Quinnton Austin, Chef Q, in the kitchen at North Park’s Louisiana Purchase. (Photo courtesy of Alt Strategies)
Since landing in San Diego in 2019, New Orleans-raised chef Quinnton Austin has shared his cultural food heritage with locals through menus at several bars and restaurants.
Find his recipes at hospitality group Grind & Prosper locations, such as Caribbean-themed Miss B’s Coconut Club in Mission Beach, American-fusion spot Coco Maya in Little Italy or beach eats at Park 101 in Carlsbad.
But it’s scratch kitchen Louisiana Purchase in North Park that has become home to Austin. There, the chef, affectionately known as Chef Q, shares the non-touristy Bayou food he grew up with in a family where every man, woman and child could cook.
“That was just the way of life. Everybody has to know how to do for themselves,” Austin said.
With so many cooks in the kitchen growing up, it wasn’t until he crafted meals for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina that his family recognized his surpassing culinary talent.
Inside a condemned dorm
In the months after the historic storm, extended families with nowhere to go stayed at Southeastern Louisiana University where Austin attended. “It’s you, your cousins and aunties, all y’all crammed in the dorm room,” he recalled.
When one woman got FEMA money, she made a big grocery run to Walmart. Food in hand, they needed someone to cook. A 19-year-old Austin, who already worked in kitchens, volunteered and began cooking from an under-resourced, condemned dorm room.
“I’m really making meals out of nothing,” Austin remembered. “Spaghetti, steaks, fried chicken, fried fish, like, we was doing so much.”
Word spread fast that not only were there free plates, but they were delicious.
With two George Foreman grills and a few hot plates, school fell to the wayside as Austin cooked for 80 people daily from a dorm meant to be demolished a year before. Hungry refugees didn’t care that the water was dirty and roaches crawled through a hole in the ceiling, just that they had familiar comfort food again after all the upheaval.
“This is what made me really love culinary,” Austin said. It also made him love his city, where people always find good in the bad.
Afterwards, his cousin told an auntie, one of the best cooks in the family, that Q made fried chicken on a hot plate that was better than hers. When Austin’s mom found out, she asked him what he wanted to do. He told her he wanted to stay in the kitchen and become a chef. She enrolled him in the Culinary Institute of New Orleans.
Testing new horizons
Chef Quinnton Austin inside the Louisiana Purchase kitchen in North Park in January 2026. (Photo by Frank Sabatini Jr./Special for Times of San Diego)
Nine years later, Austin was an executive chef at age 28, making him one of the youngest people to reach that pinnacle in the highly competitive NOLA restaurant industry.
“Lots of chefs live and die in the French Quarter,” Austin said. “But, I was young, and I’m just like, ‘Okay, what else is there?’… I wanted to test myself.”
His first choice was Los Angeles, a place where he still plans to make his mark through a Q&A Oyster Bar location or a new concept.
San Diego was not his second or even third choice. But his father, a veteran stationed here before Austin was born, told him how beautiful the city was and how nice the weather could be.
Since Grind & Prosper wooed him here, Austin has made San Diego home. At first, he stayed for the weather, environment and cleanliness. Now, it’s the people who keep him here.
“The hub that we built at Louisiana Purchase is so strong and so cool. Everybody who comes through and shows support is so loving and caring and really understanding,” he said.
Members of the military and other Southern expats who want a taste of home make up Louisiana Purchase’s core customer base. They’ve formed a consistent community and fill out social events like a Juneteenth block party outside the restaurant on Louisiana Street.
The restaurant is quick to hold fundraisers or donate meals when there’s a need in the community, whether it’s victims of the 2024 floods in Southeast San Diego or Lincoln High School’s football team.
Additionally, he advocates for the Black community in San Diego. He co-founded Bad Boyz of Culinary to mentor chefs.
“Black people in San Diego don’t have a strong enough voice,” Austin said. “If I could do anything to help that, I definitely help that.”
Food as art
But the food is his focus. Sometimes after work, Austin puts on horror movies and designs new menus until 3 or 4 in the morning. He has hundreds of menu ideas for every situation.
“I just sit there and I just write ideas, write ideas, write ideas, write ideas,” he said. “That’s pretty much what keeps me up late at night.”
At Louisiana Purchase, he curated a precise, exacting menu.
“I wanted things to be like what we grew up eating, not really like what tourists eat,” Austin explained.
Frequently, customers come in and say that they didn’t see those menu items when they visited New Orleans. Names like the Dooky Chase, a fried chicken wing meal named after Leah Chase, the late Queen of Creole Cuisine, throw them off.
Austin tries to strike a balance between his vision and the clientele. Under duress, he added beignets to the menu. Other things, like curry goat and turtle soup went too far for locals.
Seasoning especially is hard to teach other chefs after growing up cooking by feel, not recipes. “You have to know how to season … I don’t think it is teachable,” he said.
Seeking perfection
Most days, he’s in the Louisiana Purchase kitchen making sure everything tastes right. He’s less hands on with other Grind & Prosper eateries, partially because Louisiana Purchase sells more food than those cocktail-heavy restaurants.
Later this summer though, the group will open a second North Park restaurant on El Cajon Boulevard. Austin NOLA will be a Louisiana take on world cuisine.
With the proximity to Louisiana Purchase, Austin plans to bounce between his first scratch kitchen and the one bearing his name, still testing everything to make sure it is seasoned perfectly.
As a child, Austin wanted to become an artist, loving drawing and painting. Now, food is his art.
“Back home, we do things because it’s our passion. It’s our love. This is what we want to do. I want to be the best of the best,” Austin said. “You have these dreams, passions and goals that keep you focused and keep you going down the path that you need to go down.”
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