Ella Brennan, the exacting matriarch of a New Orleans restaurant family whose flagship, Commander’s Palace, is renowned for serving a blend of Louisiana and nouvelle cuisines with generous, dramatic flair, died on Thursday in New Orleans. Her death, in her elegant 19th-century house next door to the restaurant, in the Garden District, was confirmed by a family spokesman. Miss Brennan, as she preferred to be called, could not cook and never wanted to. Restaurants mattered deeply to her — what they served, how they were run and how they treated customers — so she dived deeply into cookbooks and business books. She quizzed wine merchants and smart diners for tips on how to make her restaurants better.

Source: New York Times June 02, 2018 00:22 UTC