There’s an aspect of truly gratifying New Orleans food that doesn’t come via a specific dish or kitchen technique. It’s a communication between the past and the present, with a glint of the future, a continuity that takes cues from an enduring taste of place but also brings something new.

This truth was imbued across a five-course special dinner menu I recently experienced at Commander’s Palace , and even in a shot-sized dram of strong spirits in the middle of the meal.

Days later, with that dinner still on my mind, I was at a different table when I witnessed a full-circle moment between different generations of people who care about New Orleans cuisine and its future.

Ella Brennan, the matriarch of the Commander’s Palace branch of the Brennan restaurant family, would have been 100 th

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