ROUSES_Spring2024_Magazine Pages Web

SPRING 2024

The Seafood Issue

h r i m p - S t y l e

B B Q S r l e a n s

N e w O

“ As a local, independent grocery store, supporting local is at our core. When you buy from local farmers, fishermen and suppliers who — just like us — are locally owned, you’re not just making a purchase, you’re making a direct impact in your own community. ”

ARROW-CIRCLE-LEFT Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome presents Donny Rouse with a proclamation highlighting the important role Rouses Markets played in increasing access to quality fresh nutritional food in North Baton Rouge.

I am thrilled to share the exciting news that Rouses Markets has been named one of the top independent grocery stores in the country by Progressive Grocer. Progressive Grocer has been a voice of the retail food industry since 1922. Before my grandfather, Anthony J. Rouse, Sr., opened his first store, he was in the produce shipping business. He and my great-grandfather, J.P. Rouse, who founded City Produce Company, would buy produce from local farmers in the area — some would be sold in the French Market, but most would be packed up on railcars and shipped out to other parts of the country. My grandfather and great-uncle Ciro took over City Produce in 1954 when J.P. Rouse died. They opened our family’s first grocery store in 1960. Named Ciro’s after my great-uncle, it was a 7,000-square-foot store in Houma, Louisiana. Fifteen years later, Ciro retired, sold his share of the business to my dad, Donald, and the store was renamed Rouses. Today we are one of the largest employers on the Gulf Coast, operating 64 stores across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, with over 7,000 dedicated team members. Leading this company is an honor. As a local, independent grocery store, supporting local is at our core. When you buy from local farmers, fishermen and suppliers who — just like us — are locally owned, you’re not just making a purchase, you’re making

a direct impact in your own community. Working with local people and businesses means we’re contributing to local job creation and giving a boost to the local economy. This commitment to local has allowed us to make a profound impact on the communities we serve. We recently opened a store in North Baton Rouge, addressing concerns about food deserts in Louisiana and filling a critical need in the community. The residents previously had to navigate substantial distances to access a super market. As a local, independent grocery store, we can respond to local needs and preferences, and that is very important to us. Big thanks to our incredible team! Your hard work and dedication are why we earned the Outstanding Independent title from Progressive Grocer and continue to be voted the Best Supermarket across Gulf Coast cities. It’s not just about our stores or products; it’s about your outstanding effort that helps make it all possible. Thanks to our loyal customers, too. This recognition as one of the top independents in the country is not just our personal achievement; it's a nod to the Gulf Coast communities we’re proud to serve. Your support is what makes it all matter, and we’re grateful for it.

CEO, 3rd Generation

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Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan

Contributors MARCELLE BIENVENU

Art Director & Design Eliza Schulze

Illustrator Kacie Galtier

Marcelle Bienvenu is a cookbook author and food writer. A native of St. Martinville, in the heart of Cajun country, Bienvenu wrote Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make a Roux? and Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine with Eula Mae Dora , and other books and cookbooks. She also co authored five cookbooks with Emeril Lagasse. DAVID W. BROWN David W. Brown is a freelance writer whose work appears in The Atlantic , The New York Times , Scientific American and The New Yorker . His most recent book, The Mission: A True Story , a rollicking adventure about a motley band of explorers on a quest to find oceans on Europa, is in bookstores now. Brown lives in New Orleans. LIZ THORPE Liz Thorpe is a world-class cheese expert. A Yale graduate, she left a “normal” job in 2002 to work the counter at New York’s famed Murray’s Cheese. She is the founder of The People’s Cheese, and author of The Book of Cheese: The Essential Guide to Discovering Cheeses You’ll Love and The Cheese Chronicles . POPPY TOOKER Poppy Tooker is a native New Orleanian who has spent her life immersed in the vibrant colors and flavors of her state. Poppy spreads her message statewide and beyond via her NPR-affiliated radio show and podcast, Louisiana Eats!

Designer Mary Ann Florey

Marketing Coordinator Harley Breaux

Copy Editor Patti Stallard

Advertising & Marketing ron bonacci Tim Acosta Amanda Kennedy Stephanie Hopkins

Nancy Besson Taryn Clement

GUIDRY’S CATFISH ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Guidry’s Catfish, Inc. , located in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, had its origins in 1975, when Bobby and Debbie Guidry first placed catfish traps in the delta wetlands of the Atchafalaya Basin to earn extra income. In 1976, after doing thorough research on the catfish industry, Bobby Guidry began processing U.S. farm-raised catfish. Processing out of a 20' x 20' building, the Guidrys, along with a handful of family members and several close neighborhood friends, would work all day and into the night to process the 4,000 or so pounds of farm-raised catfish they had trucked in each day. A lot has changed since those days: Guidry’s now employs over 230 people and operates out of a 100,000-square foot, state-of-the-art facility. They process over 1.2 million pounds of fresh catfish a week. Bobby and Debbie’s children, the family business’s second generation, are now involved in the day-to-day operations and management of the company, and are helping to drive the company into the future.

