 oz. rum
and Y2 oz. creme de banana. Ignite and serve
while hot, either plain or over vanilla ice cream.
These nine people - seven Brennans and two head chefssupervise
the affairs of the famous family-owned restaurant.
fP C
have been Dinner at Brennan's?"
Beebe, never a man to let friendship warp
his critical judgment, shook his head. "No
euphony," he said firmly. Suddenly his eyes lit
up. "Breakfast at Brennan's!" he said. "Now,
that's perfect." He then pointed out that the
possibilities of the morning meal had been
more or less forgotten in this country and that,
if Owen wanted to do something which would
attract attention to the new re"taurant, a revival
of the elaborate nineteenth-century breakfast
would be the perfect device. Owen was
enthusiastic about the idea.
Brennan's had been serving only luncheon
and dinner until that time, so all hands had to
set out on a widespread search for breakfast
recipes. Beebe supplied some. Chef Blange
developed others. Ella and Adelaide Brennan
went through a sizable library of cookbooks.
The kitchen doubled a<; an experimental laboratory,
and dozens of dishes were tried and
rejected for everyone found acceptable. Gradually
the menu took form.
Breakfast at Brennan's was an immediate
success. Few of the other leading restaurants
have ever served a morning meal, so Brennan's
has had the field almost to itself. Natives
and tourists alike were pleased with a breakfast
that was on a qualitative and quantitative par
with the two other meals of the day. As a matter
of fact, the breakfast dishes became so
popular that they are now served from the
nine-A.M. opening until the midnight closing.
Although I was well and happily acquainted
with Brennan's luncheons and dinners, I hadn't
done any extensive exploring of the breakfast
menu until my most recent trip to New Orleans,
when I decided to see how the more fortunate
of our forefatherg fared in the morning.
If Brennan's research has been accurate, they
did ver well indeed.
On my first morning in town,1 had what
the management describes-with probable exaggeration-
as "a typical New Orleans breakfast."
The meal began with grilled grapefruit
flavored with kirschwasser, a cherry liqueur.
Next came eggs Hussarde, a combination of
poached eggs with hollandaise, and grilled
ham and tomato on rusk with marchand-de-vz'n
sauce. The latter sauce, made of mushrooms,
ham, consomme, shallots, onions and red wine,
is as perfectly suited to the homely ham and
tomato as cheddar cheese to apple pie. Hot
French bread and marmalade rounded out
this course. The meal ended with bananas
Foster-the fruit is gently cooked in butter,
brown sugar and cinnamon and then set
aflame with banana liqueur and rum-and a
huge cup of cafe au lait.
Emboldened by my ability to move after
that meal, I went back the next day and ordered
the "traditional Brennan breakfast".
Fresh Creole cream cheese, a fine delicately
flavored dish which responds equally well to
rich cream or salt and pepper, got things under
way. Eggs Benedict were next, and then came
a perfectly grilled steak with bearnaise sauce.
Again there was hot French bread and marmalade.
For the finale, a waiter wheeled up a
service table and prepared crepes Suzette and
then cafe Brulot.
By now, the dire pretrip warnings I had received
from my wife and the man who lets out
the seams in my clothing had been completely
forgotten and, during the days which followed,
I had, at various breakfasts, snails broiled in
garlic butter; broiled pompano garnished with
chopped onions, garlic, parsley and chives;
and, as a gesture to the South, calf's liver and
bacon with hominy grits. Grits, however, are
not for this Yankee. Even when prepared by
Brennan's, they still tasted like a shredded telephone
book to me.
My respect for the hen, though, increased
enormously. Eggs Sardou (poached eggs in an
artichoke bottom and served with creamed
spinach and hollandaise sauce) and eggs a la
Turk (shirred eggs with chicken livers, mushrooms
and a red-wine sauce) brightened two
rainy mornings considerably. And I still remember
a couple of omelets with misty-eyed
pleasure. The first was made with fresh Louisiana
strawberries and set aflame with brandy,
and the other with snails and vegetables and
topped with a red-wine sauce.
