NEW ORLEANS – On the heels of being named a finalist for a prestigious James Beard Award for “Best Chef: South,” Compère Lapin’s Chef/co-owner Nina Compton is the only New Orleans chef to be named one of Food & Wine Magazine’s “Best New Chefs 2017” in its July issue.
Food & Wine reports, “Each year, we tour the country to uncover America's most brilliant up-and-coming chefs. This year's list took restaurant editor Jordana Rothman and a seasoned team of always-hungry editors and reporters from coast to coast, north to south.”
In New Orleans, they dined at Compère Lapin in the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery, 535 Tchoupitoulas St., and reported, “The Caribbean influence in New Orleans is deeply embedded in the Cajun and Creole tradition. But at Compère Lapin, Saint Lucian Chef Nina Compton unravels the French/Southern/Haitian rubber-band ball of Louisiana cooking, and looks at its constituent parts in a new way. Her food contends beautifully and deliciously with her own heritage and that of her adopted city. A Caribbean seafood pepper pot is like a West Indian bouillabaisse, with shrimp and freshwater drum in a slow-burn broth. For her curried goat Nina plays with form, serving the sticky, cinnamon-scented meat with refined sweet potato gnocchi. But even still, there’s no mistaking the flavors of this dish—or anything else at Compère Lapin—as anything but a tender, tautly-rendered torch song from an island girl.”