Cover photo by Romney Caruso

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Photo by Romney Caruso

Table of Contents

50 Fryday, Saturday, Sunday by David W. Brown 54 Shrimply Irresistible

In Every Issue 1 Letter from Donny Rouse 7 Letter from the Editor by Marcy Nathan 9 Cookin’ on Hwy. 1 with Tim Acosta 13 Just Roll with It by Ali Rouse Royster Show & Tail 16 In a Pinch by David W. Brown 18 Folk Tails by David W. Brown 22 Sacks and the City by David W. Brown 26 Trap to Tray by David W. Brown 29 Queso con Seafood by Liz Thorpe 33 Crawfish & Grits by Marcelle Bienvenu 36 Here, There & Meunière 39

Seafood for Thought 9 Hwy. 1 Boiled Crabs

31 Frank Brigtsen’s Queso Sauce

33 Seafood Dipping Sauce Smothered Grits with Crawfish 41 Poppy’s Crabmeat Ravigote Poppy’s Remoulade Sauce Poppy’s Trout Pecan Meunière Trout Meunière Amandine

55 Steamed Royal Reds

61 Barbecue Shrimp Poppy’s Barbeque Shrimp

62 Beanie’s BBQ Shrimp

63 Mai Tai Crab Rangoon Dip with Wonton Chips

Pecan-Mandine by Poppy Tooker 40 Louisiana Eats with Poppy Tooker 46 The World Is Your Chargrilled Oyster

64 Shrimp Constantine

65 Coconut Shrimp

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START YOUR DAY the New Orleans way!

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Letter from the Editor by Marcy Nathan, Rouses Markets Creative Director THE CRAB HOUSE When I was a child, my family rented the same house in Pen sacola for one week every summer. The house sits right on the Santa Rosa Sound, surrounded by dunes covered in sea oats and switchgrass. You know how some people see a face in the façade of a house? It’s a phenomenon called pareidolia ; it’s why you think the faucet in the tub is staring at you when you take a bath. We thought our beach house looked like a giant crab, with a covered porch for the mouth, windows for eyes, and a staircase and stilts for claws and legs. There is a round Futuro “UFO House” on Panferio Drive near the crab house. It actually looks like a spaceship. My grandfather set a crab trap 10 feet from the shore first thing every morning. He used chicken necks and turkey butts for bait, and secured it with a rope to a buoy. At breakfast he’d start a pool. Each of us got to pick a number out of a hat predict ing how many crabs he’d trap that day. We couldn’t wait to see who won when he pulled the trap each afternoon. He made it a game. Instead of dumping the crabs into a bushel basket like most people did, he’d pour them out on the concrete under the house. The crabs would go scuttling, and we kids had to quickly collect them — and count them, of course, to determine which of us had won the pool. He’d taught us to step on them, then lift them from under their back legs to keep from getting pinched. Most days, my sisters and I and all our cousins swam in the sound while the adults sunbathed a shell’s throw away. Pen sacola sand is sugar-fine, and we built elaborate sandcastles for

the conchs that washed up on shore at low tide, complete with underwater tunnels and moats. At least once a day we’d walk the stretch of beach around to the cove, filling baskets with shells of all shapes and sizes — including the occasional whole empty conch shell — or we’d walk the other way, down to the point by the tall condominiums. Some days my grandfather would take us to the gulf, where we’d spend hours dodging undertows and jellyfish and, once, a stingray. We rarely wore anything other than bathing suits, even when we went to the Pak-a-Sak within walking distance of the crab house, where we bought SweeTarts and candy necklaces and giant gemstone sucker rings. We occasionally went to the water park or a souvenir shop for tacky T-shirts. One year we even rented a motorcycle! We finished a steady stream of puzzles, and spent our eve nings playing cards. Gin rummy, mostly. Gin was also the adult’s drink of choice; my mother mixed hers with Fresca. On the weekend we had a card tournament, with matches spread out across days of play and a grand prize of $5 — plus a silver medal, which was back up for grabs the next summer. As I got older we stopped going to Pensacola. I guess every one just got too busy, or had other commitments, but my sisters and I have never forgotten those lazy summer days at the beach. They say you can’t go home again but that doesn’t keep us from trying. A few years ago, my sister Courtney and I went back to Pen sacola. She and her family vacation there often, but nowadays I’m more likely to go to Destin or Orange Beach. As we walked the strip of beach from our hotel to the crab house we’d once thought of as our own, we talked about our mom and dad, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, gin rummy and gin and Fresca. The house had been partially rebuilt after Hurricane Ivan, which hit Pensacola as a category 3 storm. I was relieved to see the owners had kept the same design, but disappointed to see that the house looked like, well, a house — just a house. But one still filled with memories.

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Photo by Romney Caruso

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Cookin’ on Hwy. 1 by Tim Acosta, Rouses

Add the lemon, onions, garlic, smoked sausage and potatoes to the pot, and bring the water to a boil. Let it boil for 10 minutes. Remove the lid and add the shrimp, mushrooms and frozen corn. Replace the lid. Once you see steam coming out it means the water is approaching a boil. Start your timer. Two minutes later, kill the heat and toss in some ice. You may have to go an extra 30 seconds to a minute more for larger shrimp. You’ll know the shrimp are ready when they are separating from their shells. Let the shrimp soak for 10 minutes before removing from the water or draining. Serve with a traditional dipping sauce — a simple yet addictive accompaniment that is also great with fried fish. And, yes, with crawfish too. We have a Rouses Markets Bayou Dipping Sauce, specifically designed for seafood. If you prefer to make the sauce at home, there is a recipe on page 33. WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 3-4 dozen fresh Gulf blue crabs 1 4.5-pound container Rouses Seafood Boil 1 8-ounce bottle Zatarain’s Concentrated Shrimp and Crab Boil 1 16-ounce bottle hot sauce 1 bag small red potatoes, about 3 pounds 3 pounds yellow onions, halved 1 stalk celery, root removed, cut into quarters 6 lemons, halved 8 ears frozen mini corn on the cob or 3 fresh ears corn, cut into thirds 1½ pounds Rouses Green Onion Smoked Sausage, cut in chunks 1-2 large bags ice 80-quart boiling pot HOW TO PREP: Fill boiling pot halfway with water. Fill boiling pot halfway with water. Add the seafood boil, shrimp and crab boil, and the hot sauce. Place lid on the pot and set propane burner on high. Bring water to a rolling boil. Continue boiling 8 minutes. Remove lid and add the crabs, vegetables (except the corn), lemon and sausage. Replace the lid and bring water back to a rolling boil. Remove the lid and add the corn. Replace the lid and continue HWY. 1 BOILED CRABS Serves 12-24

