While no streetcar runs down Chartres Street, chef Scott Boswell’s Stella! in the lower east corner of New Orleans’ French Quarter has evolved since 2001 into a place that incites culinary desire.
Nestled down a small walkway next to the historic Provincial Hotel, Stella! has become part laboratory and part cathedral to modern cooking in the city known for its steeped-in-history Cajun and Creole cuisines.
“Scott Boswell’s campaign to make Stella! a restaurant that fulfills Michelin-starred aspirations has made one thing certain: The restaurant today is a distant cousin to the one Boswell opened in 2001,” New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant critic Brett Anderson recently wrote in his listing of the city’s Top 10 eateries.
The well-traveled Boswell, a native of Louisiana, said, “My international experience has allowed me to create a style that captures the elegance of French and the simplicity of Italian, combined with Asian flavors and bold Creole accents.”
With a casual Stanley restaurant — its name also is derived from Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” — just two blocks away on Jackson Square, Boswell has two palettes from which to paint his creations.
“My travels and explorations have added important layers to my culinary repertoire,” Boswell said.
The chef, who graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., began his career at the venerable Windsor Court in New Orleans and then worked in kitchens in France, Italy and Japan. That experience is reflected in the food at Stella!
Boswell renovated his kitchen in 2006, following business interruption after Hurricane Katrina, so it now accommodates some more avant-garde techniques.
These days, his $125 seven-course tasting menu might start with Nantucket Bay scallop sashimi with petite radish salad, pickled cucumelons, yuzu ice and nasturtium air, and then transition to roasted autumn squash puree with applewood-smoked bacon, Mexican chocolate, cinnamon-nutmeg crème fraîche and virgin olive oil.
It then might pick up regional inspiration with Louisiana gulf shrimp risotto with chanterelle mushrooms, local scallions and thyme, and then take a swift trip to Asia with kabayaki glazed Prime beef tenderloin with Japanese yam, wilted baby choy, sake glazed carrots and tempura okra kimchee.
The dining room was remodeled this past August, and reviewer Anderson said the latest renovation “re-dressed the once French Quarter-Provençal dining rooms in designer power suits.”
Anderson earlier this year elevated Stella! into the pantheon of what the Times-Picayune rates as “top bean” restaurants in the city and recognized what he said was “the intense effort Boswell devotes to improving his craft and, by extension, his restaurant.”
Boswell said he works “to reach beyond the senses to create a culinary performance.” He wants to create “foods that shout with uniquely global voices.”
Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected].
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