Rockin' St. Roch Market

Poppy Tooker and Kevin Pedeaux inside St. Roch Market in New Orleans. (Joe Shriner)

Since reopening with much fanfare in 2015, New Orleans' St. Roch Market has experienced ups and downs, but the city's second oldest city market is still standing. Since 2015, St. Roch has functioned as a culinary incubator for food professional wannabes – and what a bunch of delicious incubation is happening there now!

On this week's show, we speak with the market's new director, longtime vendor Kevin Pedeaux, and learn why that bustling spot on St. Claude is the place to be these days. We then go stall by stall to meet the vendors – the St. Roch stars who are cooking up some of the most diverse offerings to be found under one single roof today.

Next, we hear from one of St. Roch Market's biggest success stories. Chef Charly Pierre began creating delicious Haitian dishes based on the traditional street foods that abound in his ancestral homeland. Charly's career has since skyrocketed. He's been featured on a number of national cooking competition shows, and garnered accolades from the likes of Zagat, Eater, and the James Beard Foundation. These days, Charly can be found in the kitchen of his own Basin Street restaurant, Fritai.