Remembering Pableaux Johnson, the New Orleans writer, photographer and roaming red beans maestro

Search “Pableaux Johnson red beans” online and you’ll find several recipes for his version of the New Orleans staple, each a little different.

All of them put forth the essentials: kidney beans, Andouille sausage, the sacred trinity of onions, celery and green pepper. They include his preferred additions: six to eight cloves of garlic, dried basil, fresh sage and bay leaves to layer the flavors. A couple of them namecheck the brand of beans (Louisiana-based Camellia), Tony Chachere’s peppery Creole seasoning blend and Pableaux’s preferred local hot sauce, Crystal. Most suggest the garnish of chopped parsley and scallions I watched him sprinkle reflexively over countless bowls. He’d lately devised a method for the Instapot, but there was nothing like staring into a Dutch oven full of beautiful murk the color of ruddy clay, bubbling slow and thick as tar pits.

Their variances arguably reflect the testing and tweaking of the publications for which he wrote. I prefer to believe their sum more accurately reveals how Pableaux pulled together red beans: no exact measurements, simmered to taste, sustenance at once immutable and receptive to improvisation. He lived as he cooked.

Red beans were but one medium by which to know Pableaux. A writer and photographer, he died in New Orleans on Sunday of a heart attack at 59. We were friends for over 20 years.

His ritual of hosting a Monday night supper of red beans and rice, cornbread and nothing more than whiskey for dessert was, for those of us who knew him, encoded in our NOLA experience. No cellphones or social media allowed. Wine was the only thing he’d ever want you to bring.

He wrote of the tradition’s broader origins for Food & Wine: “Historically tied to pre-modern domestic routines — when ‘laundry day’ meant washboard work and a trip to the river — red beans and rice developed as a hearty, low-maintenance meal that simmered slowly over a banked fire, often flavored with hambone from the previous Sunday’s sit-down supper.”

In her exquisite and meticulously researched memoir, “Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table,” Sara Roahen recounts her indoctrination into those evenings:

“A native of New Iberia … Pableaux (né Paul) moved to New Orleans roughly a year after [my husband] Matt and I did. I met him through a mutual friend, though if she hadn’t introduced us we would have met through another friend, or in a cafe, or at the dentist’s. It’s virtually impossible not to meet Pableaux, a magnetic extrovert, and once you’re in, you’re in. ‘Wanna come over for red beans on Monday?’ he asks, and you agree at once, so convinced by his enthusiasm that you neglect to run his name through Google first.”

Writer and photographer Pableaux Johnson in New Orleans in June 2018.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

I met both of them at a symposium held by the Southern Foodways Alliance in Oxford, Miss., in 2002, but these words bring me back to the gravitational pull of our acquaintance, and the soulful tenacity by which he maintained friendships. Always with a camera in his hand, he took portraits that he’d send out freely and, if he hadn’t seen you in a while, he’d revisit and reedit over the years.

The many tributes to him this week remarked on his routine check-ins: friendly texts, concerned follow-ups, playlists blasted out. He would phone unprompted, often during his frequent cross-state drives, particularly over the last decade when he turned his Monday night traditions into the Red Beans Road Show, partnering with chefs and restaurants across the country.

I hate that it took his death for me this week to fully appreciate his efforts. How many of us in our overwhelmed American lives would host a dozen people for a meal every week? Who keeps in touch with so many long-distance friends through unscheduled calls?

Pableaux’s “Eating New Orleans” was published in 2005 two months before Hurricane Katrina, so rather than simply a guidebook it also became a history on elements of the culture that were lost forever. The grief in my New Orleans friends from that time will stay with me forever. It’s the same kind of heartache as I’ve felt and witnessed this last month in Los Angeles, in the wake of the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires.

Though we’d stayed in touch, I hadn’t seen Pableaux since his last visit to L.A. early in 2019. He was in town to give a talk at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, which had mounted an exhibit of his enduring passion project: documenting the singular spirit of New Orleans’ second line parades. (He was photographing the Ladies and Men of Unity parade on Sunday when he experienced cardiac arrest and, rushed to the hospital, couldn’t be revived.)

Pableaux Johnson discusses his exhibition of second-line parade photogaphs in January 2019 at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

(Michael Oates Palmer)

He understood L.A.’s riches. He was also a diner guy. For what became our final meal, he wanted pancakes for a late breakfast at the Griddle Cafe. Perfect enough. Six years later, the possibility of showers returns to the week’s upcoming forecast. Fluffy, hubcap-size hot cakes are good, but a garlicky pot of red beans for rainy day comfort and remembrance sounds even better.

An Arts District hub redefining the bistro for Los Angeles

I finished writing a review of Camélia — the Arts District restaurant owned by Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba, who also run the enduringly wonderful Tsubaki in Echo Park — during the holidays. For various scheduling reasons its publication was pushed to the beginning of January, when the fires erupted. It’s ironic that I begin the piece by describing Kaplan and Namba brainstorming the restaurant during “bleak days” in 2021. What an understatement to say we’ve endured too much bleakness this decade.

Koshihikari risotto with grilled Monterey Bay squid and uni butter at Camélia

(Rebecca Reloquin / For The Times)

But that said, this is a gorgeous restaurant in many senses: The room is midcentury-modern effervescence, the staff brims with engaged pros, and Namba’s cooking grafts Japanese and French flavors in smart, fresh ways. Kaplan brings all her knowledge to her wine and sake program — and “Dryuary” is over. This is me nudging you to check out one of L.A.’s great new restaurants.

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• Stephanie also reports on another difficult closure: decade-old Cassia in Santa Monica will serve its last meal on Feb. 22.
  
• The Grammy Awards are this weekend, but Super Bowl Sunday is just ahead: Stephanie, Danielle Dorsey and Jenn Harris name their favorite places for wings.
  
• David Rosoff writes about the new generation of winemakers in the Santa Cruz Mountain range who are reshaping the story of what California wine can be.