< Back to Oral History project: Career Servers
ORAL HISTORY
Jeanette Meyer
Jeanette Meyer, born in 1956, grew up in rural Western New York, where her father owned a wholesale produce business. As a teenager, Meyer became interested in art; one day she persuaded her father to let her paint custom murals on his delivery vans. This talent for custom paintwork eventually took her to car shows all over the country. After one such trip to New Orleans in 1981, Jeanette decided that she belonged in the Crescent City.
By 1982, Meyer began waiting tables at the venerable Quarter institution, The Coffee Pot. There she came to know Chef Paul Prudhomme, to whom she sold mammoth curly parsley that she grew in the courtyard of her French Quarter apartment. Prudhomme recruited Meyer to wait tables at K-Paul’s in 1985. Seeking a change of pace, Meyer went to Grand Casino in Gulfport in 1993. She took charge of training all beverage servers, a job she loved but lost in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina washed it away. She has worked at Pascal’s Manale since 2005 and continues to make polymer clay art, which she sells around the country.
