Du Jour: Dustie Latiolais, Hilton Garden Inn

Chef Dustie Latiolais cut his culinary teeth as a teenager working at Pat’s Fisherman’s Wharf in Henderson, the well-known Cajun fry house owned by his uncle, Pat Huval. Like many who end up in the restaurant business, Latiolais began in the trenches, busing tables and washing dishes as a green 14-year-old who had no idea that food would be his calling. Now at age 23, he’s executive chef of the Hilton Garden Inn in Baton Rouge, and likes the idea of fast-tracking his way to other Hilton properties worldwide. By 16, Latiolais was on the fry station at Pat’s, followed by a two-year sous chef stint at Crawfish Town USA. By then, the food industry clearly beckoned, so he enrolled in the Louisiana Culinary Institute in Baton Rouge for official training. He excelled in his courses, volunteered at charitable events and landed first place at the Baton Rouge ACF cooking competition (student category) in 2008. Along the way, he worked in the kitchen of Tsunami, and after graduation, landed a job as a sous chef at Baton Rouge’s downtown fine dining eatery, Stroube’s.

Three months ago, he was asked to take over the executive chef position at the Hilton Garden Inn and help transform its menu. “It’s an incredible opportunity,” he says. “A lot of the people I graduated with didn’t even stay in the industry.” In part, he adds, because the reality of restaurant cooking is far different from its reality-show image. “It’s a totally different pace. You go from having time to do your best on one dish to being responsible for getting out 30 tickets at one time,” he says. “It’s not for everybody.” Latiolais recounts an example of a tension-filled Sunday morning in early October when dozens of dyspeptic Tennessee fans wanted their breakfast simultaneously before returning home after a crushing goal-line loss to LSU. “That was a tough one,” he says.

Part of Latiolais’ charge is to draw more traffic to the airport hotel by creating a first-ever lunch menu and retooling the dinner line-up. He’s tossed out the hotel’s cookie cutter line-up and replaced it with seafood sourced exclusively from Louisiana and with produce from many local farmers. For example, greens and squash purveyed on one of his bi-weekly trips to the Red Stick Farmers Market resulted in butternut squash bisque with candied pecans and a grilled redfish special with crawfish cream and braised collard greens. The Hilton Garden Inn’s lunch service will be rolled out after the first of the year.