Our Team
Ralph Brennan
Ralph Brennan's passion for restaurants and hospitality was ignited as a teenager in the 1960’s with a summer job as a prep cook at the original Brennan’s Restaurant on Royal Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. The hands-on physical work coupled with kitchen camaraderie, smells and flavors and the behind the scenes restaurant activity were fascinating to an impressionable young boy and inspired a lifelong enthusiasm for all things epicurean.
A third-generation restaurateur, Ralph is the owner and operator of Red Fish Grill in the New Orleans French Quarter, Ralph's on the Park in Mid-City New Orleans, Ralph Brennan’s Courtyard Cafe housed inside New Orleans Museum of Art, the upcoming café b (April 2011), Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen® located in the Downtown Disney® District at the DISNEYLAND® Resort, and Ralph Brennan Catering & Events. Ralph is a co-owner of Mr. B's Bistro and Commander's Palace in New Orleans and Brennan's of Houston. Additionally, for twenty years, Ralph owned and operated the DiRoNa Award winning BACCO restaurant in New Orleans and is presently relocating this concept.
The Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group portfolio boasts a diverse array of restaurant concepts, cuisines, and locations. Unifying elements across the spectrum are a relentless adherence to quality, local ingredients, superior service and New Orleans-style hospitality. Ralph is an involved operator who has the luxury of spending his days directly interacting with chefs, managers, staff, and customers. He oversees a staff of 550 dedicated team members, many of whom boast a decade plus of service.
A foodservice and tourism industry advocate, Ralph has a long history of service to his city and his industry. He served as Chairman and President of the National Restaurant Association in 1995-1996 and locally presided over both the Louisiana Restaurant Association and New Orleans Restaurant Associations. While at the helm of the National Restaurant Association, Ralph used his platform to bolster the image of the foodservice industry and position foodservice as an industry of opportunity.
At the invitation of the Governor of Louisiana, Ralph served as Chairman of the Board of the Ernest N. Morial New Orleans Convention Center from 1996–2005 where he oversaw the construction and opening of phase III of the Convention Center which added 1,000,000 square feet of exhibit, back of the house, and amenity space and elevated New Orleans to a top tier convention destination.
Ralph Brennan’s debut cookbook offering, Ralph Brennan's New Orleans Seafood Cookbook, was released in 2008. Now in its second printing, the 432-page tome was written with national food writer and former Times Picayune restaurant columnist and reviewer Gene Bourg with the goal of de-mystifying seafood preparation at home. The 170 recipes, seafood cook’s manual, suggested seafood and wine pairings, and 143 color photographs by award winning photographer Kerri McCaffety culminated in recognition from New Orleans Magazine named the booked “Best Cookbook of 2008” and the Chicago Tribune and the LA Examiner and Orlando New Sentinel named the book “A top 10 pick” of 2008.
Ralph Brennan is a graduate of Tulane University (BA 1973, MBA 1975). After graduation and prior to reentering the restaurant industry, Ralph worked as a Certified Public Accountant with Price Waterhouse & Company. One of eight third generation cousins actively involved in the restaurant industry today, Ralph Brennan and his cousins run twelve New Orleans-style restaurants, ten of which are located in New Orleans. In March 2008, Ralph and his family were inducted into the Culinary Institute of America’s Hall of Fame.
Ralph and his wife Susan have been married for twenty-eight years and have three children. Ralph’s eldest daughter Kathryn recently joined the Ralph Brennan Restaurant Group as a manager after three years working in New York City. Ralph’s son Patrick works as a cook in Durango, Colorado, and his youngest daughter Kristen will graduate from college in the spring of 2011.