Markets Advertising & Marketing Director

The beautiful thing about a stovetop shrimp boil is that you don’t have to go through the fuss of

a full-scale crawfish boil. Here’s how I make a traditional Louisiana shrimp boil on my outdoor burner — or you can do it on a stovetop in your kitchen. Get five pounds of wild-caught local Gulf shrimp from the ice table display in our Rouses Seafood Department. We sell more wild-caught local Gulf shrimp than anyone else on the Gulf Coast, and they are always beautiful. I recommend cooking the shrimp in the shell, which adds flavor. Get a small container of fresh button mushrooms, a bag of small red potatoes, a couple of yellow onions, at least two whole heads of garlic (I like garlic), and a couple of lemons in the Produce Department. You can get fresh corn on the cob, too, but I usually use frozen. I also add Rouses Green Onion Smoked Sausage — except on a Friday during Lent. Now, you are going to need a large stockpot, not a crawfish boil pot. I have a 16-quart stockpot that I use for shrimp; I also use it for lobsters. It’s the right size for gumbo, too. Fill the pot no more than halfway with water (for a 16-quart pot, that’s 8 quarts) and turn burner to high. Add Rouses Down the Bayou Seafood Boil. This is where most of the flavor for the shrimp boil comes from. It’s a kind of dump-it-in magic that trans forms the water into a flavorful broth. You can add a couple of bay leaves (just because that’s how we cook on the Gulf Coast), some hot sauce and a couple of tablespoons of Cajun Power Garlic Sauce for more flavor — this is optional, but it’s how I like my seafood: cooked and spiced. With shrimp, I always add about half a cup of Italian dressing. You could use oil instead, but the dressing adds a little more flavor; the dressing (or oil)

will also make the peeling process easier. The vinegar in the hot sauce helps too. Halve the lemons and onions, slice into the garlic

cooking for 15 minutes. Remove the lid and shut off the flame. Add ice to the pot to stop the crabs from cooking.

halfway from the side to expose more of the cloves, and cut the smoked sausage (if using) into 1½- to 2-inch pieces. You can leave the potatoes whole if they are small. Otherwise, cut them into chunks.

Crack a beer and wait while the crabs soak for 10 minutes to absorb the seasoning. Pull the basket out of the water, let drain, and serve.

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Buy Local buy certified!

ELEVATE EVERY DAY WITH CERTIFIED PRODUCTS. Look for the Certified logos in Rouses Markets to support Louisiana businesses and families, and celebrate our state!

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certifiedlouisiana.org

MIKE STRAIN, DVM COMMISSIONER

DAIRY-FREE GARLICKY GRILLED CHEESE

PREP TIME: 10 MIN

PORTIONS: 1

INGREDIENTS • 2 Violife Just Like Cheddar Slices • 2 tbsp Country Crock ® Plant Butter with Avocado Oil • 1–2 tbsp olive oil DIRECTIONS 1. Heat a large griddle pan over medium heat. Add the olive oil and the Country Crock ® Plant Butter with Avocado Oil along with the sliced garlic. 2. Add the bread slices and grill for 2–4 minutes on each side until nice and golden, and then turn down the heat. 3. Start assembling your sandwich in the pan! Top both slices of bread with one Violife Just Like Cheddar Slice. Then add a slice of tomato on top of the cheese. Cover with a pan to brown the bread and let the cheese steam.

• 1 garlic clove, sliced • 2 slices sourdough bread • 1 tomato, sliced • Your favorite garlic aioli sauce, to serve

4. Once bread is browned to your liking, place one half of the sandwich on top of the other to make a handheld sandwich. Cover with a lid and let steam in the pan for 1–2 minutes so cheese can continue to melt on low heat. 5. When the slices have melted nicely, remove sandwich from the pan and serve with garlic aioli sauce on the side.

Visit Violifefoods.com for more recipe inspiration

© 2024 Upfield

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INDULGE IN THE SMOOTH PICK-ME-UP YOU CRAVE. AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL ROUSES

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© 2023 Community Co ee Company

Jazz up the party with Red Beans & Rice! Feed your krewe for under $ 15!

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!

