The Interview That Never Recorded
I went to New Orleans to interview Chef Wiley Wilkinson Lewis. I left with nothing… and everything.
This is the story of Wiley Wilkinson Lewis, Executive Chef of Delacroix Restaurant in New Orleans, a BRG Hospitality concept set on the Mississippi River in Spanish Plaza, built around Gulf seafood, a raw bar, and a come-as-you-are approach to dining.
Rooted in the South. Driven by Purpose. Built for Living.
I landed in New Orleans with a simple plan. Experience Delacroix Restaurant unannounced. Then interview Chef Wiley the next morning, and share her story as authentically as I could.
Before I hit record, I wanted to see something else. I wanted to experience what was real. So I did not tell her or her PR team I was coming. No heads up. No choreography. No, “we’re expecting you.”
I just walked from my hotel room at The Westin to Delacroix for lunch after checking in.
Two blocks, maybe three. Call it a nine iron.
Delacroix Restaurant New Orleans
The space is what struck me initially.
A true riverfront restaurant in New Orleans, sitting directly on the Mississippi River in Spanish Plaza, centered between the Audubon Aquarium and Riverwalk. If you could survive the current, you could swim to Algiers. The seagulls greet you from their rooftop perch on the ferry terminal building. The river-facing exterior walls of the restaurant are glass. Crossing the threshold, it immediately feels bright, open, and clean.
The Unannounced Visit
I took a seat at the bar and introduced myself to Stephanie.
She handed me a cocktail list. “What do you like making right now?” I asked.
“Been having a lot of fun with the lemon drop lately,” she replied. “Tito’s okay?”
Normally I’d decline anything with a sugar rim. But this cocktail worked. It was crisp and balanced. Not too tart, not too sweet, just right.
Oysters came next. Gulf-bottom oysters from Louisiana, Alabama, and Flo-rida that rotate daily. Dock to table. No middleman.
I went with the Bright Sides out of Grand Isle.
And I sat for a moment just savoring each oyster, sipping my drink, and watching container ships make the turn at Algiers Point.
After a little guidance from Stephanie, I ordered the boudin balls which were served old school in a brown paper bag that caught the grease. They were crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, with the melted pepper jack doing just enough.
Then came Momma’s Drum Almandine. Black Drum instead of trout. It was fried perfectly and topped with sliced almonds and meunière. The green beans and stewed potatoes that came with it could stand on their own, not an afterthought.
But what sealed it for me didn’t come on the half shell, in a glass, or on a plate. It was the vibrancy of the room.
People were happy.
You could hear it. Servers involuntarily sang along with the playlist as they moved between tables and the kitchen. And right in the middle of it all was Chef Wiley.
Running food. Greeting tables. Right in the mix, not above it.
She walked over to greet me as she would any other patron with a huge smile.
“Hey, how’s everything?” she asked.
“Chef Wiley, it’s so nice to meet you in-person” I replied.
She paused. A slight tilt of the head, like the RCA puppy staring at the TV screen.
I didn’t make it awkward for too long.
“I’m James,” I said. “I’m interviewing you tomorrow morning.”
She laughed. “Oh my God… you didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“I know.” I said. “I didn’t want you to know.”
We started talking.
After a few minutes she asked if I wanted to meet Chef John Besh. I said yes before she finished the sentence. How often do you get to meet a James Beard Award winning chef? Not that often, at least for me.
She disappeared and came back with him like it was nothing.
A firm handshake and easy conversation.
That’s BRG Hospitality. That’s New Orleans.
That’s Delacroix.
I told her I’d see her in the morning, finished my drum, and paid my tab. I walked out feeling one thing. This interview was going to be good.
I returned the next morning at 7:45. Early. Quiet. We hit record. Mics hot and camera speeding.
Or so I thought…
But before I get into that, you need to understand Chef Wiley.
Because none of this starts in New Orleans.
It starts in Shreveport.
