Lucy “LuLu” Buffett reveals her favorite Jimmy Buffett song in a new Southern Living podcast episode, and that’s just one insight among many in an interview that touches on her brother’s death, her love of cooking and their early life in Mobile.

Lucy Buffett, the owner of LuLu’s restaurant, is the featured guest on the latest episode of Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast with host Sid Evans. The 47-minute interview, released Tuesday, covers a lot of ground. Among other things, Buffett admits that she really didn’t know what she was doing when she opened the first small version of LuLu’s on Weeks Bay in 1999.

“This is the hardest business in the world,” she says. “I naively said, ‘This’ll be a piece of cake, we’re just going to sell a lot of drinks and beer and we’ll have a hamburger and a shrimp loaf, which is what we called po-boys, down right there in Fairhope, it’s just going to be easy and I’ll sit out on the front porch.’ I dreamed of being a writer, not a restaurateur. And so I rapidly had to change and shift from that mentality.”

But she wasn’t afraid to work hard at it, and she had a lot of confidence in her own cooking ability. Buffett tells Evans a lot about how much she learned from her two grandmothers. Making gumbo starts with the roux, she says, and you have to be willing to push it right to the edge to get the full flavor you want.

“Gumbo is not for the faint of heart. But it’s not rocket science either,” Buffett says to Evans. “If you scorch that roux — you either fail by not taking it to the limit, the roux … and if you take it over, it’s over. You have to start all over.”

Buffett talks at some length about her final visit with her brother, before his death on Sept. 1, 2023, and how it left her with “a very peaceful heart” about his passing. And of course she talks about music, revealing that she and her daughter work up seasonal playlists for the three LuLu’s restaurants. “I listen to a lot of Kenny Chesney because I think he’s such a wonderful guy,” she says, praising the eclectic taste of his “No Shoes Radio” channel on SiriusXM.

Her favorite “Jimmy song?” “Havana Daydreamin’,” from the 1976 album of the same name.

“I was in Key West at the time that he wrote that or it came out, I can‘t remember,” she says. “I love that because that’s about opening the eyes to travel and adventure and going for the horizon. And that came from my grandfather, my grandfather spent time in Cuba. That’s my favorite Jimmy song.” She goes on to mention several more that she loves because they’re about family.

The new episode of “Biscuits & Jam” can be heard for free at Southern Living’s website or on other streaming services including Apple Podcasts,Amazon Music,Tune In,Player.fm, SpotifyandiHeartRadio.