Inside ‘High Chef’ Alum and Fritai Proprietor Charly Pierre’s Huge 12 months

It’s been a giant yr for Fritai chef Charly Pierre.

This yr marks the third anniversary of Fritai, which he opened on the sting of New Orleans’s Treme neighborhood, the oldest Black neighborhood in America. Pierre began the Haitian restaurant as a stall within the St. Roch Market in 2016; in Haitian delicacies, fritai typically refers to fried plantains, pork, or dumplings bought by avenue distributors, meals he seems to be ahead to on his common pilgrimages to Haiti to see family and friends.

The yr 2024 additionally marked the primary time Pierre was a vendor at French Quarter Fest, Bayou Boogaloo, and, most significantly, Jazz Fest. After which there was the little matter of his look as a contestant on High Chef: Wisconsin. On Thursday, September 19, Pierre is internet hosting a High Chef reunion dinner at Fritai, cooking alongside fellow Season 21 contestants Manny Barella and Kévin D’Andréa, two cooks he grew near in the course of the filming. The five-course dinner will intermingle flavors from Pierre’s Haitian delicacies, Barella’s Mexican heritage, and D’Andréa’s French coaching.

Randy Schmidt/Eater NOLA

“It’s good to take inventory,” says the 35-year-old chef, a James Beard Award semifinalist for Greatest Chef: South in 2023. “We’re all the time pushing however don’t all the time give ourselves the credit score for what we’ve achieved. I believe that is the primary yr I really feel we actually perceive the ins-and-outs of the restaurant enterprise. How issues work.”

After weathering storms each literal and figurative, from Hurricane Ida in 2021 to the COVID pandemic and town’s economically fraught summers, when tourism is often at its slowest, Pierre feels just like the web page has turned. “Town is plateauing right into a sort of normalcy. So now we determine how we cope with that,” he says. This summer time wasn’t as dire as final, however gross sales are nonetheless down since Fritai stopped serving lunch, which it paused whereas Pierre filmed High Chef. He plans to ease again in by beginning weekend brunch service in October, then lunch.

Pierre had achieved meals reveals, like Chopped, earlier than. However High Chef was the final word problem. The decision to look got here in 2022; filming started in Milwaukee in 2023. The season debuted on March 20, 2024, and Pierre lasted by way of the fifth episode. Paradoxically, he was despatched residence the identical episode — “Supper Membership” — throughout which he received his first and solely Quickfire Problem. Utilizing components from the Dane County Farmers Market, contestants have been to cook dinner a dish incorporating one in all pioneering Madison chef Carson Gulley’s famed sauce recipes — Pierre occurred to choose the Creole sauce.

David Moir/Bravo through Getty Pictures

“My favourite dish that my mother used to make was her Creole hen,” Pierre mentioned in the course of the episode. “That dish continues to be on my menu; it’s not a dish that’s ever going to return off.” Pierre’s mother handed away about 15 years in the past, and he has goals about her speaking to him about his success, he mentioned on the present. “And look what I’ve turn out to be. I do know she’d be so happy with me.”

In the long run, the Quickfire win wasn’t sufficient to save lots of him after a workforce loss within the elimination problem. “I’m a chef so I’ve achieved loads of nerve-racking issues in my life. This was essentially the most nerve-racking factor I’ve ever achieved, by far,” Pierre says. He was despatched residence for overcooking his fish, in line with the judges, partly a response, on his half, to prior criticism about undercooking fish. “I cooked within the Haitian means, and so they noticed that as frying it too arduous. I’m not at the French Laundry, though I understand how to cook dinner that means. However I used to be modeling it after what I cook dinner right here,” he says.

“There are issues I tousled on, that I can clearly see now,” says Pierre. Nonetheless, he thinks essentially the most proficient contestant, the one that deserved to win, received.

Randy Schmidt/Eater NOLA

After High Chef aired, it was again to the actual world — and his residence life in New Orleans — for Pierre. Working his sales space at Jazz Fest the final weekend in April and first weekend in Could, with a three-item menu of grilled shrimp pikliz, crab macaroni and cheese, and toasted corn “ribs” reduce off the cob, Pierre did two-and-a-half months of gross sales in two weeks. “That cash is in our stockpile. It helped us survive summer time,” he says.

Pierre had been angling for a Jazz Fest sales space for years; beforehand, he had achieved meals demonstrations on the world-famous competition, which might see as much as 100,000 ticketed attendees per day. He was requested to do French Quarter Fest, a free, annual competition held two weeks earlier than Jazz Fest, in 2023, however the timing wasn’t proper. “This yr, though I knew it was lots, I used to be in,” he says.

Whereas the primary few days of French Quarter Fest have been “a little bit of a shit present,” Pierre says, by the tip of the competition, the workforce had its programs down. They figured issues would go easily on the Jazz Fest Fairgrounds just a few weeks later. Then the primary day threw them a curve. “They informed me I couldn’t use my fryer with the road that they had out there,” Pierre says. He rented an authorised fryer and had it specific shipped for the following day; after its arrival, issues turned “straightforward breezy.” By the point Bayou Boogaloo rolled round, the smaller neighborhood competition felt like gradual movement in comparison with what he had achieved on the different two.

Fritai

The three festivals introduced in nearly six figures in gross sales for Fritai. “It was price all of the planning and energy,” Pierre says.

Because the busier fall tourism season looms, Pierre is staffed up and prepared. He just lately employed a feminine cook dinner for the road. “I’m comfortable I acquired one other lady within the kitchen,” he says. She labored in a single day shifts at Rally’s, the fast-food burger chain with a number of New Orleans eating places. “She’s sturdy. She’s acquired what it takes,” says Pierre.

Whereas he’d like to open one other restaurant in New Orleans, Pierre doesn’t assume it’s going to appear like Fritai. “I’d like to go tremendous eating with a French Haitian place. However it took us 4 years to search out this house,” he says. “We’ll make investments when it’s the appropriate time. I must be affected person.” His enterprise companion Eva Chereches, the realist, retains him level-headed in decision-making. And he will get recommendation often from fellow New Orleans cooks, amongst them Nina Compton (Compere Lapin), Alon Shaya (Saba), Serigne Mbaye (Dakar NOLA), Prince Lobos (Addis), and Lisa Nelson (Queen Trini Lisa).

Caring for his workforce is paramount to Pierre and Chereches. “Our verify averages are usually not loopy excessive. We have now to determine methods to maintain our folks paid with out overworking them,” says Pierre.

One factor he’s not affected person about is his upcoming October nuptials. He’s marrying movie stylist and designer Christine M. Hamilton, a Baton Rouge native, who he proposed to the day earlier than he left for High Chef. “Our ceremony will likely be small, simply household, however then there will likely be two events. And we’re going to Italy. I’m most excited in regards to the marriage ceremony,” he says. “I simply can’t wait to get married.”