Just Roll with It By Ali Rouse Royster, 3 rd Generation Picture it: Summer 2020. You all know what was going on back then. My children, who were then three, four and five years old, had been home since mid-March. My boys were sporting unfortunate home haircuts. We’ve watched all of the streaming. We have cooked 10,000 homemade meals. So when my five-year old adventurous eater asks, “Mom, can we have sushi for dinner?” (to him that means a very tame California roll, which I know is not technically sushi), I say: “Absolutely.” We are game for anything to mix up our dinner routine at this point! And then I say: “We’ve got nothing but time; why don’t we try making sushi?! What could go wrong?” (Cut to a montage of all our upcoming mishaps in the kitchen.) We googled. Realizing we needed just one special tool, a sushi rolling mat, we ordered. We found all our ingredients at our local Rouses. We made our own rice. We mixed our own crab-with-a-k. And then the fun part: Let’s put it on seaweed paper and roll it all up and enjoy! We sharpened our best knife, and wet it before using. (I have since invested in new knives.) Well, wouldn’t you know. There’s an art to rolling and cutting sushi that I decidedly did not pick up from the two YouTube videos I watched as my “training.” I have always appreciated the culinary expertise of chefs, but have a newfound deep appreciation for the finger-muscle strength and knife skills of our sushi chefs at all our favorite local sushi joints, including the fine folks at the sushi counters at Rouses. So when my oldest asks me, now that he’s nine, “Mom, how about sushi?” — the answer may still be “Absolutely,” and it will be fresh-made and hand-rolled that same day, but we are going to know our role and make a little Rouses run for that California roll.

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Available in 20 oz ., 32 oz . and 64 oz . sizes

@ 2024 Evamor Products , LLC

“W hat Rouses customers can depend on is that we always get the very best of what’s out there,” said Denise Englade, the director of seafood for Rouses Markets, “and just like every crawfish season, we are the place to come for the best price and quality.” One word that describes the situation, however, is “unprecedented,” she said. “It’s just something no one’s ever seen before. The kind of drought and then heat and then freeze that we went through in 2023 and into 2024, it all just continued to pile up and snowball, one negative impact after another on the crawfish industry. We’ve never really seen anything like this, so no one really knew what to expect.” So how did we get here? You probably recall the AC-slaying drought this past summer, during which time the sun roasted our lush state into a scorched, arid tableau. It was a summer so severe it bordered on the theatrical. Remember the salt wedge? It was a bizarre, typically New Orleans crisis. The drought caused the Mississippi River to fall to perilously low levels, allowing saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico to intrude upstream — far enough to threaten the city’s drinking

water supply. To combat this, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reinforced an underwater barrier to halt the saltwater’s progression, and rain did come — eventually. In the end, the worst was averted…for us. But while we muddled through on snowballs and triple-digit electric bills, the crawfish in the basins and rice farms became unwitting actors in a drama of survival. First, the dry ground caused under ground burrows, where crawfish usually spend the summer reproducing, to crack open, harming their habitats. Second, the lack of rain increased the salt levels in water sources used to flood crawfish ponds. (Farmers generally depend on surface water for irrigation.) This was understandably hard on the crawfish, especially the smaller ones. Additionally, there were concerns about the health of rice, grasses and other forages that crawfish feed on during the winter, as these too were affected by the hot, dry conditions. It was bad all around, and we are still feeling the effects. In the end, about 45,000 acres of crawfish ponds were directly affected, and another 43,000 acres became inaccessible for fishing due to dry ponds or saltwater intrusion. Farmers did the best they could, flushing fields with water to reduce

In a Pinch By David W. Brown As you probably know by now, this has been a tough season for crawfish. The bottom line, however, is that while the season is unusual, it is not canceled. The crawfish industry is made up of small family businesses, and Rouses has been working closely with many of them for decades. This year, we are partnered with more than 20 different crawfish vendors to make sure that as the yields increase, our shoppers are the first to benefit.

CRAWFISH AND RICE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT What does rice have in common with crawfish? More than it does with étouffée! Both rice and crawfish thrive in soils with sufficient clay content, which is crucial for water retention. The crawfish actively contribute to the water quality of rice fields, stirring up sediments and enhancing oxygenation, fostering a healthier ecosystem for both rice and crawfish. In this integrated system, rice is planted in March. When it reaches a height of about six inches, water is pumped in. Live crawfish are introduced in May. The crawfish mate in the open waters of the rice field before burrowing beneath the rice. This helps them to weather the summer heat and also ensures their safety during the rice harvest. The rice fields remain flooded until mid-summer, when they are drained, preceding the rice harvest in late July or August. The fields

are then reflooded to draw the crawfish out of their holes. The crawfish feed on the recently cut rice stubble, which is the vegetative part of the rice plant that remains after the harvest.

DID YOU KNOW? ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Louisiana is among the top three rice-producing states in the country , behind Arkansas and California (Mississippi is the sixth-largest rice-producing state). Jefferson Davis and Acadia parishes in Southwest Louisiana are particularly well-suited for rice production. Recognized as the “Rice Capital of the World,” Crowley, in Acadia Parish, hosts the International Rice Festival.

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"What Rouses customers can depend on is that we always get the very best of what’s out there, and just like every crawfish season, we are the place to come for the best price and quality.” – Denise Englade, Director of Seafood for Rouses Markets

cracking and maintain moisture, but these efforts came with their own challenges. The situation led to a later-than-normal season for crawfish, with reduced yields, and at great economic cost. From Denise’s desk, it was a hard thing to watch. “We heard early on that the drought meant the salt level was too high in the canals that farmers draw from to flood the fields. When I would talk to the vendors about supplies coming back up, every week they would tell me, ‘Maybe next week,’” she explained. “Thankfully, recovery will come, but it’s a longer timeline than anyone wants. It’s very disheartening for the season, but it’s just this season. There have just been a lot of bad things happening at once.” As a result, there are simply fewer crawfish than usual, which means they cost more than ever. “One farmer sent me a message with a picture of a little tiny crawfish in his hand, and another picture with a normal-sized one,” she said. “He told me they’re seeing a lot of the one and not enough of the other, and it’s really cost-prohibitive for them to send a team out for 12 hours and only get two sacks.”

