Why K-Paul's in New Orleans was forced to close: 'You can only bleed so much' (2024)

K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen made Cajun cooking a global phenomenon, made its founding chef a superstar of American food and had a culinary impact that spanned generations.

Now one of the most famous and influential restaurants in New Orleans has shut down permanently amid hard times from the coronavirus crisis.

The restaurant created by the legendary late chef Paul Prudhomme had been in business for four decades. But closure orders and restrictions from the coronavirus response and the prospects for difficult days ahead forced the decision to shutter the restaurant, its owners said.

“It’s heartbreaking and we’re trying to absorb it ourselves,” said Brenda Prudhomme, niece of the late chef, and co-owner of the restaurant. “This has been devastating for so many businesses out there, including ours.”

The last meal at K-Paul’s was served sometime back in May, before the restaurant shut down for what Prudhomme and her husband, chef Paul Miller, thought would be a temporary closure.

Now, it's final. The restaurant’s building, at 416 Chartres St., is up for sale. The K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen name, however, will not be part of any sale. That business name is being retired in the transition.

“It’s hard because once we’re gone, that name is gone,” said Miller.

Early in the crisis, K-Paul’s remained open for takeout and then added limited dine-in service as reopening phases progressed. But Miller said the expenses of stocking and staffing the restaurant while doing only a trickle of its normal business were draining the restaurant.

“The business has been bleeding through this, and you can only bleed so much before you have to stop it,” he said.

The hospitality industry has been reeling in the coronavirus crisis. In New Orleans, the steep decline in travel is especially ominous for a restaurant scene accustomed to hosting millions of hungry tourists a year.

A growing number of New Orleans restaurants have announced plans to temporarily close for varying spans of time, citing concerns over coronavirus spread, financial sustainability and burnout after frequent and dramatic changes in business operations. Some restaurants have closed altogether.

K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen is by far the most significant to shutter for good. Over the decades it has ranked among the most prominent restaurants in the city. It was a bucket list destination for visitors, and the influence of the restaurant and its founder reach deep into the modern New Orleans restaurant scene.

Paul Prudhomme, who died in 2015 at age 75, was hailed in his time as a visionary who brought Louisiana flavor a global following and who helped chart a new phase for American cuisine.

''I think that Paul Prudhomme has had the greatest influence on American cooking, in cultivating the public interest in American food, of anybody I know,'' the New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne said in a 1988 interview.

He started with humble roots but a rich vein of Louisiana food heritage. The youngest of 13 children, Prudhomme grew up on his family’s small farm on the Cajun prairie outside Opelousas. He learned cooking at his mother’s side, and often credited the early lessons of farm life and family traditions for his success.

Prudhomme moved to New Orleans in 1970 and was the chef at the Maison Dupuy hotel in the French Quarter when he came to the attention of the Brennan family, who recently had taken over the old Garden District restaurant Commander’s Palace.

Commander’s Palace had always had formally-trained European chefs at the helm. But this new, self-trained chef from Acadiana began gradually working bolder regional Louisiana flavors onto the menu.

“Paul came along at a very exciting moment in American cooking, a transformative time, and he was a major part of it,” the late Ella Brennan said of her chef in a 2015 interview.

He later helped the Brennans open their modern restaurant, Mr. B’s Bistro, on Royal Street in the French Quarter.

At the same time, he and his wife, the late K Hinrichs, were developing what they envisioned as a small lunch café around the corner on Chartres Street. Prudhomme left Commander’s Palace to devote himself full time to that restaurant.

When K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen opened in 1979 it was small and casual, with communal tables and no reservations. In style and in flavor it was a marked change from the traditional Creole restaurants of the day, and it quickly became a sensation.

Gene Bourg, the former Times-Picayune restaurant critic, covered K-Paul’s in its early days. He said the closing of the restaurant was significant because of what it represented at a pivotal time in local restaurant culture.

“It was a big discovery for a lot of people,” Bourg said. “It was an identifiable, regional American cooking style and recognizing that was new for the country then. And the food was really good, it had such a depth of flavor.”

People lined up along Chartres Street for a seat, and soon Prudhomme was getting invitations to travel and cook up his Louisiana flavors across the country, in an early rendition of the pop-up trend. The craze around one dish - blackened redfish – is credited with nearly wiping out local redfish stocks, leading to long lasting commercial fishing limits on the catch. Prudhomme later switched his recipe to blackened drum.

He wrote cookbooks that have become canonical, developed his own brand of spice blends that are now kitchen pantry staples and starred in TV cooking shows that made his image — with his rotund build and beaming smile — into an international emblem of Louisiana bonhomie.

Even as K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen grew in prominence, it kept the feel of a family-run restaurant, and that continued after the chef’s death.

Brenda Prudhomme and Paul Miller assumed the reins of the restaurant in 2015. Paul Prudhomme often introduced Miller as his stepson, and the two had cooked together for decades, going back to Commander’s Palace. Miller followed Prudhomme to K-Paul’s in 1982 and cooked there for the rest of his career.

In later years, the restaurant could feel like an interactive tribute to the chef, with colorful Louisiana motifs around the dining rooms and signature dishes he created anchoring the menu.

Brenda Prudhomme and Miller acknowledged that they would eventually close the restaurant, though they envisioned that happening for at least another five years or so. The coronavirus crisis forced the decision much earlier. K-Paul's received emergency funding through the federal government's Payroll Protection Program. But Prudhomme said while that money helped pay staff it wasn't enough to carry the restaurant through the lull in business, with no clear picture of when travelers might return.

“You can only go so long knowing that your future is not defined,” said Prudhomme. “The one thing we have control is how we decide this. That’s the truth, and it’s a hard place to go, but it's the truth.”

Though the restaurant has closed, Prudhomme’s line of spice blends will continue to flow from Magic Seasoning Blends in Elmwood, which is a separate company from the restaurant.

Brenda Prudhomme said that was one way the chef’s legacy would endure beyond the restaurant, along with his books and cooking shows. Another facet of the restaurant’s own legacy is less tangible but still on Prudhomme’s mind now as it shuts down.

“It’s hard to say goodbye, but we know everyone who walked through our doors made memories,” Prudhomme said. “Those memories, the conversations, the people you met and the stories you shared, all that is still there.”