Shreveport Roots
Her parents divorced when she was young.
But she never lacked for presence. She had time with both of them. Weekend bags were part of the routine. She grew up between two sisters. Middle child, the glue. She was always moving, always competing. The soccer field was her escape when she needed it. She played almost every position: Striker, Wing, Goalie. It didn’t matter.
Some of her earliest memories are in a deer stand with her dad at Caddo Lake.
She was three years old and quietly coloring next to her father when he softly told her to put on the headphones to protect her ears. He took the shot. They both ran to discover an 18-point buck that, in her mind, still feels larger than life.
Her father took a picture of her holding the trophy stag. That moment hangs on the wall at Delacroix today.
A reminder of where she started.
Big Daddy and the Bismarck
Then there’s her grandfather.
Carl Wiley Jones.
“Big Daddy”
Her namesake.
Christmas Eve at his house wasn’t a small immediate family gathering.
It was an open house. Everyone was invited. Not just family. Everyone.
Food. People. Music.
He taught her how to make pain perdu and mayhaw jelly.
That’s probably where her sweet tooth started.
That theme repeats itself later.
She showed me a picture of her grandmother, Carolyn “Aimeé” Jones, on the deck of their family houseboat called the Bismarck which they kept down south of Lake Charles on Pecan Island.
She’s standing up top. Waving to the camera below, drink in hand, like the Queen of Mardi Gras.
And, as Chef Wiley tells it, it was early. Eight in the morning. And that’s okay.
That memory stayed with her. The Bismarck was a cornerstone of her childhood. That’s where she learned how to fish, trap shoot, and hunt ducks.
So she put it on the menu.
The Bismarck. Her version of baked Alaska made with butterfinger ice cream, bruleed meringue, and salted caramel.
The Path is Rarely Linear
Her path to the kitchen wasn’t linear. It ran through a few campuses first. She started at the University of Louisiana Lafayette, affectionately known throughout the state as, “Ooh La La” or “ULL” for short.
Then an extended stay at Louisiana State University where she may or may not have frequented places like The Chimes, Fred’s, and Bogie’s. She admitted her stint at LSU lasted a bit longer than she initially planned.
She eventually landed at the University of New Orleans in the restaurant management program.
Closer to the life she was already moving toward.
She talked her way into her first food service job at Ralph's on the Park with no experience and started at the bottom plating salads and bread service with nowhere to go but up.
And one day they ran out of the marshmallow fluff used for desserts in the middle of service.
So she made it.
That was the moment. Pastry clicked.
Not because someone taught her. Because she figured it out on the fly.
From there it’s a whirlwind.
Commander's Palace under Tory McPhail.
Then into BRG Hospitality starting at Restaurant Borgne followed by tours of duty through August, Domenica, Shaya, and Willa Jean.
She was constantly learning, moving, and evolving.
But in 2016 she decided to step away, get married, start a family. Slow down.
She totally changed gears and went to work for Em’s Boutique in Metairie which specialized in women’s clothing and jewelry. About as far away from a kitchen as you might possibly get.
But a few years later in 2022, everything shattered.
Chef Wiley lost her mother and went through a divorce in the same year. That would be enough to take down anyone, but not her.
She could already do hard things. She had done hard things before.
One childhood walk in particular stuck with her. She stepped too close and surprised a copperhead. It struck. Her dad didn’t realize what happened at first. Then he saw the snake retreating. He handled that part. Then he got her to the hospital. Fast.
She survived the bite.
To this day, she’s got an Indiana Jones–level fear of snakes. But I like to think that maybe… just maybe… a little bit of that venom is still running through her veins and gives her a little more grit than the rest of us.
Chef Wiley had already learned, quite literally, how much pain she could take and keep going. She kept moving.
She went to work as a fishmonger for Inland Seafood where she learned a very valuable lesson which would serve her well later down the line. In New Orleans, when it comes to fresh seafood, nobody needs a middleman. They already have their guy (or gal) on the dock.
