From St. Lucia to New Orleans: Nina Compton shares her chef’s journey through recipes

An individual’s culinary point of view can be focused or expansive depending on where their footsteps have taken them and how food weaves through their journey. Nina Compton’s culinary curiosity led her to places outside her home island of St. Lucia but the award-winning chef used each move as a way to become more technically skilled while imbuing herself in the food cultures around her. She’s the chef and co- owner of several New Orleans restaurants. In her new cookbook, Kwéyòl/Creole: Recipes, Stories, and Tings from a St. Lucian’s Chef’s Journey: A Cookbook, written with Osayi Endolyn, Nina explores her personal winding road, which will be familiar to many chefs.

Evan Kleiman:  Hi, Nina.

Nina Compton: Hi, how are you? 

I’m good, but I need a drink. Can we start our conversation with a cocktail?

I think my best suggestion is a passion fruit rum punch. Passion fruit is probably my favorite fruit to cook with or to work with because whether you’re muddling it in a rum punch or you’re cooking with it to make a crème brûlée or something, passion fruit has the most captivating smell and makes you salivate at the same time. So if anybody’s listening, have a passion fruit rum punch today.

I saw that recipe, and I was like, “Oh, my goodness. I have every one of these ingredients.”

Yeah, well, go ahead. I want to hear a shaker in the background. I think with Caribbean cuisine, it’s really about life, it’s about having fun, it’s about letting your inhibitions go. That part of the book was about having fun and introducing people to the flavors that I grew up with, and I with my journey. I want to take people on that journey as well. I think that’s what Osayi and I did. This was three and a half, almost four years of recipes and stories and history telling.

Passion fruit is muddled to make a rum punch. Photo by Brittany Conerly.

I’d love to talk about your collaboration with Osayi. This is Osayi Endolyn. She’s such a marvelous writer. 

I think Osayi, honestly, was the perfect match for me, because she basically got me to stop and tell my story. She was able to spend some time in St. Lucia during the process, and go to St. Lucia and experience the market, experience the small villages. She also got time with my mom, and that was very instrumental in the book, because she understood my upbringing, my house, everything about it.

Let’s talk about this story of yours. Growing up in St. Lucia. I imagine you were surrounded by family and good food. When did you start to participate in the kitchen? Was it an early passion or did it come on slowly?

I tell a lot of people this, that the kitchen in my house was the busiest room in the house, and I would wake up as a young child with my grandmother in the kitchen making tea. My father, who woke up very early, bringing oranges or grapefruits or lemons or limes from the garden, and making us juice, getting us packed up for lunch and going off to school, but then also coming back in the afternoon, and just kind of us regrouping. 

Sundays and Saturdays were the big family days. Saturdays were more of the soup day, and that’s a very Caribbean thing. It’s the first day of the weekend and you’re catching up on all your chores, doing laundry and doing all these things. Sundays were the day of rest, where you spend time with your family, where there was no work involved, it was about either going to church or going to the beach.

When your grandmother was in the kitchen, did she pull you in to help, or were you meant to be just a watcher?

My grandmother was older. She was in her 60s when she moved in with us but she was a nurse during the Second World War, and she still kept that discipline, that diligence of being very structured, very British. I would always say, “Granny, I’ll help cut the onions, I’ll help cut the potatoes,” and do all these things. It became my joy of waking up and helping granny in the kitchen. 

I remember as a young, I was maybe 16 or 17, coming back to St. Lucia for Christmas holiday, and always remember my aunt, my grandmother, and my mom in the kitchen cooking the meal, serving it, and then doing dishes. The dishes felt like it took six hours. Later in life, I realized they were talking and having conversation and not in a rush. I remember coming home and saying, “You know what, I’m gonna cook the Christmas meal.” 

I did Christmas Eve, I did canapes, I made this rum punch and something else, and made my niece and nephews serve the adults — my father, my mom, my grandmother. Had a little cocktail party, and everybody’s having a good time, and nobody was stressing. I said, “Tomorrow I’m going to cook Christmas lunch so you guys can enjoy life.” 

