“You know how they say that the best way to kill time is to watch a movie, right?” says Kenny, the former chef and restaurant owner of Mayflower Seafood.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”
The restaurateur and entrepreneur is a founding member of Mayfield Seafood, which opened in 2013 in a former seafood restaurant in Kenner.
He has since opened a range of seafood restaurants across Louisiana, Georgia and the Carolinas.
He is also a founding board member of the Kenner Foodie Festival, an annual festival in Kennebunkport that draws up to 50,000 people.
Kenny has been on a quest to bring a more modern and modern twist to his seafood.
While he has a passion for fish, he says the seafood is a more natural part of his culinary repertoire.
“I’ve always had a love for cooking seafood and the way it was served before,” he said.
“I started to think about what I wanted to make, what I would like to do with it and how I would serve it, and that led me to this idea of bringing the seafood out of the kitchen and into the food court.”
“My grandfather cooked it, but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started to cook it myself. “
I’ve never made seafood from scratch since then, but I was able to make some great oysters that I was so happy with.””
My grandfather cooked it, but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started to cook it myself.
I’ve never made seafood from scratch since then, but I was able to make some great oysters that I was so happy with.”
Kenny’s focus on the seafood, and the food, is evident in the restaurant’s menu, which offers dishes like the Oyster-Stuffed Crab with Shrimp, the Baked Chicken with Mushroom and Cabbage, and “The Sea Scallop Sandwich.”
“We really take our time with our seafood,” he says.
“We have the oyster, we have the scallop, we put it on a bread bun and we just go through it.”
The food and the seafood are part of Kenny’s culinary identity, but he also loves to share his knowledge of the food with the public.
“You want to share what you learn with people,” he explains.
“You’re always learning something new and you’re always trying to be different and try new things.”
With all of his new ventures, Kenny is also opening a seafood restaurant near his home in Kennersville, a community of about 1,400 residents.
“The reason I am opening a restaurant is that I’m trying to share this food with people in a new way,” he explained.
“When I first started my business, I wanted it to be like my backyard.”
Kees, who has lived in the same home for more than 30 years, has also opened a seafood cafe in Kenning, near where Kenny’s first restaurant, the Fish & Oyster, is located.
Kees opened his first seafood restaurant, a seafood bar and restaurant called “The Oyster and the Sea Scallyp,” in 2011.
It was a success.
“In the beginning, the food was good, but after two years, we lost customers,” he recalls.
“So I took a risk and opened a new restaurant.
We opened the Oysters & Seafood Cafe, which was a restaurant that focused on seafood, but the restaurant was so successful that I decided to open the Fish and Oyster Cafe.”
Since then, Kenny has opened several seafood restaurants in the region, including one in Kenney and two in Louisiana.
“But I don’t think we’ll be opening more than three in the next three years,” he laughs.
“If I had to predict the future of seafood, I would say I think we’re going to be in the seafood business for a long time,” Kenny said.
He also hopes that more seafood restaurants will open in the area.
“When we opened the Fish&Oyster, I was just looking at it as a venture, and now we have a million people coming in and I think it’s going to change,” Kenny says.
He hopes to open a new seafood restaurant as soon as possible.
Kellen’s first venture into the seafood industry was his partnership with former colleague, David Huggins, who worked for the Culinary Institute of America for more of his career.
When Kenny was working at the Culiacanas, Huggis had been trying to get his culinary chops in place.
Huggins told Kenny that if he was going to work in the food industry, he needed to learn how to cook.
“He said that if you had a great chef, you’d get a good job, but if