And then, like it tends to do in New Orleans, the right person reappeared at the right time. No chance meetings.
The Return to Delacroix
The path back to BRG came through one of her best friends, Melissa Joyce, who she had met years prior during Mardi Gras and is coincidentally the Director of Catering and Sales for BRG.
Melissa was the first to bring up the opportunity to open Delacroix.
At first, Chef Wiley brushed it off. But it kept coming up.
Eventually she agreed to meet with Melissa and Chef Besh and see the space.
And much like my first impression, that was all it took for Wiley.
She knew, even though she tried to, “play it cool.”
Locals Don’t Order Gumbo
We talked about her smoked duck gumbo featured on the menu. And she said something that made sense to me although I’d never really thought about it.
Nobody from Louisiana goes out to eat gumbo.
You make it at home. Usually too much of it. So you freeze it and pull it out in the winter when it gets cold. It’s a comfort food and everyone puts their own personal spin on it.
So when locals order her gumbo at Delacroix, and they do, that means something.
The Expo Moment
I asked her about working with Chef Besh, specifically if it ever stops being intimidating.
“Of course not,” she said. “When we opened Delacroix he asked me to call him John… absolutely not. You’re Chef Besh.”
But then she told me about a moment early on at Delacroix.
They were in the middle of service. Chef Besh was on the line and Chef Wiley was running expo.
If you’ve never worked in a kitchen, expo (short for expeditor) is the nerve center. The air traffic controller. The person calling tickets, lining up every plate, making sure everything hits the table hot, right, and at the exact same time. Nothing leaves the kitchen without going through that position.
It’s fast. It’s loud. It’s controlled chaos.
And in the middle of it all, she was calling tickets to him.
“Fire almandine, shrimp creole, crabby rice…”
Making sure he plated every dish with precision. Just like anyone else on the line. No hesitation. No deference. Just doing her job.
That was her pinch-me moment.
Him on the line. Her on expo.
And for the first time, it wasn’t Chef Besh. It was just John.
And the only thing that mattered was getting the food out right.
She laughed when she told me.
That’s when she felt she belonged in her role.
It was clear from our conversation that Chef Wiley and Chef Besh were both very intentional about making Delacroix a “come as you are” kind of place. Approachable, not just in feel but in price. The raw bar carries some higher-end options, but the core of the menu is accessible. Small plates and desserts land in the teens, gumbo and greens under $20, and most sandwiches and entrées fall between $20 and $35. That balance is by design.
We talked hot sauce.
Tabasco, all the way.
She’s got a growler of it gifted to her by the company. It is just behind the hostess stand where you walk in. She hasn’t opened it yet. She is waiting for the right moment. Perhaps the one-year anniversary of Delacroix’s opening. Time will tell.
Life Outside the Kitchen
I asked her to describe her perfect day in New Orleans outside of work and here is what she laid out.
Start with a morning walk around Audubon Park. Coffee and a bagel from Stein's Market and Deli. Then wander down to the French Quarter and walk Royal Street. Head back uptown in the afternoon for cocktails at Cure. Cap it with dinner at Clancy's.
Hard to beat.
I asked her about Shreveport. Where she goes when she goes home.
It’s the original.
I asked her, hypothetically, if I were to go there and have one too many margaritas and get in a pinch, who do I call?
She smiled.
“My cousin Marshall Jones.” Attorney. Save the number.
I asked her which she prefers: Mardi Gras or Jazz Fest. She smiled as soon as it came up.
Jazz Fest.
In college, she followed Widespread Panic and if you know, you know. That’s not casual listening. That’s a lifestyle.
From there it wasn’t a leap to Grateful Dead. She never saw Jerry, but she’s spent plenty of time with the next best thing, Dead & Company, with Bob Weir and John Mayer carrying it forward.
I asked her who she’d want to see at Jazz Fest this year.
No hesitation. Jon Batiste.
That felt right.
