I stumbled across this news story during my usual Google search this morning and thought: “They buried the lede.” A Mississippi chef who is also a deacon? That’s news!

Take a look:

Bill Vrazel gets a kick out of those high-strung television chefs who throw fits when things don’t go their way.

But Vrazel, a classically trained chef himself, is more about discipline than drama.

When he goes into the kitchen at Vrazel’s Fine Foods, you can just about cut the tension with a knife.

“People get nervous when I walk in,” Vrazel said. “Things get quiet.”

Vrazel believes discipline is a necessary ingredient to maintain quality in the kitchen and in the dining room.

“You’re feeding people’s bodies,” he said. “I don’t take that lightly.”

For that reason, every order that comes out of the kitchen has to get his approval before it’s served.

The message to his staff of 40-plus is clear: He is their toughest critic.

“If you please me,” he tells them, “the customer will be thrilled to death.”

The restaurant business is notoriously tough, especially for independents and particularly with the economic trauma after Hurricane Katrina. Vrazel insists that the high standard he’s set keeps customers coming back.

“We’re trying to do our best,” Vrazel said. “We have a really nice reputation and we want to maintain it. Consistency is very difficult with turnover really big.”

Vrazel’s office, on the west end of the restaurant, is practically in the shadow of the Island View Casino, where celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse opened a restaurant in 2007.

Vrazel said the competition for workers and customers in a casino market is a challenge for independent restaurant owners, though he tips his hat to Island View for sending customers to his restaurant, “which is greatly appreciated.”

Still, he said, “It’s like a battle every day.”

Every day except Sunday. That’s the one day Vrazel insists on closing so everyone at the restaurant has the opportunity to worship at church and honor God and family.

“”It’s family day,” he said. “You ought to have one day to be home. It’s one of our hallmarks.”

Another hallmark is a local customer base that he calls “the backbone of our restaurant.”

Longtime customers told him they “watched every brick” being replaced and often thanked him for building back on U.S. Highway 90 after Katrina.

Vrazel was able to salvage the kitchen and reopened May 24, 2006, slightly past the restaurant’s 20th anniversary.

Vrazel remains focused on quality food.

“Our cuisine is unique,” he said. “The seafood is more of the Creole style — the food is very well seasoned. That’s our niche.”

The menu is laden with popular dishes such as the creamy Spinach Touffle. Touffle is a word Vrazel created for the dish.

“We make tons of that every day,” he said.

Vrazel’s trump card is the the eggplant dish that anchors his menu.

“We have them hooked on Eggplant LaRosa,” he said. “If we dropped that, they’d run us out of town.”

The dish — a bubbling combination of eggplant, shrimp, crabmeat and cheese — is similar to one his Italian grandmother, Josephine LaRosa, made when Vrazel was 6 or 7 years old.

“My grandmother was bedridden but it didn’t stop her from cooking,” he said. “I would stand at the stove on a milk crate. She’d say, ‘Stir it up and bring me a little taste.’

He went on to graduate from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York, where he learned classical food preparation and honed his knack for creating dishes.

Vrazel, 55, was born in Gulfport and went to high school in Mobile. In 1975, he moved to Diamondhead, where he was chef and general manager of the yacht club and country club for 11 years. He opened his Gulfport location in 1986.

Vrazel’s menu, which rarely changes, mirrors his Italian background. Some dishes are named after his grandchildren “to give it some interest.”

On any given day, the white tablecloth restaurant serves professionals, tourists, families and the occasional celebrity.

“It’s not your everyday restaurant,” Vrazel said. “It’s where you bring out-of-town guests, or come to celebrate special occasions and for business deals.”

President Bush and his entourage had dinner at Vrazel’s on his latest post-Katrina visit to the coast.

Dorothy Samuel of Gulfport has been enjoying Vrazel’s meals since he was in Diamondhead and is a regular in Gulfport.

“What I like is to take friends there,” she said. “He’s a wonderful chef and a very fine man.”

Vrazel’s is a family operation. His wife, Louise, stays behind the scenes, doing the books and running the office. Daughter Heather Radix has worked at the restaurant since she was in high school and has worked her way up to general manager, helping make sure the kitchen and dining room run smoothly.

“We want customers to go away with a nice feeling of being relaxed and having a nice experience,” she said. “We want them to brag to a friend, ‘You’ve got to try this place.’

Back in Vrazel’s office is a poster that reads “serving good food and spiritual nourishment,” a reference to a weekly prayer meeting held there. Vrazel, an ordained Catholic deacon, always wears a cross blessed by Pope John Paul II.

“It reminds me of who I am and where I’m going,” he said. “I love being a deacon. It’s one of the highlights of my life.”

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