The foundation of John Besh's culinary celebrity was built in the late 1990s, on the North Shore. He grew up in Slidell, the son of a former fighter pilot paralyzed by a drunk driver while riding his bike. Besh was 9 at the time. By 1999, when Food & Wine Magazine named him one of the country's Best New Chefs for his cooking at Artesia, a now-closed restaurant in Abita Springs, Besh was a Marine combat veteran of the first Gulf War who'd apprenticed at restaurants in France and Germany. The fact that Besh was a precociously gifted craftsman with...