Emeril Lagasse's Favorite Meal At His Restaurant, 34

While it might seem a little bit like a parent choosing their favorite child, it's probably inevitable that some chefs have a favorite dish in their restaurants. That's the case for Emeril Lagasse in his newest restaurant, 34. While Lagasse is arguably best known for serving up Cajun and Creole dishes in his New Orleans restaurants like Meril and Emeril's, with 34 he has pivoted to Portuguese food. Emeril knows what makes a good restaurant, and it's a cuisine that's more within Lagasse's wheelhouse than you might think: His mother is Portuguese and his culinary career started out with a teenage job in a Portuguese bakery. He's also published classic Portuguese recipes like a kale-chorizo soup or his mother's chicken stew (the former appears on 34's lunch menu, too).

But Lagasse has named his favorite Portuguese dishes (at least, out of those on the menu at 34): Duck rice, paella, and espetada (grilled skewers). Here's what you should know about them — firstly, espetada. This is a catch-all term for different types of skewered meat: Portuguese espetada recipes can feature beef, pork, or seafood, to name a few options. These skewers are traditionally associated with the islands of Madeira, off the Portuguese coast: Ideally, they'd be grilled over the embers of a fire made from bay tree branches to infuse them with flavor, although if that's not feasible, you can season them with bay leaves to approximate this, then char grill them until they're perfectly juicy.

While espetadas are a relatively simple dish, Lagasse's other two favorites from the 34 menu are a bit more complex. Firstly, there's the duck rice ("arroz de pato" in Portuguese). Considering the prominence of rice in Cajun dishes like jambalaya, it's something that fits neatly into Lagasse's repertoire. It's a hearty dish designed to share: Lagasse's version features duck legs braised in port, orange juice, stock, and seasonings. Then there's rice (cooked in duck or chicken stock) and nuggets of chouriço, the Portuguese counterpart to chorizo; the whole dish is briefly baked to crisp up all that flavorful meat.

Lagasse's other favorite dish is not quite Portuguese — a paella made with rabbit sausage and shrimp from the gulf. Strictly speaking, Portugal doesn't do paella — it hails from eastern Spain, around Valencia. But Portuguese cuisine does feature dishes that certainly bear resemblance, like arroz de marisco, which features both rice and shellfish, but has a lot of sauce, as opposed to the typically drier paella. Paella comes with lots of variations: You may also find a rabbit version in Spain's traditional paella-making region, too. Lagasse's exact recipe isn't publicly available, but classic recipes for this kind of paella would be made with peppers, tomato, rice (ideally, the bomba variety), stock, and saffron for a deep golden color. Lagasse hints that his version has some Cajun twists — but the only way to know for sure is to head to the Big Easy and try it.