Louisiana Eats! 2015 Year In Review

As we reach the end of 2015, we're taking a look back at the triumphs and tragedies of the year past.

Chef Prudhomme and Chef Frank Brigtsen, passing the skillet outside of Brigtsen's Restaurant, 1986.

COURTESY OF FRANK BRIGTSEN

2015 was a big year for Louisiana Eats! This June, we celebrated our fifth anniversary on the air, with listeners and friends including the NPR affiliates WWNO, WRKF, KRVS and Red River Radio. We found ourselves traveling across the state, the country and the world, covering topics ranging from substance abuse in the service industry, revelry and tradition at the annual Blackpot Festival in Lafayette, ghosts in the attic at Tujague's Restaurant, seafood innovation on the Gulf Coast and the domestic slave trade in America.

Sadly, 2015 also came with the loss of good friends and mentors. Mildred Covert, who taught the world how to cook Creole and Cajun while keeping Kosher, left us in the spring. In the fall, we lost the man who taught the world to love the food of South Louisiana, Chef Paul Prudhomme.

In this week's show, we look back on the life of Chef Prudhomme through the lens of two people whose lives have been positively impacted by him and his late wife, Kay Hinrichs Prudhomme. We hear from Sandy Hanson, who was at K-Paul's the day they opened their doors in 1979, and from her brother-in-law, Chef Frank Brigtsen, who credits his culinary successes to his friend and mentor — the man he simply calls chef.

Then, we revisit an old interview with Kosher Creole Cajun cooking maven Midred Covert, and celebrate Antoine's amazing 175 years — a landmark occasion they marked in 2015.

It's time for auld lang syne, on this week's Louisiana Eats!