For nearly 40 years, Emeril’s restaurant in New Orleans has been one of the crown jewels of Creole cuisine—and these days it has never shined brighter. Founded in 1990 by Emeril Lagasse—after transforming the kitchen he inherited from legendary chef Paul Prudhome at nearby Commander’s Palace in the 1980s by creating what he called “new New Orleans cooking”—Emeril’s also benefited from Lagasse’s charismatic and seemingly ubiquitous TV appearances.
But when he finally gave up his toque at his flagship and namesake restaurant, there was only one chef who could follow him—Lagasse’s actual namesake, his 23-year-old son, E. J. (né Emeril John Lagasse IV) who has been head chef and co-owner for the past four years. He led a complete restaurant renovation and unveiled an entirely new menu: what was once seven courses for $95 is now thirteen courses for $295. And at just 22, he achieved something his famous father never did. Last November, when the Michelin Guide came to New Orleans for the first time, Emeril’s earned two Michelin stars (making Lagasse the youngest two-star chef in Michelin history). Emeril’s also debuted on the coveted World’s 50 Best list, where the restaurant is now No. 20 in North America.
“We’re still the least expensive two-star restaurant in the country—something we did intentionally,” Lagasse tells Forbes, in the main dining room of his Warehouse District restaurant. “My dad and I have been working on this for 10 years—the idea of really taking Emeril’s and returning it to what it was opened to be.”
Emeril’s serves just 50 tables a night, but business has never been better. Under the younger Lagasse, Emeril’s has increased its revenue 167% to an estimated $5 million annually — sales driven by his stars and accolades and a new generation of diners who have rushed to get a table.
Coveted listings are part of what Lagasse describes as the “outward validation” which has made the Emeril’s revamp a buzzy success. He says, “I’m not going to sit here and tell you the accolades don’t matter,” he says, “because I think each chef that tells you that they don’t probably isn’t telling the truth.”
But he adds, “The most fulfilling thing of it all, it’s not the stars, it’s not the 50 Best, it’s not any of that stuff. The most fulfilling thing out of it is that I get to do this with my dad.”
Chef D’Oeuvre: E.J. Lagasse (then 12 years old) with his father at the 25th anniversary of Emeril’s in 2015.
Erika Goldring/Getty Images
While Lagasse is now leading the kitchen day-to-day, Emeril III is still only a phone call away: “He’s here quite a bit,” says Lagasse. “I have the benefit of being able to call my dad and be like, ‘What should I do?’”
Lagasse says his 66-year-old father, whose licensing deals include air fryers, cookware and other kitchen accessories, sold the rights to Emeril-branded television shows, cookbooks, kitchen products and spice blends for about $50 million in 2008 (around $77 million today), still lets him make mistakes. A big one was when E.J. tried to change the restaurant’s iconic banana cream pie at the beginning of his return and he got enough hate mail that he reversed the decision.
Mistakes are easier to make since the Lagasses have no investors. It’s just father and son as owners of Emeril’s. Emeril remains the majority shareholder, but E.J. has a “substantial” stake. These days, fine dining establishments can bring in solid profits, with EBITDA margins topping 10%. Deals like the Lagasse family has with Carnival cruises as well as for its outposts in Las Vegas can be even more profitable.
“E.J. has always approached the restaurant with the mindset of both a chef and an operator,” says Lagasse père. “He thinks about every aspect of the business, from guest experience to his team, and he’s shown a maturity beyond his years in how he approaches the business.”
And, no, he doesn’t have a signature catchphrase like his father’s iconic “Bam!” In fact, he likes to joke that he doesn’t use the trademarked saying because, “I’d have to pay Emeril to say it.”
After growing up in his father’s kitchens, E.J. Lagasse decided he wanted to be a chef while eating at Café Boulud, chef Daniel Bouloud’s Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City, for his eighth birthday. He has been formally preparing to revamp Emeril’s since he was 13 years old and he soon began working at his father’s Meril Restaurant in New Orleans. He puked before his first shift, worried that the kitchen staff would treat him differently because he was the owner’s son. Throughout high school he also worked for his father at Emeril’s Coastal in Florida.
“I have so many bonding moments with my father when I was younger over food,” says Lagasse, who is Emeril’s third of four children, and his only son. “It felt like second nature to come in and peel shallots with him and just hang out.”
Second Course: “My dad and I have been working on this for 10 years,” E.J. Lagasse says of the reimagined flagship restaurant, “the idea of really taking Emeril’s and returning it to what it was opened to be.”
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He started getting home-schooled so he could cook more, and during summer breaks, did a stage at Café Boulud. He then spent nearly two years learning under chef Eric Ripert at Manhattan’s famed Le Bernardin.
“If Eric Ripert would have looked at me and said, ‘I need you to repaint the bathroom’ I’d have been like, ‘Where’s the paint? What do you need me to do? How do you want me to do it?’” he recalls. “I always was trying to be just helpful. People were running around and cooking, doing their thing and I was running around like, ‘I’ll clean that for you. I got it.’”
Ripert created an environment, Lagasse says, where “you can go and you never feel afraid to ask a question or anything like that.”
After E.J. graduated from his father’s alma mater, Rhode Island’s Johnson & Wales University, in 2021, the elder Lagasse made it clear that he still needed more training, explaining, “Look, you can’t just work for me. That’s not going to happen. You have to go work for other people. “
So Lagasse moved to London to learn at Core by Clare Smyth, which has three Michelin stars. Then, because he says he “wanted something that was a totally different speed,” he moved to Stockholm and spent a year sharpening his techniques at restaurant Frantzén under Björn Frantzén, the only chef in the world with three restaurants with three Michelin stars.
“I was always really, really drawn to super-efficient, super-organized environments,” Lagasse recalls
When he finally returned to New Orleans in 2022, at 19, his father thought he was ready. He began the massive undertaking of completely reimagining the dining room, kitchen and menu of Emeril’s at a cost of $1.7 million.
When the restaurant reopened in 2023, Lagasse’s new menu served a more refined approach to New Orleans cuisine, highlighting the bounty of Louisiana and its surrounding Gulf.
Lagasse describes his cooking as “contemporary Louisiana” and says, “We’re not trying to take any of our dishes and change them to a point where they’re unrecognizable. People that have grown up here that have been coming to this restaurant for 36 years, we wanted them to close their eyes and be able to have a bite and say, ‘Wow, that really is barbecue shrimp’ and ‘That really is gumbo.’”
“From a technique standpoint, we want to take these dishes and these flavors and be able to elevate them,” he continues, “and not make them better than they’ve ever been but try to distill them down to the ideal version of what they are.”
Ultimately, Lagasse is striving to provide a sense of place for his diners, and that’s attracted the attention of some major culinary and travel awards. His first key move was getting Emeril’s included on the list of Relais & Chateaux in 2024.
“A local that lives uptown on Magazine Street, they don’t have to fly to Per Se in New York to go have their birthday meal,” says Lagasse. “They can come a mile and a half down the road to Tchoupitoulas Street and have that experience.”
The critical acclaim has prompted many to ask what’s next. Lagasse says don’t expect a YouTube channel or a New York restaurant or his own fine dining establishment anytime soon: “I have no desire to open an E.J. Lagasse restaurant or whatever. I have our Lagasse restaurant.”
“The big dream is having this family lineage of carrying on the torch,” he says. “I would love to do another 36 years and hit that big 70 mark.”
“Restaurants are a team sport, right?” he says. “They’re not about one person. We’re not sitting here because I’ve done something spectacular.”