Such fare has made breakfast parties at
Brennan's a popular social activity in New
Orleans. It also seems probable that the natives
like the breakfast idea because it gives
them more time than usual to spend in a favorite
restaurant.
One group of six, including an acquaintance
of mine, came into Brennan's about eleven
o'clock one morning just as I was finishing my
own breakfast. When I returned at nine that
evening, the same assemblage was still at the
same table, talking animatedly over their
dinner demi-tasse.
"Have you been here all this time?" I asked
the man I knew.
"Sure," he said with some surprise at my
question. "This didn't happen to be a very
busy day for most of us."
The present quarters of Brennan's are highly
conducive to these marathon sessions. The
building itself was erected in the early part of
the last century and, when the Brennans renovated
the structure, they preserved the architectural
flavor of the old French Quarter.
What was formerly the carriage drive is now
the entrance to the restaurant. This passageway
leads to the main dining room on the
right and, straight ahead, to a completely
walled-in courtyard set off with a splashing
fountain, magnolia, palm and banana trees,
shrubbery and vividly colored flowers. There
are tables and chairs in the yard, where guests
may sit and have drinks while awaiting space
in the dining rooms. Radiant heaters mounted
along the wall and on the second-floor porch
of the L-shaped building keep the courtyard
comfortable even on chill days and evenings.
On the first floor of the restaurant are two
large connecting rooms with soft green carpets
and cream-colored walls. Enormous windows
permit a view of the patio from every table.
On the second floor there are five attractive
dining rooms of varying sizes which can, when
necessary, be used for private parties. Meals
are also served on the porch overlooking the
courtyard. Dining capacity for the entire establishment
is 300 guests.
Although there is a large and competent
staff to handle the affairs of the restaurant,
there are always several Brennans wandering
about to make the guests feel welcome and to
see that everything is moving smoothly. Since
Owen's death, in 1955, the enterprise has been
operated by a family council which functions
with an astonishing absence of friction.
Ella Brennan Martin is manager and does
most of the buying. Her older sister, Adelaide,
is assistant manager and bookkeeper. A younger
sister, Dorothy Brennan Bridgeman, and Lynn
Brennan, the wife of brother Dick, handle
reservations and greet the patrons at the door.
Father Owen Patrick Brennan is in charge of
physical properties and doubles as still another
host. Brother John, who was formerly
with the restaurant, now operates a packaging
plant for fresh vegetables and salads-Brennan's
is one of his best customers-and sits on
the governing board. To complete this somewhat
bewildering genealogical study, brother
Dick and Owen E.'s son, Owen, Jr.,-men in
their twenties who recently completed their
Army service-are taking over management of
the Old Absinthe House, which will soon have
a steak-and-chop house added to its present facilities.
Both young men received their restaurant
training at Brennan's.
In addition to all the Brennans, the restaurant
has a staff of nearly 200, including fourteen
cooks, who are needed to maintain two
shifts.
When breakfast became part of Brennan's
activities, chef Paul Blange could not, of
course, supervise the kitchen for the entire day,
and a morning chef was added. That job is
now filled by Jimmy Smith, a man of thirty
from the bayou country, who came to New
Orleans some thirteen years ago to learn to
cook. He was with Antoine's for nine years; a
few months after he quit his job there, in 1954,
he went to work for Brennan's.
Jimmy arrives at the Brennan kitchen at
four A.M. and immediately begins to make the
sauces and soups for the day. He is commander
of the pots and pans un til two in the afternoon.
An hour later, Blange arrives and takes over
until the restaurant closes.
Jimmy is especially proud of the breakfasts
he serves and, like most serious cooks, he is
something of a missionary on the subject of
good food. Therefore, when I asked him for
some recipes, he treated me as a welcome convert,
not as a spy.
