- 2 days ago
Join James Beard Award-winning chef Nina Compton and Chopped winner Chef Charly Pierre—founder of Fritai NOLA—for a vibrant conversation on the rich ties between Caribbean and New Orleans Creole cuisine. Rooted in African, French, and Haitian traditions, they’ll explore how food tells stories of migration, identity, and resistance. From Carnival to Mardi Gras, jerk to gumbo, and roti to po’boys, this dialogue is spiced with culture, heritage, and personal journey. Inspired by Nina’s new cookbook A Culinary Canon: From St. Lucia to Louisiana, expect bold flavors, honest insight, and deep connection.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00All right, good afternoon, everybody. We're going to have a fun discussion with my friend, Charlie Pierre of Free Thai, Haitian restaurant here in New Orleans.
00:09And Charlie is a two-time nominated James Beard, top champion, and everything else.
00:18Yes, yeah. Yeah, I've done a lot. Also, Top Chef, did you say that?
00:22Yes, Top Chef as well.
00:23I was on Top Chef as well.
00:25But yeah, I have a restaurant here called Free Thai. It's Haitian cuisine.
00:29I have a little bit of traditional, a little bit of modern cuisine in there as well.
00:33And yeah, that's what we've been. We've been there for about four and a half years.
00:37Before that, we were at a public food hall called St. Rock Market.
00:41So, total, been running our restaurant for about nine years.
00:44And it never gets any easier, but it's always a blessing.
00:47Well, congrats on that.
00:48Thank you, thank you.
00:49So, tell me about your childhood.
00:51Yeah.
00:52You've been from a Haitian family.
00:54Yeah, I mean, I am a Haitian-American through and through.
00:57Both of my parents are Haitian and were born in Haiti and immigrated to the United States in 1988.
01:03I was born in 1989, so I was kind of the American dream, if you will.
01:08I'm so American that my parents named me after Charlie Brown.
01:12So, I am Charlie named after Charlie Brown.
01:14I know. It's crazy.
01:16But yeah, growing up, I was always around a Haitian community.
01:20I grew up in Cambridge, which is in the Boston area.
01:23And there's a huge Haitian community there, along with East Africans and Portuguese folks.
01:28So, I had a little bit of a mixture of all those cultures.
01:31So, of course, my cuisine is always deeply rooted in those flavors.
01:35So, heavy heat, heavy spices.
01:38But a little bit of European-ness just because of where I grew up in my area.
01:41So, Haitian culture is deeply rooted in me.
01:44So, how did you end up in New Orleans?
01:47I get questioned a lot about that.
01:49Yeah, yeah. That's a huge question in my life.
01:52People are always asking me how it ended up in New Orleans.
01:54And one of my easiest answers, I always say, is that it's the closest to being in the Caribbean without actually being in the Caribbean.
02:02So, you know, New Orleans itself has so many highlights of, you know, Haiti and other aspects of the Caribbean all through it.
02:08Whether it's food, music, the architecture.
02:12And with that really attracted me, you know.
02:14And I've been thinking about New Orleans as a baby, really, even before I could remember.
02:18I've always loved the cuisine.
02:20And I realized I loved it so much because it has so many similarities to Haitian cuisine.
02:24As many people may or may not know, the Hispaniola was kind of occupied and colonized by the same folks who did occupied and colonized this area, you know.
02:34So, we had a lot of Spanish, a lot of French, but also deeply rooted in African through the slave trade.
02:39And so, with all that mixed together, it kind of shows identical cultures and cuisine.
02:44And with that identity, I've always fell in love here.
02:46You know, in 2009, I came here on a chef's conference while I was in college.
02:52And I was learning culinary arts school.
02:55And with that chef, she came down here with a women's chef's conference.
02:58And with that whole team, you know, I've met so many different chefs like Susan Spicer, Emeril.
03:03And I just fell in love.
03:05You know, I remember calling my mom that day and being like, I don't want to come home.
03:08But I had to come home.
