The Gulf Coast Food Project
Texas Creole:
It's More Than a Crawdad in a Cowboy Hat
by Deanne Morgan Ashton
Brennan’s of Houston considers itself the home of Texas Creole cuisine, but what exactly is Texas Creole? Is it just Louisiana delicacies served in Texas, or is there more to it? Before you can really understand what makes food Texas Creole, though, you first need to understand what makes it Creole.
The line between Creole and Cajun can be confusing. If you aren’t from the Louisiana area, chances are Creole and Cajun are interchangeable terms to you representing a type of French-inspired cooking from New Orleans and southern Louisiana. This is not the case, but exactly what differentiates the two terms is a matter of opinion. For many, Creole is the sophisticated cousin to Cajun’s rustic, often spicy fare. It sparks mental images of candlelight soirees served on fine china in elegant dining rooms. Cajun food, on the other hand, brings to mind casual afternoons spent eating grub along the banks of the bayou. In other words, Creole is Louisiana cuisine’s city mouse to Cajun’s country mouse.
According to Brennan’s of Houston, the primary difference between Creole cuisine and Cajun fare is terroir. Terroir is the French term for the unique and special qualities that geography and climate bestow upon produce grown in a specific area. Tomatoes grown in the silty soil of New Orleans, for instance, will have different qualities than those grown in sandy Florida, so the dishes made with these different tomatoes will also have different qualities. This difference really became apparent when early French settlers to New Orleans used local ingredients in traditional French dishes. Today’s Creole chefs take advantage of the terroir of southern Louisiana’s cornucopia of food sources; from produce to livestock to seafood. They create innovative dishes full of local flavor that are more refined than the traditionally rustic Cajun fare. Texas Creole takes that innovation a step further.
When Alex Brennan-Martin took over managing Brennan’s of Houston in 1982, he said the restaurant was creating carbon copies of the dishes served in New Orleans. The quality was good, but there was no local flare. Brennan-Martin immediately began making use of locally-sourced produce and seafood. This changed the terroir of the dishes, but the chefs at Brennan’s of Houston pushed it further by infusing their cuisine with the essence of Houston’s palate. Although New Orleans has Spanish roots, Houston boasts a more visible Latin American influence. As a result, not only did salsas, chiles, cilantro, and other Hispanic ingredients find their way into Brennan’s kitchen, so did aspects of the Latin American food culture. The chefs began to look at food from both the Hispanic and French perspectives and created dishes reflective of that. So Texas Creole is a blending of the terroir and food culture of Houston and the traditional fare of New Orleans.
