Aging Gracefully - Brennan's at 50
New Orleans City Business FOCUS
by Christi Daugherty
"We are very proud of the restaurant. I think it's as good or better than it's ever been." - Ted (center), With Owen "Pip" (left) and Jimmy Brennan, flanking a portrait of founder Owen Edward Brennan Sr.
For a half-century, the sunset-colored walls of Brennan's Restaurant have drawn locals and tourists, the rich and the not-so-rich, into a small world of elegance in the French Quarter.
This year, Brennan's celebrates its 50th anniversary. Through five decades, the restaurant, founded by the late Owen Edward Brennan at the end of World War II and originally located on Bourbon Street, has held a place among the finest dining establishments in the country.
Brennan's seemed charmed from the beginning. Since its founding, the restaurant has been "where one goes" when in New Orleans. From its early days, celebrities and wealthy travelers have flocked there. Restaurant memorabilia include letters of praise from society columnist Hedda Hopper, cartoonist Hank Ketcham, movie director Elia Kazan and novelist Leon Uris.
Now under the ownership of Owen Edward Brennan's sons, Owen "Pip" Jr., Jimmy and Ted Brennan, the tradition continues. Resident celebrities and traveling newsmakers come by, dining alongside everyday Joes, locals and tourists. In true New Orleans style, the hoi polloi still mingle with high society at Brennan's. It is exactly what Owen Edward Brennan always wanted. "We are very proud of the restaurant," Ted Brennan says. "I think it's as good or better than it's ever been."
For many New Orleanians, Brennan's, like a few other local legends, remains the site where great moments are observed. Graduation, bar mitzvahs, Sweet 16 parties, grandparents' 80th birthdays and wedding engagements regularly are celebrated inside the 200-year-old walls. The signature meal remains the lavish "Breakfast at Brennan's," which Owen Edward Brennan conceived as a marketing concept-and which came to rival "Dinner at Antoine's."
The restaurant may have international acclaim, but for Ted Brennan, the patronage of local families is one of Brennan's greatest successes. The family can't rest on its laurels, he says, because none of the customers would put up with it.
"We try to act like every day is our first day in the business," he says. "We have discovered that owning a restaurant is never routine."
Over the years, diners' tastes and demands have changed, forcing the second generation of Brennans to respond. The Brennan's menu is more extensive than it was 50 years ago, with new dishes listed alongside old favorites.
Over the last two decades, Jimmy Brennan's love of wine has expanded the restaurant's extensive wine cellar to award-winning levels. Ted Brennan says more than 35,000 bottles from around the world make it the most complete restaurant wine cellar in the South.
"We try to act like every day is our first day in the business" he says.
We have discovered that owning a restaurant is never routine." -Ted Brennan
The third generation has had an impact as well. Pip Brennan's sons, Clark and Blake, share general manager duties. Ted Brennan's daughter, Alana, works in sales.
The younger Brennans recently convinced their parents to install a computer system at the restaurant. Ted Brennan freely admits to having opposed the whole idea.
"We would never have done it without their insistence. They told us we were in the Dark Ages," Brennan says. "So we had it put in and it paid for itself in two months. That just goes to show you what new blood can do."
But tradition counts for much as well. The Brennan family has been stringent about keeping the restaurant in the family and the family in the restaurant. They resisted expansion they felt might dilute the quality of the original.
So determined were Owen Edward Brennan's sons to keep control of the restaurant that the extensive Brennan family divided over the issue in 1974. Owen Edward Brennan's younger sister, Ella Brennan, her siblings and their children now own and manage Commander's Palace and several other restaurants. Owen Edward Brennan's sons remain the owners of their father's Royal Street restaurant.
The split left a permanent rift in the family.
Stable staff
Some Brennan's chefs and waiters have spent their entire careers at the restaurant, helping to bolster the Brennan's reputation for service.
"We consider our workers part of our family," says Brennan, who refers to long-time staff members as tenured employees.
Restaurant regulars might feel the same way. Some younger customers have been served by the same Brennan's waiters all their lives and dined on meals cooked under the watchful eyes of one chef.
Chef Lazone Randolph has been with Brennan's for more than 40 years and has overseen the restaurant's kitchen for half that time. He came up the old-fashioned way, beginning at the bottom and moving through the ranks.
"I started with the original Brennan's on Bourbon Street in 1955 as a busboy," Roussel says. "I've worked every phase of the dining room." His memories include busing dishes when the restaurant cooked for an event held for former French President President Charles de Gaulle in Jackson Square.
Roussel apprenticed to the original Brennan's chef Paul Blangé before becoming a chef himself in the 1970s. He has received offers over the years to open his own restaurant, but says he prefers working at Brennan's.
"I like the family, I like the customers, and I know the staff," he says. "All the things a chef normally wants for his own restaurant, I have at Brennan's."
His kitchen staff has stability as well. Four cooks have been with the restaurant for more than 25 years each, he says.
Because of Brennan's reputation for fine meals, Roussel and his staff have had unusual careers - and they have seen the world. Roussel has cooked or demonstrated his work in Denmark, England, Japan, Russia and all over the U.S.
Roussel's career at Brennan's also can be measured in volume. He and his staff prepared 11,000 servings of Bananas Foster for one of President Ronald Reagan's inaugurations. They prepared 9,000 meals for a function during the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans.
Frequently, the chef steps out of the kitchen to visit with regulars and meet new customers. "There's something about the look on a customer's face when they tell you how they enjoyed the meal," he says.
Waiter Sergio Davini knows that look well. He has worked at the restaurant since 1959.
"I came to America from Italy in the 1950s, and I have had two jobs in this country. One in a bakery, for two and a half years, the other is here," Davini says. Waiter Raul Castro has spent two decades working at Brennan's. Like Davini, he considers Brennan's the ultimate restaurant for a waiting career.
"I like to work here because of the people," Castro explains. "It's a friendly staff, and every day you get to meet people from all over the world."
Growing up in the business
Ted Brennan started with the restaurant much younger than did his staff.
"I grew up in this restaurant," he says. 'I can remember when they were renovating this building before we moved here from Bourbon Street, when I was a child. I can remember playing in the courtyard."
The history he and his brothers share helps them keep a perspective on how they would like to see the restaurant operate in the future. That means walking a fine line: They don't want the restaurant to fall behind the times, but they also don't want it to lose its charm. "The most important thing is to keep it constant," he says.
Some Brennan's customers come only a few times in their lives, Brennan says, and they connect the restaurant with those moments. To change it in any significant way would be to dash the memories of those times.
"Many people came here for their first anniversary, and they come back for their 10th," Brennan explains. "They want to have the same meal now that they had then, and they want it to feel the same. When people come here there's something they're looking for, and it's a moment in time."
Some Brennan's customers come only a few times in their lives. Brennan says, and they connect the restaurant with those moments. To change it in any significant way would be to dash the memories of those times.
Customers who haven't returned to New Orleans for decades tell the Brennan children and grandchildren tales of their first visits and their meetings with Owen Edward Brennan.
"I love those stories, and l love for them to be as happy with the restaurant now as they were then," Brennan says.
Owen Edward Brennan's sons feel the restaurant is a heritage more than a legacy. They've dedicated the restaurant's 50th anniversary to the memory of their father, who was just 45 when he died. They think he would be happy with how they have kept up the family business. "At the same time, " Ted Brennan says, "it's a lot to live up to."