Rouses is still in the crawfish business, though. "We’re still selling crawfish as they arrive, at the best prices, and still boiling them in stores as they become available," she told me. "The season started much later than expected, but we’re hoping to see a good amount of crawfish this year." Because crawfish are the heart of so many family traditions, and the center of the Louisiana culinary scene, we’re all a little impatient. “Normally by December, crawfish are abundant enough that they’re starting to fill Rouses locations in the bayou area. That didn’t happen this time, and that was kind of the first, ‘Oh my,’” Denise says. “Then we went through December and it was like, okay, we’re going to have some by the end of December. Then the first of January. Then mid-January. And so on — everyone was learning the extent of the season’s troubles as we went. No one really knew what to

expect because it had never happened before. In the crawfish business, you don’t know how a season will go until farmers and fishermen start to harvest product.” What’s bad for crawfish is good for other seafood, however. “The saltwater has been great for oysters this year,” says Denise. “The higher salt content means oysters are really tasting better than ever. That’s a positive, I guess you could say. And shrimp, which are caught in the Gulf of Mexico, have been in abundance this year, at a better cost than we have seen in a while.” As for crawfish, we are going to look back on this year as an oddity. “This is not the new normal,” Denise says. “Next year crawfish will be back to business as usual.”

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Photo by Romney Caruso

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STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND The Cajuns came to Louisiana when the British kicked them out of the Acadia colony of New France in 1755. That is a bigger deal than it might seem. Acadia wasn’t a colony in the way Jamestown was a colony — a few buildings, a blacksmith, a church and some walls to keep out invaders. Rather, it was a colony the way Virginia was a colony, and was about the same size. Meanwhile, New France wasn’t some tiny fly-by-night patch of ground, or little island, claimed by some guy with a boat and a flag. At the time, New France was the largest empire in the history of North America by contiguous geography, by far, clocking in at 3,000,000 square miles — about the size of the continental United States today. So, what happened? Claiming land isn’t the same as controlling land. Particularly in the New World in the 18th century, territory was aspirational and, in reality, you only owned as much as your last war revealed. (George Washington taught the British this lesson in 1783, for example.) So even though the empire of New France was large geographically, its population was very small. Depending on alliances in Europe and wars in the New World, anyone at any time could claim or chip away at anyone else’s holdings. And the British really, really wanted the strategi cally located Acadia (today, Nova Scotia in Canada). Before the British expelled the Acadians, the feisty French fought with them for 45 years. Finally, during the French and Indian War, the British gained the upper hand. The land was thus seized. When the dust settled, the Brits gave the Acadians a chance to sign oaths of allegiance to King George II. The Acadians refused (better dead than redcoat), and the British banished them in what was called “Le Grand Dérangement.” It was a pretty traumatic

Folk Tails By David W. Brown Y ou might be surprised to learn that the Cajuns were not the first to look at a crawfish and think: “Hmm, that looks tasty. I think I will eat 200 of them for dinner.” Still, crawfish proved the perfect food for the Cajuns when they got to Louisiana, in that it was cheap, nutritious and an ideal canvas for the application of French culinary techniques. But if the Cajuns didn’t eat them first, who did? And anyway, where did all these Cajuns, with their strange appetites and great recipes, come from anyway? And why do people associate all this with the city of New Orleans? The answers are a little more compli cated than you might expect, and involve three big journeys.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE BAYOUS Speaking of having your land stolen, the Acadians were not the first to set foot here. Before Europeans arrived in the New World, several American Indian tribes owned Louisiana, including the Chitim acha, Atakapa, Caddo, Choctaw, Natchez, Tunica and Houma. The Houma migrated to modern-day Baton Rouge from Missis sippi and Alabama, and had a rough go of it overall, fighting with other tribes, and eventually having to deal with the Europeans steadily encroaching as well. (The Houma and the Bayagoula tribes marked the border of their hunting grounds with red poles — those rouge batons would later give the city its name.) In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Houma had moved almost entirely to remote areas that today are part of Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, in the southernmost part of the state. Eventually, the Houma established Ouiski Bayou, a settlement near what is now Downtown Houma. The Spanish at this time claimed to own the land, but “gave” it to the Houma, and when French settlers — most notably, the Acadians — came to the region, they even called the community Houma. (I should note that this is the simple version, The name “Houma” is a Choctaw word meaning “red,” and the tribe’s symbol was — you guessed it — a crawfish. It represented bravery . The Houma, who had been doing it for centuries in the South, excelled at harvesting crawfish and other seafood.

affair. As they left their homes, thousands of French colonists died from disease, in firefights, and on board sinking ships. Though the Acadians went all over the place, the best of them ended up in modern-day Louisiana.