03:10And, you know, four years later, 2015, I finally moved here.
03:14And I never looked back.
03:16Yeah, I think New Orleans definitely has a firm grip on people when they come in.
03:20And I found when I moved here and I started traveling outside of the city and I told people I live here.
03:27They're like, I love New Orleans.
03:29I can't wait to go back.
03:30I've been there for Jazz Fest or Mardi Gras.
03:32It's always a beautiful memory that people always have.
03:35And it's something about the city that when I came here, actually doing Top Chef, that I was seeing the beautiful buildings.
03:44And I'm like, this looks like Soufret.
03:45This looks like castries.
03:47Exactly.
03:47So a lot of things spoke to me a lot.
03:50And the hospitality and the genuineness and the friendliness of people.
03:55And what I love as a chef, people love to eat.
03:59Yes, for sure.
04:00Caribbean food, too.
04:02And they want to share every beautiful morsel with you.
04:05And I think that says a lot about the city is that if somebody is cooking gumbo on the weekend, they'll bring you a quart on Monday.
04:12And I think that's a very special thing that people want to share the food with you.
04:17And I found that just very attractive to me to move here.
04:21And the other thing I also love about New Orleans is that they're very adventurous.
04:27And I've seen the culinary landscape change a lot since I've moved here in 10 years.
04:33So let's talk about the Haitian Revolution.
04:36I think a lot of people, they know that we have a big Caribbean influence.
04:41But I don't think people really understand how important Haiti is in changing not just New Orleans, but also throughout the entire Caribbean.
04:51They were ready.
04:54Yeah.
04:54I mean, Haiti itself is a driving force for independence.
04:58And not only for itself, but so many other countries after that.
05:01So a lot of folks follow suit.
05:03But our independence really started.
05:05I mean, we were officially independent in 1804.
05:07But since the late 1700s, you know, Haitians really starting to fight back, right?
05:12They started forming militias, groups, secretly running up to the mountains, doing their sacred prayers, planning, trying to figure out.
05:20Even our, it goes as deep to even our saying.
05:23When you ask a Haitian how you're doing, you say sac passe, we say nat boule.
05:27Yeah.
05:27Nat boule comes from a Haitian term that means boule cai krasi.
05:33That means you burn the houses down.
05:35It means kill everybody, destroy everything.
05:38And that word literally comes from those times of Haitian independence where it's just like, how you doing?
05:43We're like, we're great.
05:44We're about to just go burn these houses down.
05:46We're about to go take over everything.
05:48And that's literally where our Haitians, and that's kind of where our heart of the Haitian independence were.
05:52We're really about fighting back and just coming up against these extreme oppressions.
05:57You know, if you brought an enslaved person into the island of Hispaniola during the 1800s or before the 1800s, I should say, they only had a few years, if that, to survive.
06:07And that's what they respected.
06:09And that was because such of the diseases and the heat and all that you would catch on the island.
06:14So Haitians couldn't take that.
06:15The folks who were enslaved there, they had to come back.
06:18And with that came with our revolution.
06:20And with our revolution came a max exodus of folks from Haiti into spaces like New Orleans.
06:27At the time of 1803, Haitians, my apologies, in 1802, 1803, New Orleans' population was about 25,000.
06:361804, it was 50,000.
06:3825,000 Haitians came into New Orleans.
06:41And so if your city is half populated by this new group of people, of course, a lot of their cultures, a lot of their food, their identity comes with them.
06:51And with that comes a lot of the flavors, the things like second lining.
06:55These are things that were, you know, many of those things were started in Africa but came through to Haiti, developed in Haiti, and came here.
07:01But it's all in a kind of lineage that follows suit with each other.
07:05So Haitian independence is so important with New Orleans as well in trying to understand who we are as people.
07:11Even if you look in the dishes like red beans and rice, things like that, these are directly identified as dishes that came through Haiti into New Orleans.
07:20So there are so many bridges, and I can talk about hours for this.