If you've ever had the desire to start the day
in the manner of a nineteenth-century tycoon,
here are a few suggestions. t/ GRILLED GRAPEF;UIT WITH
KIRSCHW ASSER
Remove the core from half a grapefruit.
Loosen meat from skin and sprinkle top very
heavily with sugar. Sprinkle that with kirschwasser
(be generous) and put the grapefruit
under broiler until it starts to brown. Garnish
with maraschino cherry and serve.
EGGS A LA TURK
Saute Y2 bunch of finely chopped shallots
and one pound of chicken livers together.
Blend in one tablespoon of flour and one cup
chicken stock. Add 8 oz. of burgundy wine and
Y2 pound fresh mushrooms. Let boil 5 minutes.
Put 2 tablespoons of sauce in each casserole; rrea 0 eggs in each and bake. Cover eggs
wit emainder of sauce and serve. Serves two.
EGGS HUSSARDE
On the base of Holland rusk, place a slice of
grilled ham and top with marchand-de-vin
sauce. Next place a slice of grilled fresh tomato
~nd t p it with a soft-cooked poached egg.
Cr with rich golden hollandaise sauce.
HOLLANDAISE SAUCE
Beat 4 egg yolks, adding juice of one lemon.
Cook in double boiler and add 1 lb. melted
butter. Use very low fire. Cook sauce until
thic Add salt to taste. Use a wooden spoon
for irring. Do not allow water in pot to boil.
MARCHAND-DE-VIN SAUCE
Combine 4 oz. each of chopped mushroom'),
ham and consomme. Add Y2 bunch of shallots
chopped fine and one onion also chopped fine.
Thicken with a little flour and add 4< oz. of red
"Tell that to the oysters," Ella said. "Maybe
they'll grow up to be worthy of me."
New Orleanians, of course, appreciate and
are proud of the fact that the French-Creole
cooking of such outstanding restaurants as
Antoine's, Galatoire's, Arnaud's, Commander's
Palace and Brennan's has made the
Delta City a gourmet's Valhalla and lures
lovers of fine food from all over the world.
However, the warm affection and strong proprietary
feeling which the natives have for
these establishments have little to do with their
value as municipal advertisements and tourist
attractions; the local re'Sponse is personal
rather than economic. New Orleans is a city
of restaurant afidonados who have their own
high and rigid criteria in judging food. When
a restaurant consistently meets local standards,
the townspeople, in an almost literal sense,
adopt the place. Sometimes, as in the case of
Brennan's, this close relationship is expressed
in unusual ways.
Brennan',:> is, I suppo<;e, one of the few restaurants
in history to have all of its portable
parts triumphantly paraded through the streets
on the shoulders of its patrons. This somewhat
curious but completely spontaneous expression
of esteem was made several years ago when
Brennan's was about to vacate its original
quarters on Bourbon Street and move to its
present location at 417 Royal Street.
"We'd planned to move at night, right after
the last of the dinner crowd had gone," Ella
Brennan Martin recalls. "All of us were feeling
kind of low because, in addition to all the
work we had to do, rain was coming down in
an absolute deluge.
"Suddenly people started drifting in from
all over town to give us a hand. There were
over a hundred of them, all customers. We
hadn't asked them, of course. They just came
and pitched in.
"Everyone started packing dishe and pots
and pans and silverware and napkins. The
place wasn't very large and, with all of those
people milling around, it was kind of chaotic,
but somehow things got done. The professional
movers were going quietly nuts, I guess, but
they got into the spirit of the thing after a
while.
"\Vhen we were all set to move out, somebody
turned up with a Dixieland band blowing
its head off. Every customer picked up
something to carry, a procession was formed
behind the band, and off we went in the
pounding rain to the new spot. Fortunately it
was only a block and a half away. I wouldn't
say it's the most efficient way to move," she
says thoughtfully, "but it had its moments."
The fact that Brennan's, in a comparatively
few years, was able to gain thi'S standing in a
city of highly sophisticated palates is an interesting
example of the power of affronted Irish
honor over classic French-Creole cooking.
