2018 Small Town Chefs: Eric Hunter
Grit, gristle, and grappling with the small-town restaurant scene
When he took over one of the Northshore’s most respected dining destinations in 2017, Eric Hunter’s prowess in the kitchen seemed like it would be enough to bring customers old and new to his door. The skilled chef artfully arranges gorgeous plates of food that pop with flavor, color, and texture; his strong background in French technique is the underpinning of everything he cooks.
Hunter, a native of Lubbock, Texas, lived in Mandeville as a teenager and started his restaurant career at age 29 in Georgia. His wife Jennifer Pittman Hunter, an Atlanta native, also started out as a chef and later transitioned to front-of-the-house management. The two met while working together in Texas at the Lonesome Dove Bistro in Fort Worth. They moved to the Fire Oak Grill, eventually purchasing it from the owners. When they visited Hunter’s family on the Northshore, they’d include a meal at La Provence, the country French restaurant in Lacombe.
La Provence embodied the personal passion of original owner Chris Kerageorgiou, a chef from a Greek family who grew up near Marseilles in France. In 1972, Kerageorgiou, a master of French cooking in the New Orleans area, took over what had been a small hotel and café on a middle-of-nowhere stretch of Highway 190 between Mandeville and Slidell. A French auberge was the result, and La Provence quickly gained a following. John Besh took the reins from his mentor in early 2007, and Kerageorgiou died a few months later. Besh sold to the Hunters in 2017.
When Hunter stepped into the La Provence kitchen, there were certain expectations that had to be met. “We experienced the same thing in Texas,” he said. “If we changed the menu, people got upset. They wanted things to stay the same.”
Honoring La Provence’s roots was always a given, he added. “People still miss chef Chris, they want him to be in the kitchen,” said Hunter.
The Hunters brought excitement as well as skill to La Provence, working to build on the legacy of the well-loved spot. Under Besh’s management, the area behind the restaurant where chef Chris had gone to hit golf balls became a little farm, and the Hunters continued this rustic endeavor, with its stock of pigs and chickens, beehives, and raised garden beds. They sold yard eggs and homemade pâté at the Covington farmer’s market, made possible by the little plot’s bounty. The magic continued indoors: out of Hunter’s kitchen, local cornbread-stuffed crawfish swam in a flavorful bisque; pickled gulf shrimp was paired with mirliton, fennel, and greens and served with lemon aioli and lavash crackers; flounder, stuffed with crawfish, sparkled with Meyer lemon over Louisiana rice. The Northshore crowd loves game, so duck, quail, and rabbit were menu regulars.
Despite the Hunters’ hard work, business ebbed and flowed, and the couple decided to close for daily service to focus on special events, catering, and creative ways to connect with the local community; as time went on, the math grew more and more punishing, and the Hunters recently made the painful decision to close the place entirely and sell the restaurant.
Hunter reflected that changes in the restaurant industry had made their work revitalizing La Provence more of an uphill struggle than they had realized. Diners are less inclined to go to an “occasion” restaurant outside of a celebration than they might once have been, and many have shifted to places where they can experience quality food and service in shorts and a T-shirt. Consumers are also more inclined to chase deals; the Groupon boom may have subsided, but Hunter identifies that time as marking a turning point in diners’ willingness to pay a little more for a top-shelf dining experience. “In hindsight, the lesson is that we should have researched the market more,” said Hunter, “but it was just such a dream to take the place over.” It also doesn’t help that many people still associate La Provence with the disgraced John Besh, whose sexual misconduct and subsequent unedifying legal wrangling with Alon Shaya have soured many diners on his properties.
It’s not entirely bad news for the Hunters: they’ve recently made a lemons-to-lemonade move came at the request of their friends Jeff and Shannon Bordelon, who own Bayou Adventure, a kayak, fishing and tour company just up the road in Lacombe. The Bordelons invited Hunter to run a casual restaurant out of their space. They’d been thinking of adding an eatery into the mix, a place where folks could dine in or pick up takeaway, with designs too on visitors staying at the nearby cabins at Fontainebleau State Park. Channeling his Texas roots, Hunter hitched his oversized smoker and barbecue to his truck and headed up the road to open B. Hunter’s Backdoor BBQ. Open every day but Monday, the pop-up, named for Hunter’s dad Bill, serves smoked meats and sandwiches like chopped pork or brisket on a homemade bun, half rack of ribs, and some of the best smoked chicken salad, in recent memory. Platters and include cowboy beans and a side, with options like bleu cheese and apple coleslaw, bacon potato salad and cheesy mac. You can also buy meat by the pound, brisket for $16, chopped pork for $11.
Small-town pleasures and the chance to run their own restaurant in the country are two big reasons why the Hunters moved from Texas to Lacombe. The Northshore will feel the absence of La Provence, but there may be another kitchen that’ll benefit from Eric Hunter’s gifts. “We love being in a small town,” said the chef. “We love the area, close enough to anything we want to be involved in, but it still feels like you’re in the country in the middle of nowhere. We want this to be our home.”