Ryan Hacker
Brennan's | New Orleans
SEPTEMBER 2022
Ryan Hacker’s earliest memories are of Sunday afternoons at his grandmother’s house in Tyler, Texas, peeking over the kitchen counter to look at pictures in Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks. After attending Texas Tech University, Hacker enrolled in the New England Culinary Institute. He interned in Boston at the French Hamersley’s Bistro, gaining a passion for fine dining under Chef Gordon Hamersley. In 2009, Hacker returned to Texas—he spent a year on the line at Abacus in Dallas before moving on to Osteria Il Sogno in San Antonio, where he found a mentor in Chef Andrew Weissman.
Hacker moved to New Orleans in 2014 to join the re-opening team at Brennan’s, one of the city’s landmark restaurants for high-end Creole cuisine. He worked his way up to executive sous chef, aiding in building out the restaurant’s volume-management systems, and in 2019, was promoted to executive chef. Hacker has had the tall task of keeping one of the city’s most well-recognized restaurants relevant and on the cutting edge of dining, while still upholding its traditions (even through a global pandemic). Hacker infuses classic New Orleans cooking with modern techniques, managing over 500 daily covers through breakfast, happy hour, dinner, private dining, and banquet services.
