Du Jour: Jeremy Campbell, Race to Cannes 2011 winner

On Friday, April 1, culinary student Jeremy Campbell landed top honors at the Louisiana Culinary Institute’s annual Race to Cannes competition, a face-off in which students vie for a coveted spot cooking in the film festival’s American Pavilion. Campbell and 15 other LCI students were asked to prepare dishes using specified ingredients through several rounds of the bracket-style tournament. By Friday, only Campbell and Bryan Poche remained, and their final face-off required creating an appetizer and entrée with fresh seafood. Campbell came up with a delicate arugula salad with red wine vinaigrette and rings of squid braised in red wine; and, a spicy, chunky bouillabaisse with fresh, poached pompano and nutty popcorn rice. The two students had a couple of weeks to develop their recipes, but on the day of the competition, competition organizers presented a basket of required additional mystery ingredients : pecans, smoked mussels, crab butter and fresh and dried chiles. Campbell wove toasted pecans into his salad, and worked mussels, crab butter and chiles into his bouillabaisse, whose profile ranged danced from sweet to smoky to spicy. “It was a lot of work, and I’m really excited about the outcome,” says Campbell, 27, who also works full-time as a line cook at Mansur’s.

Campbell once considered becoming an English teacher, but fell hard for the culinary world working part time in college. He’s seen everything from fast food to high-end, and says that he’s looking forward to having his own spot one day. “I love what I’m doing,” he says. “I feel like all of this is building toward something good.”