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Pableaux Johnson, the Heart of New Orleans Hospitality, Dies at 59

Pableaux Johnson, the Heart of New Orleans Hospitality, Dies at 59

Pableaux Johnson, a New Orleans food writer, photographer and cook who spread the gospel of community by serving bowls of red beans and rice to thousands of people, and who documented the city’s singular Mardi Gras traditions, died there on Sunday. He was 59.

Mr. Johnson’s sister Charlotte Aaron said he was photographing a second-line parade — something he did often — when he experienced cardiac arrest and could not be revived at the hospital.

Mr. Johnson moved to New Orleans in 2001 and quickly became what the local chef Frank Brigtsen called a “joyful fixture” in the city.

“He embraced New Orleans, and it embraced him back because he was so authentic,” Mr. Brigtsen said in an interview.

Plenty of Mr. Johnson’s friendships — essentially everyone he met — began over a bowl of red beans and rice, a traditional Monday meal in New Orleans. He cooked it every week, at first for a small group of friends but soon for pilgrims from all over the country who loved the city’s food and culture.

His rotating group of guests might include not only local musicians, famous chefs and visiting journalists but also a neighbor who needed a meal or a friend with a broken heart.

No phones were allowed, and the menu never varied from red beans and rice and cornbread, with whiskey for dessert. The table was set with a roll of paper towels and a pile of spoons. Guests could bring something to drink but never food.

The restrictions were in part to adhere to the simplicity of a meal traditionally made on Mondays because the city’s cooks were busy with laundry. Extra dishes would just make the whole thing too complicated; Mr. Johnson would rather focus on the conversation.

“One of the things that’s important about that table is it wasn’t the dining table at my grandmother’s house; it was the kitchen table,” Mr. Johnson said in 2017 on the public radio show “The Splendid Table.” “The fancy dining room table didn’t get used every day, but this one did. This was where all the power was.”

The suppers became an important bridge between cultures in the city, said Jessica Harris, a scholar of the foodways of the African diaspora who lives in New Orleans part time and was a regular guest.

“There are so few places in New Orleans where Blacks and whites socialize at home,” Dr. Harris said. “The joy was that the table became a way for him to create community, and that community was one that was sorely needed in New Orleans, where a strange social…

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