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and all this happened over the course of a hundred years.) The Houma and the Acadians were all pioneers — they came in small groups and had to subdue some seriously hostile lands amid multiple wars being waged all around them. I don’t need to tell you that things didn’t go great for the tribes. Spanish Louisiana territory returned to the French in 1803, who then sold it to the United States, who did not honor the Spanish agreement with the Houma people. How does this relate to crawfish? The name “Houma” is a Choctaw word meaning “red,” and the tribe’s symbol was — you guessed it — a crawfish. It represented bravery. The Houma, who had been doing it for centuries in the South, excelled at harvesting crawfish and other seafood. It was a pretty useful skill that their new Acadian neighbors learned as well. By all accounts I could find, the Acadians and the Houma had cordial relations. This was a tough, sparsely populated place, and cooperation, cultural exchange and intermarriage were common behaviors for generations. (That is one reason why your grandmother insists that you are ¹⁄ 16 Choctaw, regardless of what 23andMe says.) There are other crawfish origin stories as well. According to Cajun folklore, crawfish were not waiting for the Acadians when they got here. Rather, they brought the beloved bug with them, though in a different form. As the fairytale goes, when the British kicked out the Acadians, the lobsters went with them. (I mean, it’s not like the British know how to cook anything, and if you’re going to be boiled and eaten, at least die to become magnificent cuisine.) As the lobsters journeyed to Louisiana, leaving behind the cold Atlantic waters, they began transforming magically, and by the time they reached the warm bayous of Louisiana, they were well-adapted to their new environ ment, much as the Acadians had likewise transformed. Regardless of whether crawfish were magic lobsters or already here, the point is, when the Acadians arrived, they weren’t the first to eat them. What they likely were first to do, however, is prepare crawfish with French panache. It didn’t take long for the Acadians to apply what they knew about cooking lobsters to cooking crawfish.

The Houma’s war emblem, the crawfish (Image from LSU Library)

particularly with respect to goods like cotton and sugar from the Southern states and grain from the Midwest. The port of New Orleans was one of the busiest on Earth, and the cotton exchange here was likewise one of the largest. The city, quite simply, was the major financial center for the South and the Midwest, and one of the USA’s key inter faces with the world. It probably even had good roads back then. Things have changed quite a bit. Though the Civil War proved ruinous for much of the South, by the mid 1900s, the economy of New Orleans yet again seemed unstop pable, largely due to its port. Moreover, the discovery of oil in the Gulf of Mexico during that time further boosted the city’s economic prospects. New Orleans became a key player in the oil industry, with companies establishing bases here, creating jobs and fueling growth. The city was seen by many scholars as a burgeoning hub of prosperity, with the chance of one day surpassing in all aspects nearly any city in America, and most cities in the world. Then the oil bust came. The collapse of oil prices led to a severe, immediate economic collapse. It is hard to imagine a more signifi cant setback. It wasn’t just the oil companies. In the government sector, the subsequent end of the Space Shuttle program meant NASA would likewise no longer be an anchor in the area. Then a series of catastrophes, the

To clear up one more thing: No one likely called the Acadians “Cajuns” for another hundred years. That word came along during the Civil War, when northern soldiers came to town. Historians found one of the first recorded uses of the word in a letter from a Union lieutenant, who described a typical Cajun as a “half-savage creature, of mixed French and Indian blood, lives in swamps and subsists by cultivating small patches of corn and sweet potatoes. The wants of the Cajun are few, and his habits are simple...” This remains pretty accurate overall. During all this, there was one more big journey in store for the crawfish. The Houma had already mastered the humble crusta cean, and the Acadians had given it the French culinary razzle-dazzle, but it took New Orleans to launch the creature into the stratosphere. THE CRESCENT CITY Just as it’s hard to imagine the scale of Acadia or New France, it is almost impos sible to understate the importance of the city of New Orleans to the United States of America. Before the Civil War, it was the wealthiest city in the nation, and the third-most populous. It was a vital port for the country with a strategic location crucial for both national and international trade,

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Chief William Thomas Dion United Houma Nation

magazine would be twice as long if I did.) A few things helped really intensify the crawfish phenomenon. First, the cold supply chain — things like refrigerated trucks — got better at moving around a living product from a few towns in South Louisiana to the entire region. Second, people like Chef Paul Prudhomme popularized Cajun cuisine inter nationally like few others before, and quite frequently his star ingredient was indeed crawfish. Lastly, because New Orleans remains an important world city, people travel from around the globe and experi ence our favorite native insect during such events as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and, of course, Mardi Gras. In the end, the crawfish phenomenon speaks to the best part of Louisiana culture: that we are all in it together. To make crawfish what it is today, it took nations from here and around the world; the rural and the urban; the rich and the downtrodden; and the oppressed and the wealthy. And today, we likewise all celebrate it the same way: in cardboard trays on sunny days, with friends and family and cold drinks and good spirits. Perhaps, then, the legends were right. Maybe crawfish is a magical creature after all.

