BAM-BAM

When E.J. Lagasse, son of Emeril, took over his father's famed restaurant, it seemed like the ultimate nepo baby privilege. Two Michelin stars later, E.J. has shocked New Orleans, the food world, and all of nepo-dom by being the unlikeliest of things: deliciously legit.

- BRETT MARTIN

IT'S THE VOICE you notice first. What is it? The tone between a croon and a growl, with more resonance and authority than you expect from the boyish face in front of you. The accent, well...it's like one of those optical illusions that flickers from one thing to another, depending on the light. Words roll around in there like pinballs, careering, often in the course of one sentence, from Mississippi to Mayfair, the smooth edges of the Upper East Side to the boggy drawl of the Florida Panhandle, pinging off Stockholm, and then tumbling into the crunch of immigrant vowels that connect the mills and docklands of New Orleans to the mills and docklands of the Northeast. In short, a vocal map of points likely connected nowhere on earth other than in the person from whose mouth the remarkable sound is issuing.

"It's different, that's for sure," says his own mother, after laughing for a long time.