Myrtle Baquet, Creole restaurateur, dies at age 88
Times Picayune 05-25-2010
Submitted By NOVA

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Myrtle Romano Baquet, a restaurateur and the matriarch of one of New Orleans’ first families of
home-style Creole cooking, died Monday at Chateau de Notre Dame nursing home of complications
from a stroke. She was 88.

With her late husband, Edward Baquet Sr., Mrs. Baquet ran Eddie’s in Gentilly, an unpretentious
neighborhood eatery that boasted a loyal clientele of locals and luminaries who returned for 30
years to enjoy the okra gumbo, oyster dressing, stuffed crabs and fried chicken, often served
buffet-style.

After comedian Bill Cosby plugged his favorites dishes at Eddie’s on “The Tonight Show,” it
became a destination for many new out-of-towners.

While the husband-and-wife team shared kitchen duties, family members said, Mrs. Baquet created
most of Eddie’s signature recipes. While a smiling Mr. Baquet made the rounds in the dining
room, checking on customers, Mrs. Baquet was in front of the stove.

“If he was schmoozing, she was cooking,” said their youngest son, Terry Baquet. “She liked to
stay out of sight, but she was instrumental in teaching my dad how to cook. He couldn’t make a
pot of beans until he met my mom.”

Mrs. Baquet, whose formal education ended when she completed St. Peter Claver Grammar School in
Treme, was a full-time homemaker raising five sons before she and her husband decided to open a
restaurant.

After serving in the Army, Mr. Baquet was hired by the U.S. Post Office. He quit 16 years later
to buy a failing restaurant and bar at 2119 Law St.

To obtain the $27,000 purchase price, the couple withdrew $5,000 from his Post Office pension
account and other savings and sold the family’s newly renovated home for $15,000. In November
1966, the Baquet clan moved into rooms at the rear of the restaurant.

Mrs. Baquet’s specialties included a variety of New Orleans-style stews and a rich, traditional
bread pudding. She had learned the recipes from her mother, Eva Romano.

In 1991, the Baquets received the Minority Business Award from the New Orleans Chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“The neighbors, the people who supported us in the beginning, have always been the most
important people to me,” Mr. Baquet said then. “If we’ve been successful at all, it’s because I
never forgot where I came from.”

In the late 1980s the Baquets turned over most of the responsibility for the family business to
their son and daughter-in-law, Wayne and Janet Baquet.

The younger couple opened two additional restaurants, Eddie’s at Krauss, a casual luncheonette
in the Canal Street department store, and Zachary’s, a more upscale Creole restaurant that
opened in 1993 on Oak Street in Carrollton.

Those businesses have since closed, but the second generation of Baquet restaurateurs now
operates under the Lil’ Dizzy’s Cafe brand at three locations, one on Esplanade Avenue and two
on Poydras Street.

Wayne Baquet, who has been serving up the family’s versions of crawfish bisque, Creole filé
gumbo and trout Baquet at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for more than 25 years,
said his success is due in large part to his mother’s lessons.

“The most important thing she taught me was consistency and discipline,” he said. “You’re going
to open at a certain time and close at a certain time. And if it’s slow, and you have only two
or three customers, you hang in there and you deal with it.

“She taught us all the value of a work ethic, that you get up in the morning, do what you got to
do and produce.”

Two of Mrs. Baquet’s sons — Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, and
Terry Baquet, the page one editor of The Times-Picayune — have each won journalism’s highest
honor. “I’ve got two boys with two Pulitzers,” Mrs. Baquet said in a 2006 interview. “Not many
mothers can say that.”

Survivors include four sons, Wayne, Rudolph, Dean and Terry; eight grandchildren; and 10 great-
grandchildren.

A Mass will be said Saturday at 11 a.m. at St. Raymond and St. Leo the Great Catholic Church,
2916 Paris Ave. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. Burial will be in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
Louisiana Undertaking Co. is in charge of arrangements.