07:24Bridges and bridges and bridges.
07:26So tell me, what is your favorite dish that you see as a reflection from Haiti in New Orleans right now?
07:32I mean, I just said it, but red beans. Red beans is such an almost so similar, you know.
07:39Beans itself and legumes are something that you can find in so many places across the world.
07:44But the way we cook beans here in New Orleans and the way they cook beans in Haiti are so similar.
07:49The only thing that we do different is that we don't add meat to our beans.
07:52We put it in after.
07:53But after that, it all starts out very similar.
07:55You know, you start out with that mirepoix, you add a bunch of seasonings, cook it down nice and slow, smooth it out, blend it.
08:02Some people do, some people don't.
08:03But these flavors are so identical.
08:06And you can find older recipes way back in Hispaniola with the same kind of idea of what they have here in dishes in New Orleans.
08:14So what do you see, you know, we talk about things that came through Africa via the Caribbean and in New Orleans.
08:22So we talk about things like Mardi Gras, things like voodoo.
08:26There's just so many common threads.
08:29And how have you seen that there are some things that we're missing that we probably don't even know are from Haiti?
08:35I, you know, I just love walking down the street and seeing folks and being like, they'd be like, I'm from New Orleans.
08:40I'd be like, but you look so Haitian.
08:42Like, you probably don't even know it, but your great-grandmother must have some Haitian.
08:46You probably can cook plantains and you don't even know.
08:48It's so deeply rooted in you.
08:50And a lot, even with the plantains itself, so many people have had or know of a plantain, but they haven't really cooked it.
08:57Or they may have their grandmother growing it in the backyard, but they don't know what to do with it.
09:02And every springtime, every fall, I always have so many random folks who just bring me bushels of plantains because they don't know.
09:09If I look through recipes, right, a lot of our generation, we don't know plantains that much.
09:14But if you look through older recipes in older restaurants, things like Brennan's, in the 50s, they had plantains on their menu.
09:20But for some reason in the recent culinary generations, it kind of got lost.
09:24But I love to say that free tie is here to bridge those connections and bring those flavors back.
09:29So that's just something that's really important to me.
09:32Yeah, I think it's very important that we preserve these recipes.
09:36And one of the things that I'm seeing a lot in Caribbean cuisine is that some of those recipes are getting lost.
09:43And that's why we have to document these recipes.
09:46And when I finally finished my first cookbook, it was because I did not see that many Caribbean cookbooks out there that were documenting recipes that I grew up with.
10:00And we saw a lot of things were disappearing over the years because the older guard did them and the younger generation did not document those things.
10:10We don't have things written down.
10:11We don't have pictures there.
10:12It's just no documentation.
10:14So I think that was one of the biggest driving forces.
10:17But for me, you know, living in St. Lucia, going to Jamaica, Miami, and then ending up in Yon's, I started to understand the origin of Creole cuisine.
10:30And it's because of Africa.
10:32The common thread through St. Lucia, Jamaica, Miami, and Yon's, it's because of the African foundation that we're seeing the spiritual connection, the cultural connection where you talk about voodoo and the celebration of music and, you know, very soulful food.
10:51And I think that's something you talk about spices and preservation, that things that came, you know, from Africa on those ships.
10:58You talk about salt cod, bacalao.
11:00Yeah.
11:01You see through all these Caribbean islands, every island has a different version of a salt fish dish.
11:07What is the dish in Haiti?
11:10Mori.
11:10We have, well, two.
11:11Our salt is a smoked version, but we have mori, which is our salt cod that we use.
11:15But we usually do herring or some type of bigger white fish.
11:18So you see, yeah, a lot of those common dishes.
11:21So in Jamaica, it's ackee and salt fish.
11:23We have green fig and salt fish.
11:25I just, I just really appreciate the resilience of folks and how, you know, culinary resilience.
11:33I always say that.
11:34And I see us throughout generations.
11:36If we get displaced or moved, we still bring our identities.