I remember cooking the entire meal and serving it and cleaning up and just seeing the joy on my family’s face, first my mom and my grandmother. I said, “I think I want to be a chef.” My mom said, “Why would you want to do that?” I said, “Because I brought you joy, so maybe I can bring somebody else joy.” She said, “If that’s the case, you got to find the job.” 

I found my first cooking job at Sandals. It was so insightful, learning the different kitchen, different cuisines, but the structure, and also by bringing joy to people and being served and bringing them happiness. For me as a chef, that was the best I could ever ask for.

Saturdays and Sundays in St. Lucia were big family days spent in the kitchen, says chef Nina Compton. Photo by L. Kasimu Harris.

This book has a double title. It’s Kwéyòl/Creole. Can you explain the difference between the two words and the different meanings in St. Lucia and Louisiana, let’s say?

So “kwéyòl” is our pronunciation of “creole.” We are a colony that is French, British, African, and Indian, mostly. Creole is the pronunciation in Louisiana. What Creole or kwéyòl, however you want to pronounce it, is really a melding of cultures. When you talk about Creole in yours, it’s really about all the influences — the French, the African, the Spanish, everything is mixed in one. It’s the same thing in St. Lucia, but the potential is different. 

When Osayi and I were doing the book, it was really about, “How do we start in the Caribbean and end in Louisiana?” A lot of people say that Louisiana or New Orleans is really the most northern part of the Caribbean. I’ve had family and friends come to visit me. I had a friend that came last weekend from Trinidad. She said, “Wow, it reminds me so much of this area in Port of Spain,” and it shows you how everybody from the Caribbean can connect to New Orleans, because it feels so familiar. I think that’s really a special thing about not just a fruit, the culture, but just the self of being where it is a friendly culture in New Orleans, and the same way it is in the Caribbean.

“Kwéyòl/Creole” celebrates Nina Compton’s culinary journey from her life in the islands to hitting her stride in New Orleans. Photo courtesy of Clarkson Potter.

You talk in the book about how most kids leave the smaller Caribbean islands at some point to experience a larger world through the bigger islands, like you did with Jamaica. What did Jamaica give you as a young woman and was there a particular dish that you experienced over and over that became a part of your repertoire?

Going from St. Lucia to Jamaica, I was teased a lot as, “Oh, you’re small island people.” It always seemed as though we didn’t know very much. But living in Jamaica for the years that I did, I was fascinated by the confidence and what they had to offer. A lot of musical influences. They’d always talk very proudly about Bob Marley and all of these things and Rastafarianism. But for me, it was understanding the dishes that they produced were also very different from us. 

I had an ackee tree. We still have it in my mom’s backyard, in front of the kitchen, and we had ackees dropping on the floor. We never ate them because in St. Lucia we don’t eat ackee. In Jamaica, it is the pride and joy of having ackee and saltfish, ackee fritters. So for me, going over to a different island, understanding things that I had in my backyard I never used or appreciated really put my ears up.

Although Nina Compton grew up with an ackee tree in her backyard, she didn’t start cooking with the fruit until she moved to Jamaica. Photo by Brittany Conerly.

Can you describe ackee, what it looks like on the tree, what it tastes like, and how it’s used?

Ackee, for me, it’s striking. It’s a red pod. What people don’t know is that if it’s not fully open and exposed, it’s poison, it can kill you. So it’s this beautiful red pod, reddish pink. As it opens up, it opens up in three compartments, and there’s this yellow flesh that has a huge black seed. You’re able to, once it opens up, take the flesh out and remove the seed. 

Once you eat it, you can either saute it, you can poach it, you can puree it. It looks like scrambled eggs if you saute it. It doesn’t taste anything like scrambled eggs. It’s very savory. Some might say it’s a little bit bitter. I would compare it to something like sea urchin, where it’s very earthy, very organic, and there’s no other flavor like it, but I always encourage people to just try it out once in your life.

Are we able to get it fresh here in the US or do we need to rely on canned?

I’ve only seen it canned in the US but I have family that has brought it to me frozen. So if you know somebody in the Caribbean that is coming to the States, they can bring you frozen ackee and it’s beautiful.

