Justin Devillier has been running the award-winning New Orleans restaurant La Petite Grocery for around two decades, and he’s about to branch out for the first time.
Although born into a Navy family in California, his family has been in Louisiana for generations and he moved to New Orleans in the early 2000s, before every city in the country had an interesting culinary scene, to pursue his career as a chef.
He eventually landed at La Petite, as he calls it, and worked his way up through the kitchen and, eventually, bought a majority stake in the restaurant and has been running it with his wife, Mia Devillier, ever since.
He won the 2016 James Beard Restaurant and Chefs Award for best chef in the South, but the restaurant was an institution long before that, and it remains one.
Now the Devilliers are getting ready to open Daughters Neighborhood Italian about eight blocks away from La Petite Grocery in the space formerly occupied by Upperline Restaurant. It will be an Italian-American place, obviously with a bit of a Creole accent.
Devillier recently discussed his approach to running restaurants and his plans for the new restaurant, possibly including a limited daily run of New Orleans’ signature Italian-American food, the Muffuletta sandwich.
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Menu Talk is a collaboration between Restaurant Business Senior Menu Editor Pat Cobe and Bret Thorn, senior food & beverage editor of Nation’s Restaurant News. You can subscribe to it wherever you listen to podcasts.