11:39And we're using what's local, what's around us to create these amazing dishes, right?
11:44So these dishes that we've seen, like red beans or things like stewed items, they had
11:49a root in somewhere in West Africa, but they got changed because of our identities, our areas
11:55got changed.
11:57Geographically, we were changed.
11:58But we still bought those deep identities, those flavors, those spices with us to learn
12:03how to cook in that style.
12:05Right.
12:06So you've been here for quite some time.
12:08Yeah.
12:09And what do you see as your culinary legacy?
12:12You know, I think a lot of people want to either preserve their traditional recipes or
12:18they want to maybe change them up based on, you know, living in New Orleans, adopting the
12:23local ingredients.
12:24Where do you see the direction of your restaurant and your legacy?
12:29Yeah.
12:29I mean, the great thing about this direction is that more and more so, even though New
12:35Orleans is such a black city, a lot of our highlights are not black, right?
12:37A lot of the leaders in culinary are not folks of color.
12:41What I'm seeing more is folks like us, folks like Serene, Mabay, who are just killing the
12:46game, who are just doing great things, who are being innovative, but just showing a little
12:49piece of what, you know, cultural New Orleans is.
12:53And there's so many folks around here.
12:55My friend from Marlin from Chicken's Kitchen, they're really bringing these, like, prominent
12:59great foods to the forefront, and I love to see it.
13:02You know, they say history is written by the winners, and we're all winners.
13:05And especially as black folks, we've been winning for generations.
13:09But we really got to make sure we're really writing down our history, and that's what
13:13keeps us going.
13:14If we're not writing it down, if we're just talking about it face-to-face and just leaving
13:18it alone, then it won't.
13:19But there are folks out here, groups of folks who are really taking their cultures, identities,
13:23and they're making sure they're written for generations.
13:25And we have to do the same thing for us.
13:27Yes, I agree.
13:28I think that we're at a beautiful time in the culinary world where people are finding
13:34a confidence and a sense of pride in their cuisine.
13:38I think that, and I'm very happy to say this, but Caribbean food is having its moment, like
13:44a really big splash.
13:46And, you know, for me, I'm seeing so many Caribbean restaurants open up, not just in Yon, but
13:52around the country.
13:54And it's because people are celebrating us.
13:57And I think that one of the things that we have to do is we want everybody to win.
14:02Yes, for sure.
14:02And I think when you're seeing, and I've been here for 10 years, to see the culinary landscape
14:07change here, where we went from Cajun, Creole, to now Senegalese, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian.
14:18There's a huge diversity, and it's not just African cuisine.
14:22It's very specific, which I think is a beautiful moment.
14:24And it's being celebrated by the locals because somehow they have a connection with that food.
14:30For sure.
14:31And I think the most important is that we're celebrated by the locals, right?
14:34We have to, they have to accept them.
14:35We have to accept us, you know, vice versa.
14:38And with that, them understanding who we are and what we're bringing in.
14:42They're not feeling, like, you know, pushed out.
14:44They're not feeling like, you know, we're really stepping on them.
14:47They're really taking us in.
14:48And we're really working side by side with a lot of great chefs who are from New Orleans.
14:52And it's a really great community to be here in New Orleans and working together.
14:56It's like, it's like no other.
14:58If there's one ingredient that you could bring to Haiti that you cannot get in yours, what would it be?
15:07Bring from Haiti?
15:09From Haiti.
15:10Uh, I think it's jonjon.
15:13I mean, I use that a lot.
15:14I knew you would say that.
15:15So, does anybody know what jonjon is?
15:18So, if you know Haitian cuisine, a lot of people's favorite dish is jonjon rice.
15:23And jonjon is black trumpet mushrooms.
15:25They're little, little mushrooms that look like trumpets.
15:27And they're very firm.
15:28They're, like, woody.
15:29But what you do is you take them, and they're extremely black.
15:32You dry them out and you steep them in a liquid, kind of like tea.
15:35You take that liquid, and it's full of umami.
