Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published February 5, 2007 Chris Kerageorgiou, 1927-2007 One of the most important New Orleans chefs of the twentieth century died over the weekend. Chris Kerageorgiou, the owner and chef of La Provence in Lacombe for thirty-four years, succumbed to a heart attack, on the heels of surgery for a brain tumor, on Sunday, February 4. He was seventy-nine. His funeral will be this Friday at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Robert E. Lee at Bayou St. John, beginning at 10 a.m. Chris was my favorite kind of food guy. His enthusiasm was boundless and his curiosity far beyond that of most chefs. He never followed trends; he cooked what he liked. And it seemed that every day he became enamored of something new. What came out of that was a unique personal cuisine, and a restaurant that could not be compared with any other. Chris's background all but guaranteed that his tastes would be off the mainstream. He was born near Marseilles in France of Greek parents. He began in the food field early on, and spent more than a few years cooking on ships. (That's where he met his lifelong friend Goffredo Fraccaro, the founder of La Riviera in Metairie.) He wound up in New Orleans in the early 1960s, and was for many years the maitre d' of the Esplanade, the flagship restaurat of the Royal Orleans Hotel. He made it his business not only to know everybody, but to make sure that everybody would want to know him. He facilitated this by calling himself Chris Kerras, so people wouldn't have to try to mispronounce his real name.  His sense of excitement and joie de vivre made the restaurant hugely successful at a time when restaurants with such a formal French tilt were not particularly popular here. (Indeed, after Chris left, the Esplanade dwindled away, and the Rib Room became the main restaurant in the hotel.) What everybody liked about Chris was that he was a little bit crazy. When he bought an old motel on the old highway between Mandeville and Slidell and turned it into a restaurant, it seemed right in character. In 1972, nobody went across the lake to eat dinner. The population of the North Shore was a small fraction of what it is now, and those people were not notoriously strong patrons of fine restaurants. Perhaps only Chris could have made a go of a spot like that. His many regular customers remained loyal, the Causeway crossing be damned. La Provence not only kept busy enough, but came to be in a league with LeRuth's, Galatoire's, Brennan's and the other top restaurants of that time. The remote location seemed only to add to its appeal. La Provence became famous for lamb and duck. But the main draw was Chris himself. He constantly burst out of the kitchen--where he was working hard enough to get a little grubby and sweaty--to pass through the dining room and give hugs to all his friends. Those included almost everybody in the place. Then he'd tell about the new dishes he had, and with great fervor recommended them. The menu was in constant evolution. Even in the last dinner I had at La Provence a few months ago, when Chris was having real health problems (he could hardly see anymore), he talked me into a five-course meal made entirely of new dishes. It seems as if Chris had been talking about selling La Provence for the last fifteen years. That never happened, because the price was always so high that it almost guaranteed that his baby would remain his. For the last five years or so, Chris openly expressed a wish that John Besh--his protégé for several years in the 1990s--would buy the restaurant. That finally happened a little more than a month ago. When we heard the news of Chris's death, my wife said about the sale of La Provence to Besh, "Maybe that was the one thing Chris had left to do before he checked out." If so, it's a perfect ending to the life of a charismatic, brilliant restaurateur. We will not again see another Chris. As for La Provence, John Besh says that he will keep it open as usual through Valenntine's Day next week. After that, the restaurant will close for five weeks to regroup, fix a few things, and prepare for the post-Chris era. His spirit will forever inform the restaurant, however, no matter what happens. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com