Magazine hosts Louisiana top chefs at Chicot Park

The publisher and editors of Louisiana Kitchen & Culture magazine brought some of the state’s premier chefs to Chicot Stte Park to spend two nights in three newly renovated cabins from Sunday afternoon, May 19, until Tuesday morning.
The publisher of the magazine, Susan Ford, said she was very impressed with the cabins where the group stayed and described sitting in the screened porch in the evening and watching the occasional gar fish or alligator passing by. “And the hospitality here has been incredible,” she said.
Ford said the event at Chicot Park is important because it brings together chefs from different parts to the state, who have varying culinary styles, to taste the flavors that are endemic to Evangeline Parish. Ford said sous chefs, who assist the executive chefs, are often sent to different locations to gain experience in different ways of preparing dishes.
Visiting executive chefs who visited Chicot State Park included Cory Bahr, chef at Cotton and Norma restaurants in Monroe; Dustie Latiolais, chef at Crawfish Town USA in Henderson; Austin Kirzner, chef at the Red Fish Grill on Bourbon Street in New Orleans; and Jason Brady, chef at Wine Country Bistro in Shreveport.
The article and photographs of the visit here will be in the September/October issue of Louisiana Kitchen & Culture, which will be on sale after Labor Day, Ford said.
She said most of the magazine’s circulation goes to subscribers from Texas to Florida, but that it does circulate nationwide and in some foreign countries. About 400 issues of the magazine are shipped to commissaries on U.S. military bases overseas because of the large numbers of service personnel who come from the magazine’s primary circulation area.
The magazine began publishing in April 2012 and Ford said it has a high subscription renewal rate of 85 percent. The magazine features at least 50 recipes per issue, mostly simple dishes that can be quickly prepared on a weeknight but also features more elaborate dishes for special occasions.