Nina Compton was born and raised in the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia, where her father served three times as Prime Minister. After spending her high school years in the UK, then graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NYC, she initially remained in the city to work alongside famed chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud. She then moved to Miami, working first at Norman’s then at the Palme d’Or at the Biltmore Hotel. In 2008, she joined the team for reopening Scarpetta at the refurbished Fontainebleau Miami Beach, first as Sous Chef and later as Chef de Cuisine. Following a move to New Orleans, in 2015 Compton opened her first restaurant, Compère Lapin.
Compton is a firm believer in the importance of connecting with people through food and sharing the ingredients and recipes she loved growing up. She serves as a culinary ambassador for Saint Lucia. She also acted as mentor chef to US Grand Finalist Daniel Garwood at the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition 2022-23 Grand Finale.
Awards she has won for her cooking include the James Beard Award for Best Chef, South in 2018—she was a finalist the previous year—and a Food & Wine Best New Chef Award in 2017.
Restaurants
Compton is chef-owner of Compère Lapin, which she opened in 2015 in the heart of New Orleans’ Arts/Warehouse District. The menu combines her love for French and Italian cuisine with the flavors of the Caribbean where she was born and raised. Indeed, the restaurant was named after the star of a series of traditional Caribbean and Creole folktales, a mischievous ‘brother rabbit’.
Compère Lapin started to receive positive press and accolades as soon as it opened, appearing in the Huffington Post’s Best New Restaurants Around the World in 2015, then topping Playboy’s Best New Bars in America and winning the NOLA.com/Times-Picayune Restaurant of the Year in 2016. These were followed in 2018 by appearances in Wine Enthusiast’s list of America's 100 Best Wine Restaurants, Food & Wine’s 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Past 40 Years, and Maxim’s 30 Best American Restaurants. The restaurant also featured in Esquire’ s 40 Most Important Restaurants of the Decade in 2019 and Eater’s list of America’s 38 Essential Restaurants.
In 2018, building on the success of Compère Lapin, Compton opened the Bywater American Bistro, later abbreviated to BABs, in partnership with husband Larry Miller and chef Levi Rains. In 2023, she opened the quick-service restaurant Nina’s Creole Cottage.
Recipes and dishes
As a child in St Lucia, Compton already knew she wanted to be a chef when her mother and grandmother would let her help them prepare big family meals at weekends. She is now known for coming up with full-flavored dishes that combine the flavors and feelings of those childhood meals with Compton’s more recent love for French and Italian cuisine, all using the best ingredients native to the Gulf and Louisiana.
Signature dishes include chilled cantaloupe and coconut soup; roast snapper and vegetables with arugula pesto; Caribbean seafood pepper pot; pickled shrimp with celery and buttermilk; and for dessert, roasted banana zeppole with rum caramel.
Compton became a well-known figure on the US culinary scene in 2013, when she took part in Season 11 of the popular reality TV show Top Chef. It was during the filming of the show in New Orleans that she fell in love with the Crescent City, and it was her success in the show—finishing runner-up and voted fan favorite—that gave her the opportunity to open her own restaurant in the city.
