In the cozy yet elegant dining room of Stella! in New Orleans, a coat and tie aren’t required, but culinary curiosity is a must. Tucked beside the Hôtel Provincial on Chartres Street, Stella! welcomes diners with its mellow neighborhood feel but dazzles them with its bold dishes. The small restaurant beautifully meshes Big Easy comfort with the excitement of Tandoori-spiced salmon, sake-glazed sweet potatoes, and black winter truffles atop Canadian lobster and eggs.

The place has style. It has grace. It has surprises. And most of all, it has ambition. Just as its name concludes with an exclamation point (Tennessee Williams fans will swoon), its atmosphere and food possess an underlying exuberance—an expressed desire to be something and, perhaps more importantly, to do something. A rapidly ascending star on the dining scene, Stella! aims to impress in ways new and different, to mix culinary influences in deliciously original dishes that leave diners both satiated 
and marveling.

That ambition is no surprise, considering the source. Chef Scott Boswell, a Louisiana native and New Orleans Magazine’s Best Chef of 2006, has the mettle to dream big. And in dreaming big, he works tirelessly, not only to run his increasingly popular restaurant but also to keep himself at the top of his game. Boswell actively seeks out Stella!’s various concepts—rustic elegance, innovative flavors, dramatic presentations. Since entering the culinary world in the mid-’90s, he has become an adherent of stages (that’s stah-ges, the French pronunciation), or brief stints in the kitchens of top chefs. Several times each year, Boswell immerses himself as both visitor and pupil in the cuisines and techniques of the culinary world’s best. The result: a confluence of diverse inspirations that Boswell stirs into Stella!’s distinctive formula for success.

“Every time I get back [from a stage], after I decompress from the traveling and throwing myself into a totally unknown environment, I start to see things happening on my plates and in my kitchen,” Boswell explains in his quiet Louisiana lilt. “It affects me; I pick things up.”

While a tradition among the world’s top tier of chefs, stages are relatively unusual for up-and-comers like Boswell. When he became a chef at age 35, he knew he was behind the curve. The fledgling Culinary Institute of America graduate was stepping into a third career—after banker and pet-store owner—as middle age approached. But he was determined to open his first restaurant by age 40 and to make it one of the finest in the world.

"I had to take some significant steps to be all that I wanted to be,” Boswell says. “I didn’t want to just be a chef that got lost on a corporate ladder … which was probable if I didn’t make the right choices.”He quickly garnered an apprenticeship at L’Abbaye de Ste Croix in France, followed by six months at Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, jobs in New Orleans and New York, and an executive chef position at Rainbow Ranch in Big Sky, Montana. When he learned that a friend with whom he had trained in Florence—Masahiko Kobe—had become a member of the wildly popular Iron Chef group in Tokyo, Boswell recognized an opportunity and seized it. He did an intense, one-week stage in Kobe’s restaurant, setting into motion the momentum for what he calls his stage “formula.”

“I do a few short days at top restaurants. As a quick-learning chef, I can gather stuff and see stuff that could take me years to figure out—systems and techniques and just little secret touches,” Boswell says.

Since launching Stella! in 2001—just weeks shy of his fortieth birthday—Boswell has participated in several stages each year, confidently sticking his foot in the door of the world’s finest kitchens. He has spent time with other Iron Chefs, including what he calls a “religious experience” with Hiroyuki Sakai at La Rochelle in Tokyo. Boswell most recently spent time in New York with Masaharu Morimoto and in Washington, D.C. with Eric Ziebold of CityZen.

“Scott was very enthusiastic,” Ziebold says of Boswell’s time in his kitchen. “He really wanted to see everything that happened, so he came in during the morning to see the mis-en-place and stayed through service. … Ours is a very dynamic and ever-evolving field. I think it’s great that Scott can take the time to go out [and] stage at other restaurants to keep his approach fresh and stay inspired.” Boswell has several more in the works. “I hope to do at least two more this year,” he says. “It’s just a matter of picking up the phone and making it happen.”

The effects of Boswell’s stages permeate Stella! Distinct Asian flairs dot his menus, from yakitori steak spectacularly stabbed with chopsticks to “Iron Chef chili prawns,” a staple on the appetizer list. Other signature dishes bear the imprint of influences ranging from classical French training to down-home bayou cooking, including Duck Five Ways, oysters on the half shell with vodka granitas, and scallops and shrimp with truffles and andouille. Invisible to diners as they savor the fruits of the chef’s labors are further inspirations, including the kitchen’s design and operations, which Boswell says are heavily influenced by Sakai.

With Stella! running at “full throttle,” as Boswell describes it, the chef sees stages as all the more necessary in his establishment’s rise to the crème de la crème of world restaurants. “I want to fit as many as I can get in,” Boswell says. “I’m getting more aggressive. The faster I get them done and under my belt, the faster I can get to the top and people will be coming to do stages at my restaurant.”

There’s no denying it: Boswell has ambition. And that drive for excellence is what is rapidly pushing Stella!, its ambiance, and its cuisine into the culinary spotlight. “There are many places that are good,” Boswell says. “I want Stella! to be wow.”

Photography Bevil Knapp