New Orleans chef goes from Marines to kitchen, shares love of chicken and dumplings

Eric Cook of New Orleans said he never gave much thought to cooking — despite his last name — for his first 24 years. 

But once he returned home from U.S. Marine combat missions, he found his second calling by running the kitchens at Gris-Gris and Saint John restaurants, he told Fox News Digital in an interview. (See the video at the top of this article.)

He's now an author, too, with a debut cookbook, "Modern Creole: A Taste of New Orleans Culture and Cuisine," published last fall.

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Growing up in southern Louisiana, Cook was surrounded by cooking, hunting and fishing.

Back then, he was more interested in "running around New Orleans," as he put it, and "didn't really have any big plans," so he enlisted in the Marines when he was 17.

By the early 1990s, after two deployments, Cook found himself back home.

"I don't think I was any smarter or had any more direction than when I left to join the Marines," he said.

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Luckily for him, Cook's "oldest sister's husband's best friend" happened to have gone to school with "a member of a very prominent restaurant family" in New Orleans — which helped Cook land his first civilian job at Brennan's.

But he had a lot to learn, he said. 

He had never been in a professional kitchen and had only eaten at a restaurant maybe once or twice at that point with family on special occasions, he said. 

His "introduction to that life" was as an "errand boy" with a list of duties that included peeling shrimp and potatoes and assisting the chefs.

What was most attractive to him about it, Cook said, "was that it was a very paramilitary situation." 

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"There was a chain of command. There was discipline, structure, rank and camaraderie," Cook said. 

"That 'yes sir, no sir' type of mentality that I had for six years in the Marines in an infantry unit transitioned very easily into a 'yes chef, no chef' situation."

His ability to "follow instructions, take orders and complete the mission" was the necessary ingredient, he said, for him to find success in the kitchen.

When Cook met his future wife, he realized he couldn't "be this rock-n-roller in the kitchen anymore," so he "started to take the career seriously" and left for Commander's Palace. 

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That's where he learned the "definition of hospitality" — which served him well as he set out to open a place of his own, he said.

First it was Gris-Gris in 2018. Then came Saint John in 2021.

Cook said his regulars would joke with him, asking him when he was going to write a cookbook. "Until I started working on that cookbook, we didn't have recipes in the restaurants," he said. "That was how we operated."

Cook spent 19 months writing out the recipes.

The recipes are all from the restaurants and inspired by family and friends — "the ones who made me who I am today," he said.

Cook said he hopes his dishes provide people with a better understanding of what Creole, New Orleans and Louisiana cooking is about.

"It's heritage," Cook said. "It's family. It's legacies. It's communities."

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"New York doesn't have our culture," he added. "Chicago doesn't have our culture. San Francisco doesn't have our culture. No one has our culture."

There's one recipe in the book that stands out for him, he said: his mom's chicken and dumplings.

It's the dish his mother made for him each year on his birthday, he said. 

Now, it's a fixture at his restaurants.

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Another New Orleans fixture is the Super Bowl, which returns Feb. 9 to the Big Easy for a record-setting 11th time.

Cook said the restaurant scene in New Orleans has changed quite a bit since the last Super Bowl in 2013.

"You get those younger chefs who maybe were not able to break away from those storied traditional recipes that these restaurants have been using for generations," Cook said. 

"And you get to bring your families into the fold. So now it's their memories and their grandmother — and it broadens the scope of our community."

No matter where revelers dine, what's most important is that they bring their appetites, he said. 

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"Stretch it," he said, laughing. "There are so many places you're going to want to go."

He suggested it will all be even better by the next Super Bowl.

"You're going to see a whole different landscape within the next 10 years of how New Orleans restaurants are perceived," Cook said. 

"The little bistro cafés and smaller restaurants are finding their niche among the long-standing legends of New Orleans."