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At its center is Commander's Palace, a big, square, colonnaded wood building, all turrets, spires, balconies, and dormers, at the corner of Coliseum Street and Washington Avenue in New Orleans' Garden District. Once a Victorian mansion built by Emile Commander in 1880, it was one of the city's more prestigious bordellos during the Prohibition era, and later became a restaurant. Bought in 1969 by Ella and her siblings Dick, Adelaide, Dottie, and John, it became the training ground for virtually all the Brennans who have gone on to open their own places.

Commander's sprawls and rambles through a series of dining rooms, bars, kitchens, and garden rooms. It is a restaurant, along with Galatoire's, Antoine's, and Arnaud's, that New Orleanians and visitors alike feel they must eat in. It is, in Ella's words, "a destination restaurant," a good-time place for the intense flavors of perfectly spiced gumbos and jambalayas, for fat Louisiana oysters and crawfish touched with a tinge of Louisiana hot pepper sauce, and for crab cakes and andouille sausages prepared in the prettified, somewhat lighter dishes Dick and Ella call haute Creole.

It is in this kitchen that Paul Prudhomme blackened his first redfish, Frank Brigtsen sauced his first crabmeat ˇtouffˇe, and Emeril Lagasse baked his first bread pudding soufflˇ.

Go to Commander's for the Sunday jazz brunch, as I did recently and you might be fortunate enough to sit surrounded by shade trees in the Garden Room and to have as your waiter Averriel Thomas, who will softly sing "Satin Doll" as he sets down your shrimp rˇmoulade, or "Pennies from Heaven," backed by Joe Simon's trio, as he brings your hot pecan pie.

Food, style, and the experience, Ella will tell you in her purr of a drawl, is what Commander's Palace is all about. All the Brennan restaurants strive for what Dick calls "the whole experience of dining out and dining well."

"It really hasn't changed all that much since my father's time," says Ella. "It's what he wanted and what he made us want."

It was Ella's father, Owen P., and her older brother Owen E., who opened the first Brennan restaurant. In 1943 they bought the Old Absinthe House on Royal Street and turned it into an upscale bar. "It was popular," says Ella, who began working there a youngster. "I learned about whiskey and about buying. We made our nickels."

Three years later, when Owen Sr. was about to retire, the younger Owen bought the Vieux Carre, across from the Absinthe House. All the Brennans worked together in this eatery, renamed Brennan's Vieux Carre, for a decade. Then family unity began to splinter. "There were too many people involved," Ella says. "Some of us wanted to expand, others didn't ." Eventually, the clutch of Brennans parted, and it wasn't the most pleasant of separations; all are reluctant to give details. "It was not exactly amiable," Ella admits.

With the breakup, Pip, who was Owen E.'s son, Pip's mother, Maude; and his two brothers, Ted and James, remained to operate Brennan's on Royal Street, famous for "Breakfast at Brennan's." Ella, Dick, Adelaide, Dottie, and John came together to buy Commander's Palace, which would form the seat of the dynasty.

In 1967, Ella's son, Alex, who had studied at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris and worked behind the stoves at Roger Vergˇ's Moulin de Mougins, went off to Texas to run Brennan' Houston. He later added Third Coast to what the Brennans call their Family of Restaurants.

PRODIGIOUS PROGENY

"Everybody grew up in Commander's" Ella says. "The kids were always there, in and out. There was no way they would not become involved. It was an assimilation process." Says Dick, "They learned how to make drinks and grew up as good bartenders. They worked hat check. Every one of them wanted to come into the business."

So they have, and with six branches on the family restaurant tree, what's next?

"Seems there's still a lot of kids coming along," says Dick Brennan.

With the remembered tastes of New Orleans fresh upon my mind and tongue, it seems a good time to talk about fresh.

What is fresh?

If a bluefish pulled up onto a Block Island fishing smack is fresh, how is one to describe the quality of a turbot caught in Europe's North Sea, then flown six thousand miles to a kitchen restaurant in Los Angeles? We see the anomaly of "fresh" fillets of Idaho trout, frozen; and another firm promises us the same "freshness" in frozen fish offered to the Swedish royal family. Is bread, packed with shelf-life preservatives and enclosed in plastic, fresh? Are vegetables grown in California, picked when unripe, and shipped East to soften en route fresh when they get to the wholesale market, still fresh when they get to the retailer, still fresh when you buy them? Is crˇme frâiche fresh? What is fresh? How fresh is fresh? It goes on. Who can doubt these days that "fresh" appears to be, along with "new" the most overused work in Englishdom. In fact, if we are to believe the rich excesses of our admakers, there is simply nothing that is not "fresh."

So, in search of what is fresh, I journeyed to that font of all things gastronomically with it, my local supermarket. There I would find, I was certain, the meaning of fresh.

I was sidetracked initially because, as I began my search for "fresh," I kept coming upon "new." Among the new were cheese crackers that "contain real cheese;" a cheese substitute that was "Cheddar flavored;" a potato snack that, although "made with real potato skins," was nevertheless doused with "artificially flavored sour cream and chives;" squeezable grape jelly bottles that were labeled "now even easier to squeeze;" and a creamy cucumber salad dressing "with real cucumber."

However, there was nothing quite like the box of thin, crisp toasts that were concocted of mixed dehydrated vegetable snack combined with flour. These were "garden fresh," and had "a salad bowl of vegetables in every slice," according to the box, which looked like a broadside view of a produce market.

Then I began to come upon fresh. I found "kitchen-fresh pierogies" in the refrigerated display cases; packs of "fresh whole-milk rice pudding" that were labeled "good for one month from date stamped;" apple juice made from "fresh apples;" and frozen stuffed potatoes tagged "100 percent fresh."

There was frozen flounder that was "quite possibly fresher than fresh;" and corn, tortilla, and potato chip snacks, all labeled either, "fresh sale through date stamped" or "guaranteed fresh for seven days from date." In all cases these dates were five weeks hence, and this gave me pause. Then there were "breakfast beverage crystals" that had a "fresh orange taste;" packages of "strained fresh tomatoes" from Italy, trumpeting "once opened will last 10 days refrigerated;" packages of rice cakes that were the "new twin pack for freshness" but were undated and thus fresh for life, I suppose; and jars of pickled cucumbers labeled "fresh." The italics are all mine.

As if this were not overwhelming, I discovered that our supermarkets are alchemists as well. I selected a head of cauliflower that my wife had asked me to pick up, pulled off a plastic bag from the roll at the end of the vegetable counter, and slipped the cauliflower into it. "Fresh," the bag said, and not only that, but "Fancy." And just like that my cauliflower became fresh cauliflower, with a pedigree to boot. Aren't supermarkets wonderful? And fresh?

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