He Cooked The Best French Food Here For 35 Years
Gerard Crozier Dead At 64
Gerard Crozier, who can credibly be called the best French restaurateur in the history of New Orleans, died suddenly Wednesday night at his post-Katrina home in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The e-mails began arriving in mid-morning Thursday from a wide range of courses. But the most telling was this, from his wife and collaborator Eveline:
I can't sleep so I am on my computer. Gerard just died tonight. I came home at 8:30 from work and he was in bed with the TV on. I thought he had fallen asleep watching TV. When I tried to wake him up to tuck him in, I realized he was dead. He was just going to be 64 in November. Say a prayer for him.
Love, Eveline
I first met Chef Gerard in 1976. I was rolling around New Orleans East looking for a place to have dinner. (This was at a time when that part of town had many restaurants.) I noticed a sign on the marquee of a new but modest strip mall on Lake Forest Boulevard. "Crozier's Restaurant Francais," it said. I chuckled, turned around, and went inside, thinking, this should be pretty funny.
I started with escargots. Perfect. Then the house salad of romaine with a classic French vinaigrette--although I didn't know just how ideally realized it was, because nobody in New Orleans served a classic French vinaigrette. Then tournedos Gerard: a pair of small filets, each topped with a slice of pate de foie gras, surrounded by a cream sauce with shrimp. I had never had anything like it in my life. Spectacular. On the side was a little plate of braised celery, as a hot vegetable. How could celery be made to taste this good? Dessert was caramel custard, a personal favorite: I could not imagine it being any better.
Neither Gerard nor Eveline knew who I was. (I had been writing restaurant reviews for only four years at the time, and was still very anonymous.) But years later, after I'd forgotten, they could tell me where I sat and what I ate. It was the second day they were open, and I was one of their first customers.
When I wrote my review of the place a few months and several more meals later, I gave Crozier's a 10 rating--one of only four in the city at the time. I kept it at the top for the entire twenty-six year history of the restaurant. The consistency implied by that was one of the restaurant's great strengths. Even as they moved, first to another New Orleans East location, then to Metairie, the food remained uncompromisingly flawless.
Truth be told, Gerard accomplished that by cooking straight out of the Escoffier canon of traditional French haute cuisine, and not varying his menu much over the years. But that is no easily-acquired skill, and he had achieved total, unconscious competence in it. It looked simpler than it was. He picked up the moves by going though the traditional apprenticeships in great kitchens from the time he was a teenager. He had the good luck to grow up in a culinary capital, even by French standards: Lyon.
He is one of the very few chefs working in New Orleans who managed to avoid being influenced by local cooking styles. Crozier's was not a Creole-French restaurant. It was a French French restaurant. And unlike the French restaurants of those times, his was a bistro--the first, really, we ever had. Crozier's blazed the trail for La Crepe Nanou, Cafe Degas, the Flaming Torch, and all the others in that vein.
Gerard came to town for a job at the Royal Sonesta Hotel. He was the chef de cuisine when Willy Coln was the executive chef there, and he was largely responsible for the excellent food at the old Begue's in those years. But this was before anyone cared who the chefs in restaurants were, and nobody knew him.
That made it tough for the Croziers when, in 1976, they went hunting for financing for their restaurant. They were rejected again and again. Later, when his restaurant was very successful, Gerard got even by posting the rejection letters sent to him by the Whitney and other local banks in his men's room.
The word got out to the gourmets about this marvelous little place in New Orleans East. In 1976, the restaurant scene Uptown was nothing like it is now, and diners were used to traveling a few miles for a good dinner. It wasn't long before a reservation was needed for Crozier's--well in advance for weekends.
The Croziers moved to Metairie when New Orleans East began declining, and they had a long, successful run there. They sold the restaurant and retired in 1999. But running (both he and Eveline did a lot of that, as was clear from their ironically wiry physiques) apparently wasn't enough for them, and they opened another restaurant in the summer of 2001. Chateaubriand capitalized on a specialty of the old restaurant: whenever they ran the double filet asa special, they sold a great deal of it. So Chateaubriand was billed as a French steakhouse, with first-class beef and classic French sauces. The rest of the menu was good, too, and included more offbeat cooking than we'd ever seen at Crozier's. I still remember an insanely delicious plate of tripe with pork belly once.
Chateaubriand had almost nothing but bad luck. First came 9/11, a few weeks after the place opened. When that had blown over, the city began installing the tracks for the new streetcar line to City Park. This made Chateaubriand accessible only with too much thinking for most people, and they stayed away. When that was finished, a mad-cow outbreak in Canada nearly doubled the price of beef. That was just moderating when Katrina put four feet of water into the restaurant. The Croziers threw in the towel, moved to Knoxville (where they had a vacation home), and never worked in the restaurant business again.
I always harbored the idea--strengthened by the number of people who called and write me wondering what happened to the Croziers--that they would come back and open a new French bistro. That is now something that will never happen.
The word is that memorial services for Chef Gerard Crozier will take place here in New Orleans, but nothing definite is out yet. It will be very well attended by both chefs and diners. Gerard was one of the all-timers.