Before he was the executive chef/partner at Mopho; chef de cuisine at John Besh’s Restaurant August; or the nighttime pizza guy at the French Quarter Planet Hollywood, working under a “burnt-out chef from Commander’s Palace,” Michael Gulotta was second in command in his mother’s kitchen. “As a kid, I’d watch cooking shows instead of cartoons,” Gulotta says. “I’d get an idea from a show and my mom would take me to the store. We’d bring everything back, she’d do the dangerous stuff. I’d do the rest and we’d make food.”
Being a chef was always Gulotta’s intention, but ending up in New Orleans was not. After two years at August, Besh sent Gulotta, who had cooked in Italy, to work with his own mentor, Karl-Josef Fuchs at Spielweg in Germany’s Black Forest.
Gulotta spent a year and a half turning fresh kills into Michelin-starred meals when Hurricane Katrina hit. “I got a ticket as fast as I could, but couldn’t get into the city,” Gulotta says. “As soon as I got back in, I started working at August again.”