15:38It's, like, ten times mushroom, beefy flavor.
15:41And you use that flavor to start cooking your rice most of the time.
15:44And Haitians do a rice with shrimp and peas.
15:47So, it's, like, a shrimp, mushroom, pea.
15:48And it's, like, almost completely black rice.
15:51It's amazing.
15:52It's everybody's favorite dish.
15:55I have it rarely because I keep a stockpile of the stuff.
15:58And if I was cooking it every day, it would be gone.
16:00So, it's only by special events or things that happen.
16:03But, yeah, jonjon is, I mean, plantains, really?
16:06But jonjon is a thing that's so, yeah, so close to my heart.
16:10Yeah, I tried to get them from a friend of mine.
16:15And he said, whatever you do, do not get the Maggie cubes.
16:19Yeah, don't get the Maggie cubes.
16:20He's, like, they're not the same.
16:21They're not the same.
16:22It's just salt.
16:23Yeah, they're just salt.
16:24But I think, for me, my favorite thing is mangoes.
16:30Mangoes.
16:31You know, that's a good one, too.
16:33Because there's so many different types of mangoes in the Caribbean.
16:36And it's mango season.
16:37It's coming to the end.
16:39But when it's in full bloom, the island smells sweet.
16:43Yeah.
16:44Mangoes are everywhere.
16:44Do you just smell the skin of the mango?
16:46Let me tell you about a good mango, y'all.
16:48A good Haitian mango, organic, pulled off the tree.
16:52It would be so ripe that it's just, like, a smoothie.
16:54You just bite into it.
16:55And it's just, yeah, we just aren't getting sexual.
16:58Are you talking any more than that?
16:59That's a little too much.
17:01Yeah.
17:01So good.
17:02I tried to grow a mango tree here, and it gets too cold.
17:07Yeah.
17:08Isn't it ironic it's too cold?
17:09Yeah, it's too cold.
17:10But here we are.
17:11But I think New Orleans definitely, you know, we're in a beautiful place where we celebrate culture.
17:18What is your favorite thing to do, whether it's, like, your favorite New Orleans tradition?
17:25What's my favorite New Orleans tradition?
17:27There's a lot.
17:28I love Mardi Gras in every aspect.
17:30I love all the little cultures and what everybody does for Mardi Gras.
17:34I love how it's an extra day off and everybody else in the United States is working.
17:38It's one of my favorite things.
17:40I mean, I love the food culture in general.
17:44No matter, even if it's this little kitschy stuff from French Quarter, I just love how everything's big on flavor.
17:49I love Second Lines, gumbo, crawfish.
17:54What am I?
17:54I'm acting like I'm forgetting about crawfish is the best.
17:57Crawfish and a daiquiri.
17:58Yes.
17:59That's all.
17:59Yeah.
18:00Yeah.
18:00That's just something about the city that when we celebrate, it's, like, the most beautiful moment.
18:08And I think it's very rare because the sense of community here and just the sharing, it feels very Caribbean.
18:17Like, my sister, she went to St. Lucia during the pandemic, and they made her quarantine for two weeks.
18:24And she had to get, like, this approved hotel to stay in.
18:28And people would come, and they would drop bread and eggs for her and, you know, Piton Bear, which is our local bear,
18:37because they felt like she was in jail, but they're like, we want to welcome you back.
18:41And I feel like New Orleans definitely does that.
18:45And when we moved to where we live now in the Bywater, we didn't know our neighbors.
18:51And he dropped off and Dewey Sausage and said, this is my favorite and Dewey.
18:56Welcome to the neighborhood.
18:57That's very sweet.
18:59I mean, it's New Orleans.
19:00They definitely share things for food.
19:03Yeah.
19:03It really feels like home.
19:04I think, pardon me, I think, like, it's something that really resonates with me.
19:10It's, like, the sense of community and family.
19:11And how much people have embraced us, especially me and you.
19:14You and I, we've been embraced by a city who barely knew us.
