Bill Vrazel Moves On
Chef Bill Vrazel has sold his Gulfport restaurant to the casino next door, and will serve the final dinners in his twenty-six-year-old restaurant during the next two months.
I have long thought that Vrazel's was the best place to eat anywhere along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A place so good that if it were in New Orleans it would be, if anything, even more successful than it is in Gulfport.
Bill is only 59, and business is good. His energy doesn't seem to be flagging. After major damage from Katrina, he came right back. So what's the problem?
There isn't one. Bill is doing something that very few longtime, successful restaurant people will ever do. He's ending the food service chapter of his life cold turkey, and moving on to something totally different.
The new chapter is well known to his customers and friends already. Bill is a deeply religious man, a deacon in his church. In that role he found a calling he thought he should pursue. Especially considering who was calling.
And that's the whole story.
I'll bet it's going to be hard to get a table in that place between now and December 15.
Vrazel's. Mississippi Gulf Coast: 3206 West Beach Blvd (US 90). 228-863-2229.
