Career
He opened his first restaurant in Opelousas in 1957, a hamburger restaurant called Big Daddy O's Patio. The restaurant went out of business in nine months, which also saw the end of his first marriage. He became a magazine seller initially in New Orleans, and afterwards a number of restaurant jobs took him around the country. During this period he began creating his own spice mixes, and gave them away to customers. In 1970 he moved back to New Orleans to work as a sous chef at the Le Pavilion Hotel. He left after a short while to open Clarence Dupuy's restaurant Maison du Puy. While there, he met his second wife, Kay Hinrichs, who worked at the restaurant as a waitress. In 1975 Prudhomme left to become executive chef at the restaurant Commander's Palace.
In 1979, he and his wife, Kay Prudhomme, opened K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The restaurant was named as a portmanteau of their names, with Paul working as head chef and Kay as restaurant manager. For a while he attempted to operate the restaurant whilst still working at Commander's Palace, but the demand in his new restaurant was such that he moved to work there full-time and also hired Emeril Lagasse to work in the kitchen. In 1980, he was made a Chevalier (Knight) of the French Ordre National du Mérite Agricole in honor of his work with Cajun and Creole cuisines.
His cookbook Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen was published by William Morrow and Company in 1984. It was subsequently given a Culinary Classic Book Award in 2012 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Prudhomme has been credited with popularising cajun cuisine and in particular blackened redfish during the 1980s, and has been credited with introducing the turducken. Such was the popularity of the redfish in particular, and the number of other restaurants who began serving the dish, that commercial fishing of the species became restricted in order to prevent it from going extinct.
During a summer residence in New York in 1985, Prudhomme's pop-up restaurant was reported to the Board of Health which visited the restaurant and closed it before it opened, reporting 29 violations of the city's health code. Prudhomme ignored the order and opened the restaurant anyway, resulting in the Board of Health threatening Prudhomme with time in jail if he continued to operate the restaurant. The city's mayor Ed Koch appeared with Prudhomme at the restaurant to declare an end to what the media reported as the "Gumbo war". The restaurant was quite successful during the five weeks it was open, with queues sometimes reaching four blocks long. Four years later he opened a permanent restaurant in New York City at 622 Broadway, and again had lengthy queues for the restaurant of up to two hours.
In 1992, he was charged with possession of a weapon while trying to board a plane at Baltimore/Washington International Airport after leaving a loaded revolver in his carry-on luggage. He later released a press statement saying that he had forgotten it was in the bag. He made a guest appearance at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, France, in October 1994.
In 2004, he travelled to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, along with 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) of ingredients to cook for the United States troops stationed there. Following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Prudhomme was forced to close his restaurant. During the restoration efforts, he cooked for free at a relief center for the military and residents staying in the French Quarter; at one point his team cooked over 6,000 meals in ten days. He reopened the restaurant during the following October, the premises were not extensively damaged by the storm. Bon Appétit awarded Prudhomme their Humanitarian Award in 2006 for his efforts following the hurricane.
In March 2008, Prudhomme was grazed by a .22-calibre stray bullet while catering the Zurich Classic of New Orleans golf tournament. He at first thought a bee had stung his arm, required no serious medical attention, and within five minutes was back to cooking for the golf tournament. It was thought to have been a falling bullet.
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