Owen E. Brennan, founder of the establishment,
was one of the least likely of New Orleans'
citizens to open a restaurant devoted to
haute cuisine. He had, at various times, sold
candy bars from door to door, operated a
drugstore-although he was not a pharmacist-
run a gas station and been a liquor salesman,
among numerous other activities, none
of them even remotely connected with the restaurant
business.
Owen, however, did demonstrate that he
had considerable talents as a host when he
bought the historic Old Absinthe House in
1943. This bar, which was built about 200
years ago and, according to legend, was the
place where Andrew Jackson and Jean Lafitte
planned the defense of New Orleans in the
War of 1812, had been moribund for many
years, but under Owen's loose-limbed conviviality,
it flourished mightily.
To be fair to Owen, when he decided to
open a restaurant in 1946, just across Bourbon
Street from hi':> bar, his ambition was appropriately
modest. He had in mind a glorified
hamburger stand to which he could dispatch
such Absinthe House customers as felt the need
for simple, quickly obtainable food.
This humble ambition, however, grew to
astonishing proportions one evening a few
weeks later when Owen was discussing the
project with his friend, "Count" Arnaud Cazenave,
the late owner of the famous Arnaud's
restaurant.
Toward the end of the conversation, the
Count made some lighthearted comment to
the effect that Owen would merely be in the
food business, but that he, Cazenave, would
continue to work at a gastronomic art form. He
also stated that the Irish, although a nation of
poets, were probably incapable of any culinary
accomplishment more complex than boiling
potatoes.
Outraged by this jocular insult, Owen bellowed,
"I'll show you that an Irishman, this
Irishman, can run the best French restaurant
in New Orleans."
Owen's first task was to capture a chef who
was thoroughly familiar with the subtleties of
Creole cooking, and he was fortunately able
to bag Paul Blange, who is still the restaurant's
head chef. A native of The Hague, Blange had
received thorough training on the Continent,
had cooked for over a decade on some of the
world's best ocean liners and had spent some
twen ty years as chef in several of New Orleans'
leading restaurants.
Because the Brennans have a tribal bond
which would have abashed the Medicis, Owen
turned to his family for part of the financing
and for recruits to staff the front of the restaurant.
Sister Ella was brought in to become the
food expert, sister Adelaide took over the bookkeeping,
and Owen's father, Owen Patrick,
became night manager. All of them were as
innocent as Owen of restaurant experience.
Today there are so many Brennans connected
with the enterprise that anyone going through
the lengthy process of meeting the clan for the
first time has the mistaken feeling that they
outnumber the customers.
Ella had just graduated from high school
when she took over the job. Her qualifications
consisted of little more than a healthy adolescent's
enthusiasm for eating. During her
early days with the restaurant, she ate her way
through every dish which was served, and
read cookbooks as avidly as most of her contemporaries
did movie magazines. When she
had completed this primary course, she made
a tour of many of the best restaurants in the
country, asked questions, made notes and returned
home erupting with ideas for improving
Brennan's. She was soon promoted to
manager.
Ella, an attractive, relaxed, amiable woman,
now in her early thirties, is well suited to her
job in .New Orleans, where the natives regard
a 'favorite restaurant in about the same way
the Viennese do a coffeehouse-a combination
second home, private club and convenient spot
to conduct a considerable amount of business.
Brennan's local patrons soon began behaving
as though they were major stockholders
rather than customers. For example, many of
them developed the cozy habit of entering the
restaurant through the kitchen door rather
than through the main entrance, thus enabling
them to make a leisurely examination of the
offerings of the day and to discuss selections
with chef Paul Blange.
"Sometimes the kitchen seemed to have
more customers than the dining room," Ella
says, "all of them sniffing the sauces, talking
with the staff and arguing among themselves
whether the sole Marguery or the duckling
with wild-cherry sauce was the better bet for
the day.
