# Pableaux Johnson

Pableaux Johnson (born Paul Michael Johnson, January 8, 1966 – January 26, 2025) was an American writer, photographer, filmmaker, cook, and designer whose work focused on the food and culture of New Orleans.

## Background

Johnson was born on January 8, 1966, in Trenton, New Jersey, then named Paul Michael Johnson. Before he was seven, after his parents divorced, his mother moved, with Paul, and two sisters, to New Iberia, Louisiana, where he grew up. He attended Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. There he changed his first name from Paul to Pableaux, to honor both his Latino friends and his French Cajun roots, and graduated in 1988, having studied history, religion, and sociology. After a few years of "bouncing between San Francisco, Europe and Oxford," Mississippi, Johnson moved to Austin, Texas, where he lived for about 10 years, working as a freelance food writer. He moved from Austin to New Orleans in 2001.
Johnson died on January 26, 2025, at the age of 59, after suffering a heart attack and collapsing while photographing the Ladies and Men of Unity second-line parade in New Orleans.

## Writing

Johnson published four books, on New Orleans generally, New Orleans food, and football tailgate cooking.
He also wrote for numerous publications including (with a date range of his articles in each, where available) The Kitchn (2017–2023), Culinary Backstreets (2022–2023), Saveur (2013–2019), Imbibe (2015–2019), The New York Times (2004–2017), Garden & Gun (2012–2015), The Bitter Southerner (2015), Bon Appétit (2008), Gambit Weekly (now Gambit) (2003), The Austin Chronicle (1997–2001), Texas Monthly (1997–1999), Food & Wine, and Southern Living.

## Photography

Johnson's photographs, particularly of New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians and second-line parades, were exhibited in museums and galleries around the United States, and published.
An exhibit of his photographs, "Of the Nation: New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians 2014," was displayed at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture, in Oxford, Mississippi, in October 2014, and at the LeFevre Art Gallery at The Ohio State University at Newark from autumn 2015 to January 2016.
The Fowler Museum at UCLA displayed an exhibit entitled "New Orleans Second Line Parades: Photographs by Pableaux Johnson," from December 16, 2018, to April 28, 2019. The exhibit was later displayed at the Center for the Study of the American South, in Chapel Hill, until December 2019.
Johnson published a series of photographs called "Second Line Sunday: New Orleans Street Dance" on LensCulture, the Dutch photography magazine and website.
A 14-photograph slide show of his photos illustrated a 2013 New York Times piece about Louisiana king cakes. His photography was featured in other publications, including Gambit.

## Red Beans Roadshow

For several years Johnson ran the Red Beans Roadshow, a traveling operation which brought New Orleans cuisine, and specifically red beans and rice, to "pop–up" events in restaurants around the country. (An ad for one of the events described his role in it as "wiseass/cook.") For example, there was an event in Nashville in October 2015, and a summer 2016 tour of mostly south-eastern U.S. cities. It appeared in 2024 that the Red Beans Roadshow ended around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, since at that time the last online advertisement was for an event held in February 2020, in Dallas.
After a several-year hiatus, Johnson resumed the Red Beans Roadshow in January 2025 with an event scheduled in Nashville for January 11. The Roadshow's Square website announced that the Nashville event was rescheduled to January 18, and that others were held in Atlanta on January 13 and Athens, Georgia, on January 14. Another Roadshow website posted a map, indicating plans for 2025 events with legs in, in addition to the Southeast, the Northeast (e.g., Boston, New York, Washington), the "Cold North" (e.g.,Toronto, Chicago, Cleveland), Texas (e.g., Houston, Dallas, San Antonio), Central (e.g., Birmingham, Louisville, Kansas City), the West (e.g., Seattle, Denver, Los Angeles), and International (London).

## Documentary filmmaking

Johnson was credited as a co-producer and still photographer for two companion documentary films about New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians, The Spirit Leads My Needle: The Big Chiefs of Carnival and It's Your Glory: The Big Queens of Carnival. Largely made by students at Ohio State University-Newark as service learning projects, New Orleans public television WYES-TV premiered the two documentaries in January 2016 and broadcast them through that February. WYES re-broadcast them around Mardi Gras in 2021, 2022 (at least "Big Chiefs," which it described as among "Carnival classic programs"), and 2023. They were also broadcast on WOUB-TV in Athens, Ohio. "Big Queens" was nominated for a regional Emmy.

## Home and community cooking

As a weekly tradition that received significant media coverage, on Monday evenings when he was in town, Johnson cooked dinner—red beans and rice, cornbread, and "whiskey for dessert"—at his New Orleans home for a "rotating ensemble" of about ten to twelve "friends and friends of friends." In 16 years, he never had the same group, Johnson wrote in 2018. Johnson said about what to call the event, "When people describe the gathering as a salon or a dinner party, I almost always correct them. It is just people getting together and talking. It’s supper, not a dinner party."
From 2010, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Johnson served as "Gumbo Claus," collecting many turkey carcasses and turning them into turkey stock which he uses to make "around 50 gallons of smoky gumbo" for friends.

## Character

When writers described Johnson in brief, they usually picked a word or phrase, often in French, for someone who is fun to be around: "raconteur," or "bon vivant," or "first order gadabout," or "beloved."

## Recognition

* Johnson's article "End of the Lines?" was nominated for the 2004 James Beard Foundation Award for Newspaper Feature Writing About Restaurants and/or Chefs.
* Johnson's book World Food New Orleans won the Jacob's Creek World Media Award (silver)
* Johnson's book Eating New Orleans was nominated for a 2007 Le Cordon Bleu World Media Award
* Johnson's article "Everyday Sacred: A Personal Path to Gumbo" was included in the anthology Best Food Writing 2016
* A documentary film co-produced by Johnson, It’s Your Glory: Big Queens of the Carnival was nominated for a Suncoast regional Emmy, for best cultural documentary, in 2016.
* Epicurious named Johnson as one of the "100 Best Home Cooks of All Time" in 2017
* Johnson was among the top ten nominees for "Best Cocktail and Spirits Writer," Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards 2018

## Books

* World Food: New Orleans (Lonely Planet, 2000)
* Legends of New Orleans (Blue Marble Music Guidebook series, 2001)
* Eating New Orleans: From French Quarter Creole Dining to the Perfect Poboy (2005)
* ESPN Gameday Gourmet: More Than 80 All-American Tailgate Recipes (2007)

## Selected articles

* "End of the Lines?" Gambit Weekly (March 3, 2003)
* "Some New Faces, and Many Familiar Ones, at a New Orleans Tradition," The New York Times (May 3, 2006)
* "Wild Creation" (story and photographs), Bitter Southerner (March 2015)
* "Everyday Sacred: A Personal Path to Gumbo," Serious Eats (2016)
* "Lunch at This Iconic New Orleans Restaurant Includes a Fried Chicken Avalanche: Dining at Dooky Chase with the Equally Legendary Jessica B. Harris," Saveur (January 8, 2019)