Image from United Houma Nation.

gradually became a cornerstone of the city’s burgeoning, and eventually dominant, Creole style of cooking — itself a sophis ticated blend of French, Spanish, African, Caribbean and Native American influences. The integration of crawfish into Creole cooking gained unstoppable momentum with the city’s economic ascent. The food landscape here over the centuries evolved specifically to celebrate local ingredi ents. By the 20th century, crawfish was the undisputed king of culinary New Orleans. Crawfish by then was not merely a peasant’s food for the provincial Cajuns, but rather, cosmopolitan cuisine worthy of a global audience. Today, the crustacean is intrinsic to Louisiana’s cultural identity. Let’s face it: The four seasons in Louisiana are crawfish, hurricane, football and summer — the latter lasting 12 months, with varying degrees of intensity. (I had intended to list all the crawfish festivals in the state, but the

worst of which was Hurricane Katrina, just proved too much for New Orleans to endure. The city never had a chance to diversify its economy or politics sufficiently to recover from the myriad disasters, whether economic or ecologic. And yet so great is the cultural import of New Orleans that decades of consecutive calamities have not diminished its status as a true “world city” with the most distinct, specific and potent culture in North America. And that is most obvious in the culinary sphere. From its humble Houma and Cajun origins, crawfish over the centuries found its way organically into the kitchens of the best chefs in New Orleans. Because we are a vital hub of national and international trade, the centuries have seen a mélange of cultures, ethnicities, culinary palates and strange ingredients converge in this single place on America’s map. The lowly crawfish

“ My grandpa, William Thomas Dion, left an indelible mark as a devoted member of the Houmas Indian tribe and a staunch advocate for Houma Indian education rights during the 1970s. A man of genuine care and profound passion, Grandpa Tom had a deep commitment to the betterment of our community, and a vision for us on many platforms. We continue to draw inspiration from him.” — Tiffany Parfait Reed, Rouses Markets Human Resources, and member, United Houma Nation

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Sacks and the City By David W. Brown

It is almost impossible to imagine a time when crawfish was not as ubiquitous in New Orleans as fleurs-de-lis or Louis Armstrong. Until the 1950s, however, if you wanted crawfish in this town, you first had to drive out to the swamps, find a fisherman, buy a sack, bring it home, figure out how to cook it, and — most daunting of all — figure out how to eat it. In truth, however, it likely never would have occurred to you to do any of this in the first place, because crawfish was considered peasant food and had no place in the world of cosmopolitan cuisine. All that changed, in large part, because of the work of one man, who not only popularized the Cajun staple in the city, but in doing so changed the New Orleans cultural and culinary scene forever. His name is Alfred Scramuzza — the self proclaimed “emperor of crawfish” — and the visionary founder of the iconic Seafood City.

A ccording to Scramuzza family lore, the whole thing began as an accident. Before Al got into the crawfish business, he sold produce and other seafoods. One day, a wholesaler came by with sacks in the back of his truck. He offered Al the chance to sell the crawfish — and Al almost turned him down. Who would buy such a thing? The whole saler, a little desperate, said something like: “Well, how ’bout we do it on consign ment, cher? Ya don’t pay me nothin’ ’less ya manage to sell ’ em. Dey prob’ly just gonna go to waste anyhow.”

walked by. At the end of the day, that first batch of crawfish was sold, Al paid the fisherman, and the next day bought more. It ramped up from there. In part, that salesman’s mentality was a result of Al’s upbringing. “He grew up poor in the French Quarter,” said Tony of his grandfather. A child of the Great Depression, Al’s family’s situation was made worse when his father took off in the early 1930s. His mom tried to keep the family together, but food was scarce and the situation became increasingly dire by the day. They’d steal scraps of food when

What the Cajun didn’t realize was that he was dealing with a world-class operator. “My grandfather was a big-time hustler and real good salesman,” said Tony Scramuzza, Al’s grandson and the owner of Scramuzza’s Seafood in Kenner. “He still has that great big personality. He wasn’t ever afraid to go through with an idea he had, even if people thought it was ‘out there’ and crazy — he’d just go full speed with it, and never let other people’s doubts affect it. He went full force.” Al was a first-rate showman. To entice buyers, he paid kids to dangle crawfish from fishing poles over the sidewalk as people

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And if I say, “Seafood City, very pretty,” you will say: “1826 North Broad.” As it turned out, simply bringing crawfish to the city wasn’t enough. Al Scramuzza could sell dozens of sacks a day, but he was thinking bigger; and for that, he had to teach the city that crawfish was more than a weird food eaten by backward Cajuns. Let’s face it: They’re not the most appetizing creatures before they go into the pot. So to get the city on board, Al had to get creative. He moved the company to a building on Broad Street at the corner of St. Bernard, and eventually called it Seafood City. The fishing poles were a mainstay, as were a kind of rolling master class in how to cook the

in deep, deep Cajun country; French was the dominant language in almost every household. When Al got there, he started striking up deals to buy up as much crawfish from the local fishermen as he could afford, to bring back to the city. In those days, the price of crawfish was something like three cents per pound. After that, Al was off to the races. It doesn’t take Morgus the Magnificent to know that, for Louisianans of a certain age, there are a few jingles that trigger Pavlovian responses. If I sing, “Rosenberg’s, Rosen berg’s…” you’ll respond: “1825 Tulane.” If I say, “You’ll have to see the Special Man!” you will say: “Let her have it.”

they could — okra, peppers, potatoes — but one by one, he and his siblings were sent elsewhere. His sister became a nun, and he and his brothers ended up in Hope Haven, an orphanage in Marrero on Barataria Boulevard. Around this time is also when Al first learned to boil crawfish. It was a poor man’s food — a trash food — and the young Scramuzza was indeed a poor man. But crawfish was ideal for the circumstances because, if you were an enterprising boy, you or your neighbors could go out and catch the crawfish yourselves, and pilfer scraps from produce stands, and ply the boil with seasonings until it resembled something like food. It could turn into a neighborhood event, and the hungry could get a good meal. “That may have been part of what started his drive as he matured,” said Tony. “Part of growing up that way and having to learn how to hustle and make something out of nothing — that’s what he did.” The drive — and also the ability to teach New Orleanians how to boil crawfish — helped Al find fast success selling them by the sack. Soon, he was outpacing his Cajun supplier and decided to go straight to the source: The fishermen at the docks. Bayou Pigeon is culturally about as far from New Orleans in 1950 as you can get without a passport. Adjacent to the Atchafalaya Basin in the southernmost tip of Iberville Parish, it was (and remains today) a fishing village

