Jyl Benson

Jyl Benson began her editorial career in 1990 with The Times Picayune in New Orleans and served as a regional reporter covering the southeastern United States for both The New York Times and Time magazine. She served as Editor-In-Chief of Louisiana Cookin’ magazine from 2009 to 2011 and founded Louisiana Kitchen & Culture magazine in 2012. Currently, she is a columnist and feature writer for Simply Recipes, Acadiana Profile, Louisiana Life, St. Charles Avenue, and New Orleans magazines, where she develops and tests recipes for culinary brands.

Furthermore, she wrote Galatoire's Cookbook: Recipes & Family History from the Time-Honored New Orleans Restaurant (Random House 2005) as well as several cultural, historical, and architectural guides to New Orleans. Fun, Funky, Fabulous: New Orleans Casual Restaurant Recipes (Pelican Publishing), her second book, was released in 2015. Her most recent cookbook Louisiana's Tables (Great Texas Line, 2017) explores the state's culinary culture based on settlement patterns.

Personal Cooking Journey: "My mother may have been the only abysmal cook in Louisiana, a place where culinary acumen is pretty much a birthright. After confronting too many inedible meals that even my six-year old palate could identify as dubious, I began to cook in self defense. Enticed by the pictures, I gathered the collection of full-color Better Homes & Gardens cookbooks my parents had been given as wedding gifts in 1950 and commenced studying. I am 13 years younger than my sister and 17 years younger than my brother so my parents were tired and paid little attention as I used the household kitchen as my personal laboratory, sometimes with disastrous outcomes. My skills have improved greatly over the years and kitchen fires are a thing of the past."