Chef Drake Leonards: “Wherever I went I learned how to cook. And I learned a little bit more about myself as well. I meet new people and was exposed to new things. This journey is not just about cooking. You take inspiration from all over. Just being exposed to new things and being around people with different backgrounds, it starts to rub off on you. And you never know where it’s going to come in to play in your life.”

Chef Chris Shepherd – UB Preserv

Baker Matthieu Cabon – Magnol French Baking

That was something that I grew up with. And it’s found in little pockets in Louisiana. I think gumbo is something that is different from home to home, from region to region, from parish to parish. And so every gumbo a little bit different. Every gumbo is unique. The cook makes it unique. By the way they do it. But we serve ours with a little bit of potato salad. I like mine with a nice dark brew. And I like it a little thicker. I like to add a little smoked meat sausage, and Tasso, and a little chicken. I love a chicken and sausage gumbo. It’s what I grew up with. I love a great seafood gumbo as well. Serve it with just a little bit of potato salad right inside. It is something unique. At the restaurant, we take the skin of our chicken and make little chicken cracklings and serve that with a little side of chicken cracklings and potato salad. In your home you can make the potato salad. I like just a little touch of horseradish on the potato salad. And you can crush up little pork crackling, like chicharrones from these great markets throughout the country. It just gives you a little crunch. With saltine crackers is the way that we eat it as well, growing up at home with potato salad and our rice.

Houston reminds me very much of what New Orleans and I think Louisiana were a couple of hundred years ago, with a huge number of people who come in and bring their cuisine, culture and way of life. And it just kind of blends here in Houston beautifully.

I love the hospitality of a restaurant and being around people. And so having a passion for food and having a passion for people, and being a Chef it’s kind of fits naturally together.

My colleagues at Café Boulud were young, hungry, ambitious cooks that made me be better because they expected more out of me than I expected out of myself.

I always think that in our restaurant, if we can surround ourselves with great people, it’s gonna make us all become a little bit better. It’s going to make our team better. It’s gonna make myself better. And it just kind of we push each other.

I learned was that Chefs have taken, what they knew and grew up with and just refined it a little bit.

France and Germany were great place to go to understand the origins of what we’re doing now and how it became Cajun or how it became Creole. I felt like I had to get to the source.

New York really gave me the confidence to know that the world was so much bigger than I could ever imagine. It just fueled that desire to really be able to see what was out there.

There’s never a perfect time for anything. There’s never enough money. There’s never enough of anything. You just have to do it.

If you liked the current episode with Chef Drake Leonards, you might like these two previous episodes:

Chef Drake Leonards

Eunice restaurant