When a chef is eating leftovers, it’s never just leftovers. So, when Cajun chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois sits down with a Tupperware container of breakfast, I have a feeling he’s not snacking on three-day-old spaghetti.
“Oh this?” he says, like a well-dressed woman might casually shrug off wearing a vintage mink. “This is actually three different dinners that I’m eating for breakfast. Kimchi stir-fried ribeye chunks with some Italian sausage, braised together with some homemade tomato sauce. Oh, and then I threw in some fajita vegetables over coconut rice.”
It’s the kind of dish a waiter would spend 10 minutes explaining. For Bourgeois, it’s just what’s in his fridge.
The tomato sauce he used for braising is left over from his family’s “pizza night.” In most families, that involves a cardboard box and a delivery driver. In the Bourgeois home, it involves scratch sauce and flour all over his kitchen.
“I’ve been obsessing about making my perfect pizza dough lately,” he shares from his living room in Gulf Breeze, Florida, not far from Pensacola. “And things get flour-y. There’s semolina flour all over the floor, but at least it’s not dirt, ya know?”
Pizza dough is the latest challenge for a chef who conquered kitchens from Napa Valley to New York City, then took on the world of long-form video and conquered that, too. The man behind the James Beard Award-winning Duck Camp Dinners relishes bringing people of different backgrounds together over Cajun cooking and Louisiana culture, whether in a blind, in the kitchen or on TV.
Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois’ Bayou Beginnings
“I’m from Louisiana, born and raised,” Bourgeois says proudly. “And when you grow up as a boy in Louisiana, men have a history of cooking. I was raised around a lot of outdoor stoves and grills and smoke shops. Our table was nourished by the outdoors.”
Bourgeois fondly recalls his father heading out to hunt ducks before dawn, then changing into his suit and heading to work as an attorney by 9 a.m.
“We would have freezers full of ducks, and we would trade for redfish, trout, rabbit or whitetail,” he says. “We always had game meat mixed into dinner. Ate what we ate and lived like we lived.”
He remembers waking up to smells of flour and fat as his father began an early-morning roux, and evenings eagerly awaiting Dad’s Duck Dinner—seared duck breast tossed with bacon, bacon-cooked apples and a bourbon-based syrup made with the drippings.
The outdoors were an equally important part of Bourgeois’ upbringing, where he’d fish Louisiana’s blackwater bayous catching catfish, gaspergou, bluegill and largemouth bass. He’d also use his Benjamin pellet rifle to hunt squirrels year-round.
“My dad and my mom, they just wanted me outside,” he says. “These things were just a part of growing up in Louisiana.”
READ MORE:Why Wild Game Finally Went Mainstream
Jean-Paul Bourgeois in New York
Those early experiences led Bourgeois to attend the John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University in his hometown of Thibodaux. During his junior and senior years, he was one of only five students selected to attend the prestigious Paul Bocuse Institute in Lyon, France.
After graduation, he went to work in Napa Valley, where he was exposed to an entirely new world of fresh ingredients from California’s agricultural bounty. He dined at Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, and fellow Louisianan Jan Birnbaum’s Catahoula. From Napa, he went to St. Thomas. After a few years having “way too much fun” cooking and bartending, he made the move to the culinary big leagues in New York City.
Bourgeois knew exactly one person when he headed to the Big Apple and lived, as most young New Yorkers do, in a space that wouldn’t even qualify as a closet. He took a job at the Oak Room inside the iconic Plaza Hotel. Within a few months, he was hired at Maialino, where he quickly gained a reputation for cooking elaborate Cajun staff meals.
“I’d come in two or three hours early, off the clock, make family meal, then punch in at two o’clock and start my prep list. By that time, I had gumbos going, I had Cajun sauces going, I had jambalayas being prepped,” he says. “And the chef and the GM said, ‘We knew when you made those family meals you were gonna be something in this business.’”
“Something” turned out to be the youngest executive chef in the Union Square Restaurant Group’s history, when he was put at the helm of Blue Smoke at age 29. “I was this wild guy from Louisiana, all full of piss and vinegar, so they were like, ‘Let’s make sure he has some media training,’” he recalls.
Though he’d never appeared on camera before, Bourgeois took to it immediately. As the face of one of the city’s most prolific restaurant groups, he appeared on Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, Food Network and pretty much any other national show that had a cooking segment. The TV reps he gained during his time in New York would prove invaluable as Bourgeois moved into the next phase of his career.