19:17And they really took us, loved us, and I feel like I'm one of them.
19:21And folks treat me like I'm one of them.
19:23So, like, there's nothing else like New Orleans.
19:25I just, yeah.
19:26It's a really great city.
19:27And, yeah, I mean, and kudos to Nina Compton.
19:30She's one of the most, the biggest, the culinary Caribbean pioneers in this city.
19:35And people forget that.
19:36Besides bringing up being black, she's a woman and just being a chef who's just been so far.
19:42So, congrats, kudos to you for doing it and being a pioneer for me.
19:46No, it is, it's beautiful to be here with you, Charlie.
19:50Because it's just really, when you meet somebody from the Caribbean, it's like you instantly gravitate to that person.
19:57When I was taking the shuttle over here, I was talking to the driver and I said, have you seen anybody famous?
20:06Because, you know, you're bringing people from the red carpet to the stage.
20:10And he says, oh, I saw Buju Bantan.
20:12And I'm like, you did?
20:14And I got so excited and I heard a little accident.
20:18I said, you're from Jamaica?
20:20And we hit it off.
20:21And we were talking about the restaurant.
20:23He's like, where are you from?
20:25I'm like, Salucia, I have a restaurant.
20:27He's like, can I write it down?
20:29He's studying at Xavier.
20:31And we just, there's just something that as soon as you say, be from the Caribbean, it's an instant connection.
20:40And I had this, my outfit for the James Beard Awards a couple of weeks ago.
20:48I wanted to celebrate the WAP duet, which is our traditional formal dress.
20:54And my sister brought the fabric and I was trying to find some way to do the dress.
21:01And one of my staff members said, call this lady up.
21:05She might, she does dresses.
21:07And I came and I brought her the fabric and she saw the madras and her eyes lit up.
21:14And she's like, I know this.
21:16And I said, how do you know this?
21:18She says, my family's from Nevis.
21:19Is that in St. Lucia?
21:22No, Nevis is next to Montserrat.
21:24Ah, okay.
21:26It's a very, very small island.
21:28And my eyes lit up and we became like best friends because we know what it's like to be a small island.
21:34And we know what it's like to feel the commonality.
21:39And, you know, that's an instant connection.
21:41I feel like New Orleans definitely brings that for people in the Caribbean because there's so many similarities.
21:47And I just want to say hi to Liv over there.
21:51My Jamaican connection that brings me Breadfruit and Moby and all the things.
21:58Oh, man.
21:58You're about to be my connection too.
22:00Not the Breadfruit.
22:02What's up, Breadfruit?
22:03He is the one.
22:04He comes to the restaurant.
22:06He tells me, why don't you have Red Stripe on the menu?
22:08Why don't you have this?
22:09Liv, I love you.
22:10Thank you for everything.
22:12But, yeah, we're celebrating Caribbean culture.
22:15There's similarities and the differences also in New Orleans.
22:20And any final thoughts?
22:22I mean, this city has done so much for me and my wife and my career.
22:29And I'm just always so happy to be here and grow.
22:32And, you know, be invited back here in New Orleans in Essence specifically.
22:37I do have my restaurant, which is down the way.
22:40It's called Fritai.
22:41F-R-I-T-A-I.
22:42If you forget, just look up Haitian Cuisine New Orleans.
22:45My face will pop up.
22:47And, yeah, come by.
22:48Come check us out.
22:49We open at 4 p.m.
22:50And, yeah, I'm just always so happy to be amongst great people and the ones who recognize.
22:54And we mutually recognize greatness.
22:56And I just love that about us.
22:58And it's a thing of New Orleans itself.
23:00You just got to recognize who the greats.
23:01Stick by them.
23:02Work with them.
23:03And just see evolving.
23:04And, like, there's no hate.
23:05It's all just evolving and just growth and beautifulness, you know?
23:10Well, thank you, everybody.
23:12Thank you, y'all.
23:13It was really a pleasure talking.
23:14Pleasure.
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