Jackson Jambalaya

Reunion's chef, Rene Bajeux, was struck down of a heart attack.  Mr. Bajeux was one of only 55 French Master Chefs in America.  He came to Reunion Golf & Country Club this summer to serve as Executive Chef for it's new $15 million restaurant.  The Times-Picayune's food critic, Brett Anderson, memorialized him:

René Bajeux, the French-born chef who became a standard-bearer of his native cuisine in New Orleans, died Monday morning (Sept. 10) of cardiac arrest in Jackson, Mississippi, according to longtime friend and fellow chef Chuck Subra.

Bajeux was 61.

Bajeux arrived in New Orleans in 1997 to take over the kitchen of The Grill Room, the restaurant in the Windsor Court Hotel, one of the most influential and luxurious local restaurants of the time. He would go on to become this century's most accomplished French-born New Orleans chef.

He was, at the age of 40, already highly credentialed, arriving from Chicago, where he worked at a number of well-regarded French restaurants, including Bistrot Zinc, which he co-owned. "The bouillabaisse is so good that customers might very well plan their schedules around it," wrote Phil Vettel, the Chicago Tribune's restaurant critic, in a 1996 review. ....

The chef was well-traveled, having worked in Hawaii before landing in Chicago, and his post-Katrina career was particularly itinerant. He landed in the Caribbean, Texas, and ultimately back in New Orleans. In the past 11 years, the chef served short stints at La Provence, on the North Shore; at the Rib Room, in the Omni Royal Orleans; and at a revived René Bistrot, which briefly took over the old La Côte space..l.

Bajeux's most recent New Orleans posting was with the Dickie Brennan restaurant group. In January of 2017, the chef hosted a Bastille Day-themed Todd Price Taste Club dinner at the Palace Café. The menu was a return to the chef's roots: pastry-wrapped salmon Coulibiac, duck leg crépinette, Cognac-poached pears.

"It's not often that you get to work alongside a master French chef," Dickie Brennan said of Bajeux. "I valued his skills and innate abilities as a culinarian, but above all I valued his friendship. Our community lost a great talent and an even greater person."

Bajeux was working at a country club outside Jackson, Mississippi, at the time of his death.

He is survived by his wife, Penny, and their two children, Remy and Clara, all of New Orleans.

Funeral arrangements are pending. Rest of article.