In 2014, Chef Michael Gulotta opened MOPHO with high school friend, Jeffrey Bybee, to combine Louisiana influences with Southeast Asian flavors.
MOPHO is Chef Michael Gulotta’s first restaurant.
But before he was known as one of Food & Wine Magazine’s Best New Chefs, named “Top 30 Chefs to Watch” by Plate Magazine and a semi-finalist two times for James Beard’s “Best Chef, South”... Chef Gulotta began cooking as a child, after being inspired by the television show Yan Can Cook by Martin Yan.
MOPHO, along with sister restaurant Maypop, has landed on “best of” lists from publications like The Times-Picayune, Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appetit, and Eater.
But outside of these accolades, this restaurant was always intended to be a place where people in the service industry would go on their day off.
Q: What does the blend of Vietnamese and New Orleanian influences actually look like on your menus?
A: “On our menu at MOPHO, we took cream and butter out of every dish and replaced those ingredients with coconut milk, which is a staple of Southeast Asian cuisine.
We have a pork pho special, which is a really interesting dish because, while it’s traditionally Vietnamese, it speaks more to the New Orleans palate.
In Vietnam, pho doesn’t have pork in it, but we added pork hock, which, in Louisiana, we put in everything.
Our pho is heavy by Vietnamese standards and light by New Orleans standards. It’s literally a middle ground.
We’re finding that some people don’t know what to call it; it’s not really fusion, just a new kind of cuisine that we can’t categorize.”
- ”Finding Southeast Asian Flavors in the American South,” Afar Media
