With 34, Emeril Lagasse brings his heritage to New Orleans

The big picture: The restaurant is Lagasse's first to open here in more than eight years, adding a new chapter to the culinary history of a city that made Lagasse a household name and became synonymous with his brand.

• Lagasse entered the national scene while cooking at Commander's Palace, a fabled run that included, as the story goes, Ella Brennan changing how the young chef's last name was pronounced to make him seem more cosmopolitan. (Luh-gas became La-gah-see.)
• But time marches on, and families grow.
• Today, Lagasse's empire includes his son, E.J., who serves as chef patron at the flagship Emeril's Restaurant. He's also listed as co-proprietor at 34. (The restaurant is named for their partnership: Lagasse is the third to carry the family name, and E.J. is the fourth. Auspiciously, this year also makes 34 years since Emeril's Restaurant opened.)

Zoom in: Still, Lagasse's history in New Orleans is why, to many, the fact that he's not from here still comes as a surprise. A staffer during a visit this week admitted they had just learned Lagasse was born and raised in Fall River, Massachusetts.

• The community has the country's highest concentration of Portuguese immigrants and their descendants. Hilda Lagasse, the chef's mother, was among them.
• And so, at 34, he honors that heritage.

Behind the scenes: To build the menu, Lagasse brought key staffers on research trips to Fall River and Portugal.

• "It was professional eating," Emeril Group director of operations Jason Lonigro tells me. They were sitting down for meals five or six times a day.
• The result is a stunning testament to Portuguese cooking that reflects not only the American diaspora but also the salted, dehydrated and fermented flavors that, over the centuries, helped Portugal expand across the globe.

You can taste it in the compressed pineapple that lays like a collapsed butterfly beside the chouriço mouro (a grilled blood sausage stuffed with rice, like boudin) and the salt cod fried in cloud-soft fritters.

The vibe: Everything here might be inspired by an old-world empire, but the space is decidedly modern, cool and elegant.

• The mood lighting comes from matte black and burnished gold pendant lanterns, dark wood ceiling panels to tamper the noise and backlit stone countertops.
• And at the center of it all is an open kitchen and a jamon bar, where for the restaurant's first several weeks a Portuguese carver works while training the staff to remove slices of the cured ham with surgical precision.

On my visit this week, a friend and I sipped on gin with house-made tonic, sampled razor-thin slices of the jamon and watched as other diners tucked into the paella.

• It's served in a large, wide pan that Lagasse told us allows his team to make sure it's crispy all the way across the bottom.
• By the end of the night, we were already planning to return to try some for ourselves.