LITERATURE + LECTURES

Blue Willow Bookshop presents  John Besh.   Searching for a taste of New Orleans? Look no further! Join us as we welcome cookbook author John Besh, as he discusses and signs his latest cookbook, My New Orleans.

My New Orleans will change the way you look at New Orleans cooking and the way you see World-famous chef John Besh. It's 16 chapters of culture, history, essay and insight, and pure goodness. Besh tells us the story of his New Orleans by the season and by the dish. Archival, four-color, location photography along with ingredient information make the Big Easy easy to tackle in home kitchens. Cooks will salivate over the 200 recipes that honor and celebrate everything New Orleans.

Bite by bite John Besh brings us New Orleans cooking like we've never tasted before. It's the perfect blend of contemporary French techniques with indigenous Southern Louisiana products and know-how. His amazing new offering is exclusively brought to fans and foodies everywhere by Andrews McMeel.

From Mardi Gras, to the shrimp season, to the urban garden, to gumbo weather, boucherie (the season of the pig), and everything tasty in between, Besh gives a sampling of New Orleans that will have us all craving for more.

The boy from the Bayou isn't just an acclaimed chef with an exceptional pallet. Besh is a chef with a heart. The ex-marine's passion for the Crescent City, its people, and its livelihood are main courses making him a leader of the city's culinary recovery and resilience after the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

Acclaimed chef John Besh is dedicated to the culinary riches of Louisiana, preserving and promoting ingredients, techniques, and heritage one mouth-watering dish at a time.

Besh grew up in southern Louisiana and has set the benchmark for fine dining in New Orleans. Each of his four successful restaurants (Restaurant August, Besh Steak, Lüke and La Provence) celebrate the bounty and traditions of the region, and two more, well on the way (Domenica and The American Sector), are poised to follow suit.

As a chef, Besh’s talent and drive have earned him continuous kudos from the outset of his career: from Food & Wine’s “Top 10 Best New Chefs in America” to Gourmet’s “Guide to America’s Best Restaurants,” and “America’s Top 50 Restaurants”. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southeast in 2006, and was awarded Food Arts’ Silver Spoon Award in 2009.

Besh’s tireless dedication to local ingredients and local cuisine also extends to his entrepreneurial projects, including the creation of Besh Restaurant Group Catering; the launch of a line of gourmet products; and the publication of his first cookbook, My New Orleans (Andrews McMeel Publishing, October 2009.) A former U.S. Marine, Besh is proud to have forged a partnership with Baton Rouge-based emergency reconstruction specialists Arkel International. For Arkel Besh, he is creating high quality ready-to-eat meals to be distributed to thousands of emergency response teams and sustained strategic operations in the U.S. and around the world by Arkel's worldwide network; the novel initiative promotes the Gulf Coast’s rich food culture as well as business in Louisiana. In recognition of his contributions, the Louisiana Restaurant Association named him Restaurateur of the Year in 2008.

Whether served as far afield as North Africa or the Middle East, or by his own hands in his flagship New Orleans restaurant, August, a meal created by John Besh is a thoughtful, flavorful, meaningful delight.