Then I asked her if she’s starting her own band, what’s she playing?
Drums.
Rhythm. The backbone.
That certainly tracks.
The Raw Bar
Before I closed the interview, I asked her if she could show me the proper way to shuck an oyster. She walked me over to the raw bar and introduced Roosevelt and Mathieu.
We watched them work. Efficiently opening oysters without spilling a drop of the liquor. Even though they shuck oysters all day, every day, they professed they never get tired of them.
We compared styles.
Roosevelt and Mathieu took theirs straight up, naked. Chef Wiley added a squeeze of lemon. I went with lemon and a smidge of horseradish. We clinked our oyster shells and slurped away. Then Chef Wiley said, “try this.” She took a seasoned fried saltine which they make in house, and topped it with a raw oyster, cocktail sauce and handed it to me. Absolutely unreal.
Then the stone crab claws came out.
Massive. They were the size of my fist. Roosevelt cracked one open with the blunt handle of his oyster knife and handed it to me. It was so big I paused for a second just to figure out how to fit it into my mouth, and I have a big mouth. It was sweet, clean, perfect, and sourced locally from Grand Isle. I highly recommend you try these on when they are in season.
And then it all unraveled.
The Nightmare
I have been doing Retire Southern for a few years now. And this was one of the best conversations I’ve had to date. This one felt really great.
I was elated when I walked back to the table to pack up my gear. Then I noticed my recorder screen was off. I’ve been doing this long enough to know my recorder. It doesn’t have a “sleep mode” like a laptop or iPhone.
I immediately knew the batteries had run out during our interview. I just didn’t know when. I was so focused on the interview, I stopped looking at the recorder’s digital display.
My only saving grace in the moment was that in addition to my podcast mics, we were each wearing a lavalier mic provided by the camera crew. I maintained my composure by reminding myself I could use the lav audio to create the podcast.
I was in an Uber headed uptown when I got the text from Connor, my cameraman.
“James, we had a major technical failure today and I want to walk you through what happened…”
My heart sank as I read through the text.
Bottom line, the camera failed. Which meant the lav mics had also failed.
I literally had next to nothing. No video. No audio. And only a partial podcast recording before my batteries died.
There’s a deafening silence in that moment that’s hard to explain.
And you have to just swallow it.
I have two recurring nightmares.
One is showing up naked in a fully occupied college auditorium style classroom with everyone laughing hysterically at my unfortunate predicament.
The other is sleeping through a final exam and not graduating.
Now I’ve got a third.
Finishing an interview as good as that…
And realizing it’s gone.
What Matters
But in the wake of my momentary pity party, I had an epiphany.
It’s not completely gone. I was there. I still have it.
When things go sideways, my mind goes to a line from the Navy SEAL ethos:
I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity... If knocked down, I will get back up, every time... I am never out of the fight.
I may have lost the recording. But I wasn’t out of the fight.
So I went back to my hotel room, and opened my laptop. I poured my brain into the keyboard, free writing everything I could remember. I learned from a previous interview with Ralph Brennan that when you make a mistake, own it. And do whatever it takes to fix it. I couldn’t bring the audio and the video back from the dead. But I could resurrect the article through memory.
I immediately texted Chef Wiley and explained the situation. She was more understanding than I deserved. More forgiving than I would ever be to myself. But that is who she is.
She is not chasing perfection. Neither is Delacroix.
It’s about presence.
It’s Big Daddy’s table.
It’s a three-year-old in a deer stand.
It’s figuring out marshmallow fluff for a customer instead of 86’ing the dessert.
It’s a chef running food because that’s what the moment calls for.
I’ll sit down with Chef Wiley again. And we’ll record another take after I personally double check all of the gear. But if you’re waiting on that version you’re missing the point.
Go to Delacroix. Come as you are. Sit at the bar.
Order fresh-shucked oysters and just watch ships roll down the Mississippi.
Come with nothing. Leave with everything.
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