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In 2017, at Al’s 90th birthday celebration, Billy Nungesser (then-lieutenant governor of Louisiana) presented Al with the Louisiana Seafood Ambassador award. In response, Al declared that there are too many “crawfish kings” out there, and that he is the “Crawfish Emperor.” Who could argue with that? In Louisiana, seafood is almost always a family business. Al and his future wife, Sarah, met as teenagers in the French Quarter, where they both grew up, in the 1940s. They later had four children. Though none of the kids took over the Seafood City empire, and Al closed its doors in 1994, the Scramuzza family wasn’t finished with crawfish just yet. “My grandfather had closed the business when I was real young,” Tony told me in an interview. “I was never interested in it, and never thought I would get into it. In fact, I always thought the opposite.” Though the Scramuzza family represents one of the great cultural success stories of the city and they were hard workers, they weren’t loaded, and there was no empire to hand to anyone after Seafood City closed. And anyway, Tony wanted to find his own path in life. His background is as varied as his grandfather’s. He worked construction. He was a mechanic. He did valet. He worked in EMS. He was a bartender. “We did a humongous business there,” Al told The Times-Picayune in 2017. “We sold seafood. We shipped seafood. We were wading in seafood; that’s how much we used to handle. We sold billions of pounds of crawfish every season. Not millions. Billions.” At its height, Seafood City could sell 50,000 pounds of crawfish on a Saturday, not even counting the myriad other creatures of the local sea it carried.

things, with Al explaining times and temper atures and ingredients and seasonings. To eyes in 2024, this seems unbelievable, when crawfish suffuses the New Orleans culinary landscape and we just pick up the basics by cultural osmosis; but in a pre-Internet world, where everyone’s uncle didn’t own a crawfish pot, how would you even begin to know where to start? Look, anyone can sell a product. But the salesman became a veritable ambassador for the lowly crawfish hole. And over time, his empire grew to take up the entire block. Scramuzza had something that comes along rarely, but when it does, burns white hot: He was a showman of, by and for the city of New Orleans. In the broader landscape, Seafood City wasn’t just a place to buy seafood; it became a cultural hub: a place where the community’s love for food and festivity converged. Scramuzza understood the soul of the city — our love of celebration and family gatherings, and our city’s deep rooted culinary traditions and its openness to new experiences. To fully create the crawfish culture in the city and then transform the culinary landscape, Scramuzza turned to television. It’s worth noting that crawfish wasn’t the only business that he went full bore into. Over the years, said his grandson, he started a record label (Scram Records). He painted Christmas trees. He founded a production company (Muzza Productions). He even ran for the state legislature. (“Don’t be a looza, vote for Scramuzza.”) So making commercials was right up his alley. He wrote them, starred in them, and sang in them. As New Orleans blogger Chuck Taggart once transcribed the famous jingle: Seeeafoood City is-a verrry pretty, Down at Broad ‘n St. B’nawd, Stay with Al Scramuzza and you’ll nevuh be a loosuh… At the end, a crowd of people would sing the kicker: 1826 North Broad! The marketing was both ahead of its time and strangely perfect for the city. The commercials were more than mere adver tisements: they were mini-events, full of humor, local flair, catchy tunes, slogans and jingles. You’ve got disco music playing in the background, a distinct local dressed as a doctor and holding a stethoscope to a

crawfish, saying to the creature in full-blown Yat-speak: “Yoo arrrite…” and then brushing its teeth. “Force of nature” is an overused expres sion, but I’m not sure how else to describe the man or what he was doing. As Seafood City grew in the ’60s and early ’70s, Al was like a one-man band suddenly leading an orchestra. And he wasn’t just writing commer cials and making deals. Behind the scenes, he was doing the job of a small businessman — even boiling the crawfish. “Once you get big in the seafood industry, it kind of consumes you,” said Tony. “You’ve got to really go 100% to get where he got.” Al would frequently be there alone, boiling all night, thanks to Seafood City’s unique setup in the back. “He set up his boiling room and — look, it was a crazy situation back there, man. They had all kinds of conveyor belts, where basically one person could boil a lot of seafood. It was almost like a mini factory of a boiler room. There were hoists and such where one person could lift the big baskets of seafood and dump them on the tables to get it all sorted and ready for the next day.” At its height, Seafood City could sell 50,000 pounds of crawfish on a Saturday, not even counting the myriad other creatures of the local sea it carried. “We did a humongous business there,” Al told The Times-Picayune in 2017. “We sold seafood. We shipped seafood. We were wading in seafood; that’s how much we used to handle. We sold billions of pounds of crawfish every season. Not millions. Billions.” At the same time, Scramuzza was shaping the nature of the crawfish market. It was essentially an entirely new product. People didn’t know how to buy them, sell them, cook them, peel them or serve them. There were no expectations of price because they weren’t really being sold anywhere else. Today we live in a world that he helped create.

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