Chef Bruno expands reach
Culinary development at Hilton latest gig

Clarion Ledger
by Sherry Lucas • slucas@clarionledger.com • May 20, 2009

Jackson celebrity chef Luis Bruno, who never left the public eye in two tenures as Governor's Mansion chef, now gets back to the public plate.

Bruno is the new director of culinary development at the Hilton Jackson.

"I'm all about taking a challenge," Bruno says. "And it's fun.

"I just like using my brain and trying to make something of it."

His new gig is hardly a guest perk only at the capital city's premier hotel. He'll have a role in all four of the Hilton's restaurants, plus banquet and event offerings.

"He's the tide that's raising the ships," says Hilton Jackson general manager Larry D. Hollingsworth.

Bruno's position is key in the hotel's shift toward health and wellness enhancements for food and beverage.

His own high-profile weight loss, advocacy for healthful eating and support of organizations such as Just Have a Ball, which promotes physical activity to combat childhood obesity, are pluses in that pursuit.

The Bronx-born chef, whose self-characterization as "Southern/Puerto Rican" hails his current geographic and his cultural roots, earned his degree in culinary arts in Florida and moved to his wife Kathleen's hometown of Jackson more than a decade ago.

He worked as executive chef at the Governor's Mansion for former Gov. Kirk Fordice and again for Gov. Haley Barbour. From 2001 to 2003, his Bruno's Eclectic Cuisine was a colorful, innovative presence on the Jackson restaurant scene.

Goals at the Hilton include updating the banquet menu, adding healthier choices for guests and incorporating more fresh Southern products in menus and recipes. The aim is also to entice more local people into the restaurant seats.

"People don't associate great food with hotels," Hollingsworth concedes. But he's worked with some great chefs in his career. "I'm a guy that understands great talent. ... My success has been taking the blandness out of hotel food and finding human capital that makes it happen. I started a year and a half ago to try and hire Luis, the first day I met him."

Now with Bruno and Timothy Sims, executive chef at Huntingtons Grille, components are there to put them on the culinary map. "Our mission is to be written about nationally."

Sims, who has placed in the top three chefs the last two years at the Chefs of Mississippi gala, says Bruno brings outside-the-box thinking to the table. "His food is lot more, I want to say, electric. He's got a lot more exciting, colorful things. That's what I want to take from him to kind of incorporate into what I'm doing at Huntingtons . ... Just kind of spice things up a little bit."

Bruno's inspiration will show up in Huntingtons ' next wine-and-food pairing dinner Thursday, $45 per person for four courses, including crab, avocado and asparagus salad and panko-crusted halibut.

In addition to Huntingtons , the Hilton's restaurants include Wellingtons , Fitzgeralds and the new poolside Luis' Havana Cabana, expected to open Memorial Day weekend.

"It just doesn't happen overnight. It's a slow process," Bruno says.

"We want to have fun," he says, nearly shying away from using the word "eclectic" that's long been associated with his cuisine. "We want to serve something different, something fun."

Expect to see a couple of items from Bruno's old restaurant to resurface, such as the spring rolls and perhaps the shrimp and grits.

"There's going to be some tweaking going on. Chef Tim is going to have his ideas, I'm going to take my ideas and we're going to put them together and we're going to make that restaurant really happening," Bruno says.

"And in Havana Cabana, I'm having my crab fritters, the Cuban sandwiches, the Cuban salad ... my caramel custard flan, tres leches (three-milk cake), so that's another little bit of the restaurant coming back as well."

Bruno's other irons in the fire - his passionate public speaking, his cookbook signings, his glassware, his spices - will continue, he says.

Bruno was on board at the Hilton for St. Paddy's weekend, with the hotel's huge annual influx of Sweet Potato Queen fans.

"He was completely blown away. He had no idea. We said, oh by the way, we need you to make 1,000 gallons of Jell-O, which hardly ever came up at Bruno's. ... He rose to the occasion," says Mississippi best-selling author Jill Conner Browne, Boss Sweet Potato Queen and a long-time Bruno fan.

On a couple of occasions when she and fellow queens were invited by the mansion for cocktails before the Sweet Potato Queens Ball, "we would stand outside and chant 'Free Luis Bruno! Free Luis Bruno!' " she says, laughing.

"So it was part of our plan all along."

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