Who: Melissa Martin
Where: New Orleans, Louisiana
It’s not an exaggeration to say that Melissa Martin is a woman with a mission. The 39-year-old chef from Chauvin, Louisiana, is trying to keep real Cajun food — the kind her mama, Maxine, and her aunts and their mamas cooked — alive, some 70 miles away in New Orleans.
Every Thursday night (or very nearly), Melissa hosts a supper club that’s both humble and rich. The menu changes according to the season and what’s available, but might include oyster soup and buttermilk biscuits, okra and étouffée, and beignets dipped in cane syrup. She’s made a few changes to her family recipes — she uses Poirier’s Cane Syrup instead of Steen’s, which is what she grew up with, and her biscuits and pies and yeast rolls are made using locally milled whole-grain flour from Bellegarde Bakery — but this feels like the kind of food your grandmother would cook (if grandma were an excellent Cajun cook).
And sitting down at Melissa’s table feels like sitting down with family. To that end, it’s a BYO affair, but the drizzly night that I attended her Mosquito Supper Club. the gathering kicked off with hot toddies and ended with a group of us sharing whatever wine was leftover from the crowd. The point is: You won’t go hungry or thirsty.
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