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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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