"Actually, it was kind of convenient to have
them around when we got busy. Often I'd
come back to the kitchen and find two or three
customers stirring things on the stove, another
one holding a tray for a waiter who had forgotten
some item or other, and a couple of
other people slicing bread and filling water
glasses.
"For a number of reasons, most of them having
to do with space, the custom stopped when
we moved to the new place. Kind of sad in a
way. The staff said they felt lonesome for quite
a while."
New Orleanians, of course, have no monopoly
on the restaurant. Brennan's has its full
quota of patronage from visitors, many of them
celebrities. Gene Kelly, Pat O'Brien, Eva
Gabor, Elliott Roosevelt, John and Milton
Eisenhower, Robert Ruark, Bing Crosby, Bob
Hope, Leopold Stokowski, Isaac Stern,Johnny
Ray and dozens of other well-known figures
have been at Brennan's, and most of them stop
in whenever they are anywhere near New
Orleans.
Ella happens to be especially fond of actors,
and she takes considerable pains to make certain
that they feel welcome and are comfortable.
For those who want to be undisturbed,
Ella sets up an impenetrable guard against
fans and autograph seekers. For those Thespians
who like attention, she approximates as
closely as possible a Hollywood opening.
There was an occasion not long ago when a
famous actress entered Brennan's and Ella was
especially enthusiastic. As she led the star to a
table, Ella spoke glowingly of the actress'
work in Medea and Macbeth on stage and of
her outstanding performances in such movies
as Rebecca and Laura.
The actress gave a chill, professional smile
as she sat down. "The next time I see Judith
Anderson, I'll tell her how much you admire
her," she said. "My name, incidentally, is
Agnes Moorehead."
Ella, a woman of usually flawless memory,
still flinches when she tells the story. "We
didn't have to turn on the air conditioner for a
week after that episode," she says.
One of the fir'St of the well-known, out-oftown
supporters of Brennan's was Lucius
Beebe, a good friend of Owen via the Absinthe
House. As a matter of fact, Beebe made a
major contribution to the scope of the restaurant.
About two years after the establishment had
been opened, Beebe made one of his periodic
trips to New Orleans. In honor of the event,
Owen met him at the station with a horsedrawn
carriage and Papa Celestin's band to
conduct the gourmet to his hotel in proper
style.
Later that day, Beebe came to the restaurant
and found Owen staring morosely at a
copy of Frances Parkinson Keyes' recently
published novel, Dinner at Antoine's.
"Why couldn't it have been us?" Owen demanded
with annoyance. "Why couldn't it
r
wme. Cook for 12 hour or so, after seasoning
to taste.
I had breakfast at Brennan's on the day I
was leaving New Orleans. "You've made a
major change in my life," I told Ella. "For
years I've gone on the assumption that anything
sturdier than orange juice, toast and
coffee in the morning would probably cause
some irreparable harm to my metabolism. Now
I can hardly wait to get home and have my
wife start using these recipes of yours."
"I know what you mean," Ella said. "Most
of the people who come in here for the first
time are appalled when a waiter suggests starting
breakfast with onion soup or Creole cream
cheese and following it with pompano, a steak
or one of our fancy egg dishes. But once they
get over their preconceptions and find that
breakfast can be as exciting and have as much
Reprinted by Special Permission of
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
From the August 30, 1958, issue
© 1958 The Curtis Publishing Company
This article has been reprinted by The Saturday
Evening Post under the following conditions: (1)
That it may not be used for advertising under any
circumstances, (2) that no one outside The Curtis
Publishing Company may affix an organization
name or any other matter to it, and (3) that no
solicitation or sales-promotion material may
accompany it.
variety as any other meal, they're on our side.
"About your wife, though," she added with
some hesitancy, "I wouldn't suggest that you
try to get her to peel an artichoke or make
some complicated sauce the very first morning
you're home. Give her time to get used to the
idea."
I'm following this advice. Meanwhile, orange
juice, toast and coffee make a quite satisfactory
breakfast.
