We’ll Give the People More of What They Love
The French Quarter Wine Festival

At another Pyramid property, the Boston Harbor Hotel, executive chef Daniel Bruce has spent twenty years creating something distinctive and ambitious in the culinary realm. The Boston Wine Festival is the nation’s longest–running cuisine and wine pairing series. This annual program of special events runs for three months and includes more than fifty dinners, seminars and receptions that celebrate cuisine and wine pairing. The Festival is extraordinary for a few reasons. As a highly acclaimed chef with a passion for wine, Chef Bruce has had the opportunity to build relationships with some of the world’s most talented winemakers. The resulting mutual respect and friendship has led to these elite winemakers choosing to assume host roles in Festival events. In the world of wine, this is very unusual, as wineries typically send sales staff to represent their interests at such events. Another reason that Chef Bruce’s Festival is unique is a result of the thoughtful preparation process that he has developed. A few days before each scheduled event, Chef Bruce tastes the wines which will be served. He lets the flavors of the wine inspire him, and he creates a unique dish to compliment each wine. Since no two wines taste exactly the same, this process has translated to a running tally of more than three thousand unique dishes, each incorporating unusual ingredients and seasoned perfectly to compliment the wines served throughout the Festival’s twenty year run.

Since the company headquarters are in Boston, Massachusetts, Pyramid leadership has had countless occasions to experience Chef Bruce’s culinary skills. Pyramid leadership has long been aware that they have a rare talent and resource in Daniel Bruce. In 2005, with their concern focused on their new hotel struggling through a tumultuous time, Pyramid leadership found a solution in a success story. The Boston Wine Festival was a hotel–based food and wine program with momentum and ready for expansion. The Festival could bring together the people of the French Quarter. It could be the catalyst for future communal celebrations.

In early 2006 with the Maison Dupuy ready to welcome guests again, Pyramid leadership decided that there was one person who needed to experience the hotel. They sent Chef Bruce down to New Orleans to view their landmark French Quarter hotel and consider it as a site for expansion of his Festival. When Chef Bruce now recounts his initial visit to the Maison Dupuy, it is clear that his first impression was a lasting one. He was charmed by the ambiance of the hotel and its surroundings. He remembers approaching the property, noting the mood created by the lit gas lamps. He loved the courtyard and the wrought iron balconies and the glass French doors that decorated the townhouses. The property resonated with him on an emotional level; the architecture had enough impact to evoke feelings. Chef Bruce loved the Maison Dupuy at first sight.

Chef Bruce’s hotel, the Boston Harbor Hotel, is defined by being a distinctly Boston property. When a tourist thinks of traveling to Boston and experiencing the ultimate trip, the Boston Harbor Hotel would naturally be a part of that experience–the prime harbor location, architecture that reflects the city’s historic past, and a signature Boston style that defines the five star service. Management there often says that the hotel couldn’t exist in any other city at any other location–the Boston Harbor Hotel is a uniquely Boston hotel. When he visited the Maison Dupuy Hotel, Chef Bruce was struck by the fact that this hotel could be defined in the same way. The Maison Dupuy is distinctly New Orleans, distinctly French Quarter. It could not exist in any other locale in the world.

So while the reconstruction of New Orleans was being directed on federal and state governmental levels in the months following Katrina, Pyramid leadership and Chef Bruce committed to their own plan to rebuild the community. They would bring the Festival to this city that appreciated good food, good wine, and good times; and they would name it for the signature New Orleans neighborhood, the French Quarter.

When focusing on attendance of the Boston Wine Festival throughout its two decade run, two themes emerge: Chef Bruce has a loyal group of fans and enthusiasts who have been returning to his Festival events for ten, fifteen, even twenty years; and every year the Festival grows in attendance, showing that more people continue to discover the series. The reasons that these attendance patterns have developed is that Chef Bruce never compromises quality. In recent years, the Boston Harbor Hotel was awarded its fifth star from Mobil Travel Guide, which is the industry’s gold standard in recognition of excellence. Chef Bruce was five star quality at the Boston Harbor Hotel long before the hotel earned that distinction. He has always understood that every aspect of his Festival must reflect excellence–the cuisine and wine pairing, the participating wineries, the service, and the setting.

In committing to expanding his Festival to New Orleans, Chef Bruce was committing to ensuring that the Maison Dupuy events would reflect the same superior standards as the program he had lovingly developed in Boston. The first French Quarter Wine Festival launched the next year in the spring of 2007. As he had with the Boston Wine Festival, Chef Bruce started small with an opening celebration in the courtyard followed by six winemaker hosted dinners. Exclusive wineries such as Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Silver Oaks Cellars, and Duckhorn Vineyards participated, because the winemakers had great relationships with Chef Bruce. The underlying concept of the Festival remained the same: perfectly paired cuisine and wine, and that concept was well received by the people of New Orleans. The first season of the French Quarter Wine Festival was a smashing success. The city that had defined the meaning of celebration in pre–Katrina times seemed ready to cast off some of the hardship and stress of reconstruction and raise a glass. From that initial season, Chef Bruce and Pyramid leadership noted progress. The French Quarter Wine Festival was becoming the community builder they had hoped it would be. Many attendants were from New Orleans or the surrounding suburbs. They were people ready to come together and do what New Orleanians do–eat well, drink well, and socialize.

A Leader Returns

One Festival attendant that first season was a man named Morty Valldejuli. Morty had worked at the Maison Dupuy more than a decade earlier as the Director of Food Beverage. A hotel management job had taken Morty out of New Orleans, the city where he had started his career in hospitality and the city which he would always consider home. In 2007 Morty learned that his former hotel was launching the French Quarter Wine Festival. A self proclaimed foodie who was nostalgic for his hometown, Morty gathered together a group of friends and attended that opening night celebration of the Festival in the courtyard of the Maison Dupuy. He remembers the camaraderie of the experience and he remembers thinking, “New Orleans needs more of this.”

Now two years later, Morty Valldejuli attends every event of the French Quarter Wine Festival. He is no longer a guest; he is a host. Morty has assumed leadership at the Maison Dupuy as general manager of the distinctly French Quarter hotel. With his appreciation of food and wine and his first impressions of the Festival as a guest, Morty is ideally and uniquely suited to develop the Festival with Chef Bruce and the Maison Dupuy team.

Morty returned to New Orleans to become general manager of the Maison Dupuy because, like so many loyal New Orleanians, he wants to rebuild his city. The wake of destruction left by Katrina did not deter him; it inspired his return. Since coming back to the French Quarter, Morty has had time to reflect on the city he loves and the people who inhabit it. Again and again he has been struck by an impressive fact. The French Quarter is the same. The neighboring, family–run businesses are the same, the cab drivers parked outside the hotel are the same, and the families who live around the hotel are the same people who greeted him with a “hello” in passing a decade ago. Morty says the French Quarter is a neighborhood that is defined by its families, and he is right. The people who have chosen to stay now and endure the city’s greatest challenges are the families who have been there for decades and even for centuries.