When we caught up with Todd Pulsinelli recently, he was distracted. A lot is vying for his attention these days. There’s his job, of course, as chef de cuisine of John Besh’s American Sector and Soda Shop, both housed in The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. And then there’s Henry Thomas--or Hank, as he’s called: Pulsinelli’s month-old son. “There’s a lot going on,” he deadpans.

The Ohio transplant came to New Orleans eight years ago for, in his words, “food and a girl.” He first worked at Besh’s flagship, Restaurant August, hustling back to New Orleans four weeks after Hurricane Katrina to help reopen the restaurant, one of the first to serve post-hurricane. “It was like starting over,” he says. “We had a one-page menu and people were serving themselves.”

For the Sous Chef Series, Pulsinelli prepared pork tacos, slow-cooking the meat until tender. It’s a technique he’s familiar with--at his wedding reception last December, he presided over a pig roast for his guests.

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