Emeril Lagasse is coming to Minneapolis, and he still hears ‘Bam!’ wherever he goes

Emeril Lagasse and son EJ Lagasse are the latest celebrity chefs to join the Synergy Series roster at Spoon and Stable. Gavin Kaysen’s guest chef series has brought the likes of Thomas Keller and Nancy Silverton to cook in Minneapolis, giving Minnesotans the opportunity to get a taste of some of the finest restaurants in the U.S. without leaving home.

Even among the culinary luminaries who have made the trip, Emeril Lagasse represents another echelon of food stardom. He’s been a fixture on television for more than 30 years, and is the owner of six restaurants, most of them in his hometown of New Orleans. His longest-running, the 35-year-old Emeril’s, was inducted last year into the luxury restaurant network Relais & Chateaux — the same time as Kaysen’s restaurant Demi.

The Lagasses and Kaysen go way back. When Lagasse was filming in New York, he would dine frequently at Cafe Boulud, where the Minnesotan was then head chef. One fateful meal there may just have changed the course of a young EJ’s career.

Now, the father-son duo are coming to Kaysen’s home turf for two sold-out dinners on Thursday and Friday.

We spoke with Lagasse — and his 21-year-old son and business partner — in May about their upcoming visit to Minneapolis, working with family, the state of food television and how often the celebrity chef still hears his signature exclamation, “Bam!”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Have you been to Minneapolis? What is your knowledge of the food scene here?

Emeril: I was going to ask you that, actually. It’s been a while since I’ve been in Minneapolis. But I’m very excited about coming, very excited about Gavin and his team and the restaurant. Excited about that and hopefully to take a day or so to just check out the food scene.

EJ: I’m sure chef Gavin’s got a couple spots for us. We’ve been talking about this event for some time, and wanted to do it and have our schedules line up. We see another amazing Minneapolis resident quite frequently, Andrew Zimmern, and we’ve been chatting about coming up just to visit in general, but super excited that we get to cook in the city for a couple nights.

You know Gavin from New York. Tell me about your relationship with him in those times.

Emeril: I was a very big patron and big fan of his when he was the chef at Cafe Boulud. Gavin and I really hit it off. And the one night that EJ told his mom and I that he wanted to be a chef, we were actually doing a tasting menu [at Cafe Boulud], and then EJ sprung on us that he’d decided what he wanted to do, and that was the start of that.

EJ: I was like 10 years old.

Emeril: I can remember some of the dishes Gavin did, and we became good friends. And when he moved on, you could do nothing but support what he was doing. We have a lot of the same philosophies about mentoring people and just being a good humanitarian.

EJ, I’m surprised that your idea to become a chef came from Gavin and not from your dad.

EJ: There was pretty heavy involvement from Dad, as well. But it was a pomegranate-glazed duck that Gavin served that I was just like, ‘Yeah, this is cool, I want to do this.’ For me, my relationship with Gavin now, he’s become a mentor, and we’ve had the privilege of being invited to do some great events together. We ended up in Paris together for the Relais & Chateaux event, and that was three days that we got to spend and chit-chat and connect. And I’ve always looked up to the things that he does. He was down here in New Orleans for the Bocuse d’Or event for a few days, and I got to show him around a little bit, Dad got to show him around a little bit. We’re excited for him to return the favor.

What will you be preparing for the Synergy dinner?

EJ: We want to do some stuff that is different and inspired by the summer and being in that part of the country, which is obviously a different climate than we get to work with on a regular basis down here.

Emeril: There are some signature dishes that EJ and I have talked about, but we’re waiting for Gavin’s lead, to give us the direction of what, seasonally, he’s thinking about. And I think we’ll just work around that and fill in the blanks.

EJ: We’re playing by old-school dinner party rules, let the host tell you what to cook.

Why are these exchanges and dinner series important? What does it do for the host city and what does it do for visiting chefs?

EJ: I think it just creates culinary excitement, to be honest. As a chef, to be able to go and cook at an away game, if you will — it’s always a fun thing. It’s a change of scenery for us, for our team, and it’s networking. The young cooks that we bring to do the event with us get to meet the young cooks that work for Gavin, and it creates a dialogue between them and an exchange of ideas. But then it really is such a cool thing for the guests. Maybe they haven’t been to New Orleans yet‚ and they get to have a little taste of Emeril’s, and a little taste of New Orleans in Minneapolis — and vice versa when we do the other side of these events.

Emeril: It really brings a big platform for both sides of the teams; being able to mentor a little bit about what we’re doing, New Orleans and Emeril’s style, with his staff and what they’re doing at Spoon inspiring us. I think that makes a really great opportunity. And like EJ said, the customer is really who benefits from this. It just gives them a new flavor and a new combination of both teams.

EJ: In our profession, it’s a huge deal to stage or intern in kitchens. For us, when we bring our teams, even though we’re cooking our food, it is kind of like a big stage for the whole team. I feel like every time we go to a dinner like this, we come away with something that we then get to implement. It’s never a dish or something, but it’s a technique or an idea or an organization thing or a product.

What’s it like to work together as father and son?

Emeril: We actually have a great working relationship. EJ and Emilie [chef Emilie Van Dyke] are basically running the flagship here, but I’m here a lot, I’m sort of like the coach. They’re testing things, presenting things to me and ideas that they have and get my feedback, whether it’s a new canape or a new seasonal dish or two. So it’s really a great environment, probably the best environment right now at Emeril’s that we’ve ever had in 35 years. I mean, we have a group of young to mid-age culinarians that are so excited to be here and so excited about what we do on a nightly basis, and it’s super fresh.

EJ: In terms of the working relationship, it’s the easiest thing for us because we have a dialogue. It’s all in collaboration. We talk about what we want to put on the menu, and then we figure it out. We don’t rush to put things on the menu. We have our time constraints that are Mother Nature’s, due to the seasons. But even when Dad’s not here, he may call me on a Sunday and say, ‘What if you put a muffuletta on the canapes?’ And then I’ll call him and say, ‘Hey, look, we were sitting around cleaning the kitchen late at night and this idea popped up in our head about doing this with tomatoes.’ It’s so valuable for me. I get to do this with my dad, and he’s got 45 years of knowledge in the industry and 35 years of having a flagship restaurant. My third year being here [was] June 26, and we’re celebrating our 35th anniversary this year, so the collaborative process for Dad and I has been such a fun thing.

So much about the restaurant industry and media landscape has changed. Emeril, do you think it’s harder or easier for chefs to create the kind of presence you did on TV?

I think people are a little tired of these competition shows, really tired of getting pie thrown in your face and getting yelled at. Where’s the cooking, where’s the real teaching and the real cooking behind it? I think there’s a big area that’s missing right now with food TV.

I think people really want to go back to learning more about food and about wine and about shopping and what to do with products. But there’s not a lot of movement right now because TV right now is very difficult. You try to have these great ideas of a television show and you go to Los Angeles and try to pitch something and you’re pitching something to this young person that does not have a lot of experience of what’s going on, so there’s a void right now in food TV. I hope that it eventually is going to come back.

EJ, any designs on following in your dad’s footsteps in the TV realm?

I’m tied to a stove right now. We’ll see what happens. I’ll never say never.

Emeril, do you still hear “Bam!” everywhere you go?

It happens quite a bit, but you know, that’s all part of it.