Gumbo Shop : A New Orleans Restaurant Cookbook

This is not a cookbook for the gourmets. This is for everyday people who love food made with ingredients readily available on the Gulf Coast. And the recipes really do yield results that taste like the restaurant's dishes. I've had the Crawfish Etouffe recipe made in Pennsylvania, and it was an exact duplicate of what I order at the restaurant. Eat at the Gumbo Shop whenever you can. The rest of the time, use their cookbook. Caroline Jumper San Jose

I was motivated to write this review when I read another review from a person in Alexandria, VA, who said the recipes and the restaurant was for tourists and that a native from Louisiana would never use it. I was born and raised in Louisiana and my mother was raised in New Orleans. I have tested almost every recipe in this book and 90% of them are, in my opinion, fabulous. This is how my grandmother's dishes tasted when I was a little girl. It's the real thing, not gourmet, but how many "normal" people are gourmet cooks? After family and friends sample a recipe, they either ask how they can get the cookbook or ask for the recipe. I've purchased around 10 as gifts. In fact, that's why I was on the site today... buying another copy!

My wife grew up in New Orleans and I lived there for a decade- We've been cooking from the standard books for years (Prudhomme, Patout, Cathedral cookbook, etc.), but until we tried the recipes from the Gumbo Shop, we were never quite satisfied. These recipes are straightforward, authentic and best of all, produce the wonderful depths of flavor we all love about New Orleans Creole cooking. Regardless of whether you ever visit the restaurant, the Gumbo Shop cookbook is a must.

A Great read in addition to some of the purest and most delicious secret recipes ever made available. This is a masterpiece on the evolution of just what makes a New Orleanian and Southerner, well, unique, through Food. It is why we 'live to eat'!

My copy of "Gumbo Shop" arrived in the mail last week, and I could hardly wait to prepare one of my favorite dishes, Shrimp Creole. After declaring the dish, "the best thing that I've eaten all year," a friend of mine, a Creole Cuisine novice,went on to ask the secret of the rich taste. I went on to explain the process of making a roux, and the technique of "sticking and scraping". "A depth of flavor unfolds that cannot be achieved otherwise," I insisted, giving full credit for the recipe and the quote, of course, to Chef Richard Stewart. The complexity of flavors is the secret to Creole Cuisine, and New Orleans is the birthplace, a city of diverse cultures that melds in its fantastic food. Every memorable dish that visitors long to savor upon arriving in the Crescent City is divulged in this cookbook, with mouth-watering photographs throughout. Having lived there for a year in the Seventies, I developed a passion for the intense tastes, and now I can indulge myself and my friends in my own kitchen. Thank you, Chef Richard Stewart, for a beautiful book. .