Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 3, 2007 Iler Pope People have been asking me about the whereabouts of Iler Pope for the last few years. She dropped out of sight before the hurricane, after selling her last restaurant--Café Atchafalaya--in 2004. I knew this was because of health problems, but I am reluctant to say things like that in this journal. Iler passed away in her sleep last Thursday. She was sixty-eight, and living in Baton Rouge, where she has been for most of the time since she sold the restaurant. Café Atchafalaya under her management was much different than it was before or after. She was almost alone in New Orleans in serving Southern cooking--a much different thing from Creole and Cajun cooking. She grew up in the Mississippi Delta country, and kept returning in order to bring back the ingredients that could only be found there. She used to brag particularly about the fresh beans she imported from there. All this took a little explaining at first, but soon people were coming in specifically for the chicken and dumplings (a dish she didn't like but felt a restaurant like hers should have), beans and greens, crabmeat West Indies (despite the name, a favorite dish from the Mississippi Gulf Coast), and fried green tomatoes. The latter made it to the menu after a movie of that name glorified the precise culture Iler was trying to duplicate in her restaurant. (She already had the Mississippi drawl.) It was the first appearance of fried green tomatoes in New Orleans, but hardly the last. Café Atchafalaya was not her first restaurant. That one, opened in 1977, was a much more ambitious place called Dante by the River. It was where Brigtsen's is now. Her chef: Richard Hughes, now the owner-chef of the five-star Pelican Club, in his first big gig. Although she let Hughes and her later chefs do more or less what they wanted, she was a taskmaster. Between cigarettes (she always had one), she let anyone in her employ who seemed to be straying from her standards know about it, and not always in polite terms. She could also be more doctrinaire with customers than some of them felt comfortable with. Every now and then, I'd get an amazed report from a victim of her bluntness. But for most of her many regulars, Iler Pope was a marvelous restaurateur with a unique style. Nothing else could explain all the seeking after her, particularly after the storm. She was one of a kind, and her departure leaves a slice missing in the local dining pie. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com