When you learned about ackee and you started working with it in Jamaica, when you went back home to visit in St. Lucia, did you make your family something with it from the tree that was in their yard?

I did. When I settled in Jamaica, I called my mom. I said, “Mom, stop giving the ackee away.” And she’s like, “Why? We don’t eat.” I said, “Mom, just save it for me when I come home. I’m going to show you.” Now, it’s become a brunch thing. Whenever I come home every Sunday, we have this huge spread of ackee and saltfish, ackee fritters, a celebration of ackee. She laughs about it now, all these years we’ve been giving it away to the Jamaicans that live In St. Lucia. Now, we’re keeping it for ourselves. 

Your trajectory through kitchens is so interesting. You left the traditional resort kitchens of the Caribbean to come to the US to go to school at the Culinary Institute of America. Then you worked for Daniel Boulud in New York, before heading south to Miami, where you met chef Norman Van Aken. In Miami, you discovered a whole new culinary culture, one with tremendous Latin influence. You also met your husband while cooking at the Versace Mansion there but you both ended up in New Orleans, where you opened your first restaurant, Compère Lapin.  With so many influences under your belt, how did you decide what the food would be?

We had gotten a lot of offers. A lot of people calling us, “Hey, open a restaurant in Miami, do something in Chicago, something in New York, something LA” but nothing really excited us. He called me up, I was actually in Toronto that weekend, he says, “Hey, I got a phone call to do something in New Orleans.” I said, “That’s my dream, to open a restaurant in New Orleans after doing Top Chef.” I said, “Well, you know, it sounds just too good to be true.” 

I remember walking the space. It was under construction, just a mess. We had to have hard hats. The owners of the hotel at the time were really trying to sell us this restaurant, very hard. “We can do this. We can do that,” but I’m not listening. It’s kind of like when you’re in a swimming pool, when you go underneath the water, where it’s just this muffled sound? That’s exactly how it felt walking the space because I wasn’t listening to anything but just looking at the space. 

We walked out. I looked at my husband. I said, “This is the space.” He’s like, “Are you sure?” I said, “This is the space.” I said, “You know, New Orleans, it has a feel about it. Where it’s not new, it’s not shiny. They love grits. They love being genuine, and the food is very soulful.”

I’m not going to put gumbo on the menu because I think that that is such a personal recipe that has been around for generations that I’m not going to come in as a newcomer putting gumbo on the menu. I want to be respectful of the people before me. New Orleans is such a humble city, a city that’s gone through a lot of tragedy, and I want to make sure that I’m making people feel comfort. I want my food to be soulful. I want this to speak to people when they try my food, where they feel comfort, not where it’s like, “Oh, you know, I’m having this tuna ceviche that’s deconstructed.” That doesn’t sing to people. I want people to crave my food. I felt like New Orleans did that the best for me, and it really spoke to me.

Let’s talk about the food. What is your most popular dish in the restaurant that is in the book as well?

Funnily enough, the curry goat. I had told my husband, “Curry is my comfort food.” He said, “If you put it on the menu, it’s not going to sell.” I said, “Well, we’ll give it a try. If it doesn’t in the month, we’ll take it off.” After almost 10 years, it’s the most popular dish.

You serve your curry goat with sweet potato gnocchi, which isn’t traditional. Do you think that move brought more people to the dish and to trying goat?

Maybe yes or no, but for me, I didn’t want to have the traditional curry goat with rice and peas. And trust me, we’ll serve rice and peas. We had a Jamaican guy a while back come in, sit at the bar, and he says he wants the curry goat but with rice. And he was not backing down. I said, “Well, it comes with gnocchi.” He was all, “I want rice.” You have those very staunch people that were in the traditional way. But for me serving with the sweet potato, it was kind of me combining and melding a dish that is very Caribbean, but also now living in the South, where you have the yams that are cooked very often, I wanted to showcase that in a different way, and kind of like melding the different cultures of Kwéyòl/Creole. It’s about a dish that is very Caribbean but then you also are using yams as part of the dish as well.

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