Louisiana Fusion: The Outdoors and the Kitchen
Though New York City does a great many things well, duck hunting is not one of them. So, when Bourgeois got the itch to shoot some birds, he headed back home to a friend’s floating duck camp in Bayou Black, Louisiana.
“I got to a point in 2019 when I was like, ‘I want to document this, and cook duck recipes or Cajun recipes and use it for Instagram,’” he says. “Also, that floating camp is just tied up to cypress trees, and we all know in the right storm it’ll get swept out into the Gulf of Mexico. Before that happened, I wanted to document the place.”
So, he hired a small video crew and brought them along for five days at the duck camp.
“We never turned the cameras off,” he recalls. “The misfits, the drinking, the drinking in boats. All the things we shouldn’t have filmed. And I think that was the most magical season there was because we didn’t know what we were doing.”
When his video crew began editing, they realized they had a lot more than the five-or-six-minute recipe videos Bourgeois had imagined.
“He said, ‘Look, man, we got a lotta great stuff here, we should make a series,’” he says. “I said we don’t have money to pay you for more editing, but if you think that’s the right move, I’m in.”
Five days turned into six episodes, the first full season of Duck Camp Dinners. That season aired through Mossy Oak’s YouTube channel, which had about 10,000 subscribers at the time. The show gained popularity, shot three more seasons and in June of 2026, earned a James Beard Foundation Media Award for Lifestyle Visual Media.
What are the James Beard Awards?
The James Beard Awards are kind of like the Oscars of the food world, awarded by the James Beard Foundation to chefs, restaurants and others in the hospitality space.
They recognize not only talent and delicious food, but also commitments to equity, sustainability, community and culture.
Beyond just restaurants, James Beard gives awards to food media, too, with prizes for books, broadcast and journalism. Each year, the awards are presented at a special ceremony in a different city, with winners receiving certificates and engraved medals.
Why Duck Camp Dinners Is Atypical Entertainment
If you haven’t seen the series, it’s more than just a cooking or hunting show. Yes, there’s plenty of time in duck blinds and the kitchen. But beyond that, it’s a raw look at Louisiana culture and the people who make it so special. It tackles subjects like wetland conservation, saltwater intrusion, oil and gas pollution and, most recently, SpaceX coming to Vermillion Parish.
“It involves everything in terms of food, historically, but also things moving forward in the Southern and Cajun vernacular,” he says. “It explores the friendships and deep-rooted bonds of the men who come to this camp. Depending on who you are and what lens you watch the show through, you’re gonna get something different out of it.”
Bourgeois credits the show’s critical acclaim to its ability to go beyond the traditional format of hunting shows and bring people of different backgrounds together.
“I was born in a very conservative, outdoorsy household. But then I moved to California, and then I moved to New York, and I saw these other groups of people that thought a little differently for me,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to be a bridge for everybody that can come in and out of this space.”
Anecdotally, Bourgeois has been successful, recalling an encounter in an airport with a man who recognized the chef from his YouTube series.
“He said, ‘Man, I don’t duck hunt. I’ve never hunted in my life, actually, and I’ve never even been on a boat. But I love Duck Camp Dinners,” Bourgeois said.
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What Next For Jean-Paul Bourgeois
Bourgeois’ next project is an animated series based on Duck Camp Dinners where he teaches kids outdoor problem-solving skills like tying fishhooks and simple survival.
“Outdoor Kids in an Inside World by Steve Rinella was one of my big inspirations,” he says. “And I thought, OK, what does that look like within my framework? So, if you know any great animators, let me know.”
Beyond his animated aspirations, Bourgeois is also working on Season Five of Duck Camp Dinners, which he says has been much easier to fund since winning a James Beard Award.
“There’s a lot more validity and acceptance of people in the food space with that award,” he says.
He’s also planning to release a slew of shorter-form videos on his “Stir the Pot” YouTube channel. There, you'll find catch-and-cook fishing videos, flounder digging and gigging, and early season duck hunting content.
“You may get a lesson, you may get a chuckle, or you may just get your mind off whatever’s going on in your life,” he says. “My goal is to make sure I give something back to enrich your life, something you can come back to and something you can share with others.”
For more information on Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois and Duck Camp Dinners, visit Jean-Paul Bourgeois’ official website.
