In the News: Chef has a love of family and a passion for food
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Jay Pierce hovers over his tilt skillet, making a big batch of beans and greens at Lucky 32 amid the sizzle and metallic clink of his busy kitchen.

His 26-person crew races around him on this particular Friday night. They're all putting together a slew of Southern dishes Pierce created himself, inspired by the hometown he loves, a place of music, bawdy fun and architectural poetry.

Every year at this time - particularly today on Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras Day - Pierce looks south and remembers why he hovers over a tilt skillet on a Friday night, away from his family. It's easy because of the Big Easy.

In New Orleans, he learned cooking is as essential as water, as spiritual as church.

He'll go on for days about it in his relaxed Cajun dialect. And get him in a kitchen, working around what he calls his "merry band of pirates,'' and he'll suck in that life like steam from a hot stove.

And what he loves to hear? "Cook something for me.''

"I'm in it for the love, man,'' says the 36-year-old father of two, the executive chef at Lucky 32. "Just the adrenaline in the kitchen. The passion. The excitement. You're putting something in your mouth, and that's human.

"It's the elemental thing. You have to eat to survive.''

Pierce did - particularly during Mardi Gras - in Marrero, the working-class community where he grew up along the west bank of the Mississippi River, a 10-minute drive from New Orleans.

During Mardi Gras, he ate King Cake every day in school, bowls of everything at people's houses and shrimp caught off the coast by two neighbors, a father and son named Dino and Clyde.

And always, he hung at his maternal grandmother's house. He called her Granny. There, in a house filled with at least 20 people, he'd find Dixie beer in the refrigerator and a pot of gumbo that had been simmering on the stove all day.

And always, he ate.

Pierce, whose Cajun family has lived in southern Louisiana since the 1700s, sprang from a long line of folks who knew how to cook and how to eat. But he dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer or English professor. He never saw cooking as a career, only as a hobby, as a way to have fun.

Then came Eugene, Ore.

After graduating from Louisiana State, Pierce ventured northward with his new wife to snag a master's degree in English at the University of Oregon. He didn't get in. So, he enrolled in a local community college to get a degree in culinary arts.

"Why come here to cook?'' one of his instructors asked him.

"You can't think outside the box,'' Pierce responded, "until you know where the box is.''

He found the box. It's taken him to Orlando, Fla., and back to his hometown, where he worked in one of the city's top restaurants and earned his first nicknames, "Hawkeye'' and "Sour Mash.''

In November 2006, Pierce came to Lucky 32. He told his new employers that cutting his goatee would be a deal-breaker. But not his hair. So, he lost his curly locks. He shaved his head bald with a pair of dog clippers from Walmart.

He hasn't cut his hair since.

He also has a new nickname. That's "Jefe,'' Spanish for "chief.''

He creates recipes from his own research - and his own upbringing in Marrero, particularly in his Granny's house on Allo Avenue.

He works around employees he calls "Rondo'' and "Rambo,'' pulls his curly hair back in a ponytail - you can see the tiny diamonds in both ears, a first anniversary gift from his wife - and scoots around the kitchen from tilt skillet, to cooler, to the dining room to talk and see.

Yes, he's the happy captain of his own pirate ship.

More About Jay

Family: Wife, Morgan, 35; daughter, Sydney, 9; son, Andrew, 6.

Education: A bachelor’s degree in English literature from Louisiana State University; an associate degree in culinary arts from Lane Community College in Eugene, Ore.

Favorite thing to eat: Margaritas and carnitas, roasted pork in Mexican cuisine.

Favorite thing to cook: “It’s really a time, and it’s Thanksgiving. I’ll cook a turkey and it’s never the same. I basted it once in a crab boil and last year, rubbed it with fennel seed and stuffed it with celery, lemon and onions. I don’t know why. It sounds good. And it tastes good.’’

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