Co-owner Chefs Donald Link and Stephen Stryljewski independently have impressive resumes. Combined, their accomplishments are stunning. Now add a Gold Clog.
Sure there's the two James Beard Foundation awards: Best New Restaurant in 2007 & Best Chef South. Frank Bruni's “Coast to Coast: Restaurants that Count” (one of ten) 2008. If you count Chef Link's Herbsaint there's also Gourmet Magazine's 2006 “America's Top 50 Restaurants” and numerous honors like “top ten” by Times-Picayune, New Orleans Magazine's Best Chef, and so on.
But, how many of their peers can also claim the honor of winning the freshly minted Golden Clog? This year at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival (note the ordering of the nouns, please) two well-known, provocative and generally well-lubricated characters, Michael Ruhlman (author, journalist) and Anthony Bourdain (author, host of No Reservations) presented the First Annual Golden Clog Awards in various categories including:
- The Fergus – For Greatest achievement in pork, and/or guts;
- The Alton – For being on Food Network and yet, somehow managing to Not Suck;
Cochon's Golden Clog honor was presented for achievement in the category “The Crazy Bastard Special Achievement Award - For the chef/operator who did the most insanely wonderful or heroic ****ing thing in recent Memory.”
Cochon's people are the kind that started early on the work of cleaning up and serving NoLA, those on the receiving and the providing sides of the table. The community that develops and deepens over a shared meal is improved, in some measure, if that meal is a pig roast.
They fed me a divine meal on my first trip back since Katrina; introduced me to a great Bourbon, a new heritage breed hog (Mulefoot), and did it all with style and grace.
Who can blame me for blowing kisses to the open kitchen on my way out?
