This image of long-time chef Gerhard Brill is special for several reasons. It was the first-ever photograph I took that appeared in The Times-Picayune (in 1989, no less – gasp!), as well as my first culinary-related image in a photography career spanning a quarter century and counting.
 

I was staying at the Perdido Beach Resort while on assignment for a syndicated news service to write a story on Orange Beach, Ala., when I learned that Brill was working as executive chef at the hotel's fine-dining restaurant Voyagers. Brill was a household name to many if not most New Orleanians. He had made a name for himself in the Big Easy at the city’s legendary Commander’s Palace where he worked for six years under the equally legendary Paul Prudhomme, retooling and modernizing the Creole dining den’s time-honored menu to feature more indigenous seafood and lighter sauces.
 

Around the time Emeril Lagasse had stepped in to oversee the kitchen (it seems every famous New Orleans chef has spent time at Commander's), the German-born and classically European-trained Brill left to open his nouvelle-Creole bistro, Gambrill’s, which never failed to garner rave reviews. According to long-time New Orleans food and restaurant critic Tom Fitzmorris, “Chef Gerhardt was the creator of blackened redfish (a take on the way Commander’s had always cooked its steaks).”   
 

For our photo session I wanted something – anything – other than the standard-issue chef-in-the-kitchen kind of shot. So, I asked Chef Gerhard if he would mind standing on the beach (“Closer to the seafood you love to put on your menus,” I joked at the time) in his toque while sharpening his cutlery. He was not only willing to accommodate the young photographer and travel writer from New Orleans, but even hammed it up just a bit for the occasion.
 

If there is a reason my photo of Gerhard Brill means more to me today it’s because I just learned he passed away last January at age 76.
 

RIP Chef Gerhard. Thank you for helping to inspire my career-long passion for photographing all things related to the culinary arts. You will not be forgotten.
 

I promise.