All photos by Lucie Monk Carter
Editor's note: In late summer 2016, Chef DeWitt Ginn parted ways with Table Kitchen & Bar and assumed the role of executive chef at Galatoire's Bistro. Our story here.
How does one become a celebrity chef, outpacing the pack of hopefuls to land on glossy magazines and under national spotlights? What is the secret?
Well, don’t ask DeWitt Ginn. That’s not his concern.
Chef DeWitt is a relative newcomer to the Baton Rouge restaurant scene. The forty-nine-year-old started at the Louisiana Culinary Institute in 2014, worked under Chef Nathan Gresham in the kitchen at Beausoleil on Jefferson Highway, and arrived at Table Kitchen and Bar just a few months ago as its new executive chef, tasked with turning the young restaurant into a genuine success.
Though it sounds reductive to say this man just wants to serve food that people will eat, it’s the reduction, the effort of an ego-free chef, that makes Chef DeWitt a bit astonishing.
On his big career change:
DG: I was in high-volume Medicaid pediatrics for twenty-two years. My wife took me to [the Louisiana Culinary Institute] for our wedding anniversary—she had it all set up as a surprise. She said she wanted me to do it. She knew it was all I had ever wanted to do. I enrolled two months later in August.
On what he learned at culinary school:
DG: It’s page ninety-four in our book. “Serve what people want to eat, not what you want to cook.” You’ve got to feed your customers. I don’t have any tattoos, but if I ever got one it would be “Page 94.” And everybody in my class would get it.
Before I went to culinary school, if I had opened a restaurant and had, say, really good dry-aged beef and somebody ordered it past medium, I wouldn’t have cooked it. I’d have told them no. ‘Cause you’re doing it wrong. I’m not serving that to you! And if they didn’t want it made the way I wanted it made, too bad.
Now—well, I’d be cussing the whole time, but I’m going to give them the best well-done steak that we can put out. I did not design this dish to go with risotto, but if you want risotto? Fine, you’re going to get risotto.
On his love for wild game:
DG: I’m planning on, in the next two or three weeks, starting Wild Game Tuesdays. I know I’m going to have to start off with venison and elk. Hopefully there will be a following, and then I can try things. I can start offering wilder things. Emu, ostrich, I can get kangaroo—I will serve kangaroo. Obviously we’ll do buffalo. But if I started with kangaroo, nobody would come. Two or three months into it, people will say “I gotta try that.”
On his signature charcuterie:
DG: My charcuterie board is the place to test the waters. I’m doing a rabbit boudin, putting that on there. I’m fixing to start doing a foie gras and sweetbread sausage.
We do all of our own charcuterie here. If we put something on the board, we made it here. Except for the cheese—but that’s coming. We’re going to start off with mozzarellas, and we’re working on some aged cheeses.
On serving “Baton Rouge food”:
DG: At the end of the night, we’re trying to make people happy. Right now we’re trying to get people to come in the restaurant. I call it “Baton Rouge food.” Somebody might not like duck, but I’m not going to serve something and somebody not like it, and I say, “Well, they don’t understand the concept!” When you say that, you’re saying, “I know better than the customer.” But the customer knows what they want to eat. And by serving Baton Rouge food, that’s what I mean. I’m trying to serve what people in Baton Rouge really want to sit down and eat.
On his kitchen:
DG: If this would have been twenty years ago, I would have probably burned thirty bridges before I got here. But I haven’t. Everybody that I’ve worked with and been associated with has done everything they can to help. From the folks [at the Louisiana Culinary Institute] to Nathan Gresham, Mike Boudreaux, and Jeff Conaway at Beausoleil. The people at Leblanc’s [where he worked during culinary school] too. They just reach out. They ask, What can I do to help?
On letting go of control:
DG: The only other place I’d move is Alaska, and my wife won’t go. It’s too cold in the wintertime. That’s my favorite place. I’ve been on numerous occasions, and you feel small. You’re in control of your surroundings here. The only place in Louisiana I feel small is offshore, because you cannot see another person or human. There are portions of Alaska where, unless you have a satellite phone, you’re not talking to anybody. You might go five days without hearing or seeing another soul. It’s a neat feeling, when you’re not one hundred percent in control. In everyday life, you have to be in control at all times. I have to be in control of the kitchen, or it’s going to get out of hand. But I let myself go in those wide-open spaces.
On impact:
DG: I want people to say, “Hey, that’s DeWitt. He came and talked to me at my table. He talked to me about my dish. He asked me, ‘Is there anything you’d like changed?’” I’ll ask flat out what I should do differently. I want people to respect that. Am I going to reinvent the wheel? No, I’m not. I’m not going to be the next Thomas Keller. My ego’s not there. Do I want to be known as one of the best guys in the city? Yeah. I do. I feel like by surrounding myself with the right people that push me, I can do that.
Table Kitchen & Bar 4205 Perkins Road Baton Rouge, La. tablekitchenandbar.com
