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Louisiana upbringing. Indeed, the further I got from the bayous and the people and places that had clearly imprinted themselves on me, the more interesting my upbringing became to me. It took a while for me to understand what a singular place our family-centered, food-centric culture occupied in the all-too-homogenized American landscape. As a writer, I felt I should be able to make something of that. Partly because of that and because I still had family in the Houma-Thibodaux area, I visited frequently. But honestly, I’d not paid much attention to the super market scene until a few years back when I began to do a deep dive for my book, Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou , a cultural and social history of our iconic dish. I wandered into that particular Rouses on St. Charles Street in Houma; I was looking for andouille for gumbo I was cooking for out-of-state friends who’d come for a fishing trip. What I discovered was an epiphany: Someone with deep forethought had assembled an amazing collage of Louisiana-made and Louisiana-grown products that had revolutionized the ease by which home cooks could gather and acquire the ingredients not just for gumbo, but for almost every conceivable dish in any authentic Cajun or Creole cookbook. There was the pre-cut trinity in a plastic container — which I know my mom, who was not particularly good with a knife, would’ve loved as a time-saver. I counted about two dozen varieties of andouille and other sausages suitable for gumbo. I found boneless pre-cut chicken breasts and thighs (and yes, whole chickens if you wanted them and even pre-cooked rotis serie chickens that I know some people plop into their gumbos). There were jarred and powdered roux mixes, not to mention an entire long shelf given over to just about every spice and hot sauce a person might desire. And, yes, fresh okra in the produce department and fresh, wild-caught local shrimp sitting on a bed of ice for a price that was about a third of what I pay for frozen shrimp in Chicago. To be clear, I learned my gumbo craft

from my mother, and I still love making my own roux because it honors my mother’s memory. But I know plenty of gumbo chefs these days who swear by these time-saving products — Rouses even has its own jarred and frozen roux, making it easier than ever to start a gumbo or stew from scratch. It’s clear that Rouses in its offerings demonstrates a deep knowledge and commitment to South Louisiana cooking traditions, yet under stands that time-saving innovations will be appreciated and embraced by a certain subset of their customers. Earlier this year, I spent two months in South Louisiana researching a book on boudin for LSU Press as part of its Louisiana True series. These are compact books, about 25,000 to 30,000 words, covering aspects of uniquely Louisiana culture, notably festivals, music and food. My boudin book, which will come out next spring, isn’t a tasting guide per se, but an examination of the history and passion that elevates this once humble sausage, birthed and perfected in rustic country kitchens, into another iconic dish on par with gumbo and andouille. Boudin, once pretty much a South Louisiana secret, is beginning — thanks to Cajun and Creole ingenuity — to show up on supermarket shelves and restaurant menus all over the country. One of the first things I did was to head (again!) to my favorite Rouses to check the boudin selection as a way of gauging what discerning locals were eating — trusting that the Rouses folks, who seem to have an unerring eye for what their target market loves and wants, would be stocking brands I needed to pay attention to. And, in fact, the selection was so large and the variety so interesting that it told me boudin makers were not just thriving but innovating in interesting and unexpected ways. As I traveled what I call the Boudin Belt — the 22 contiguous South Louisiana parishes that form the area known as Acadiana — I came to realize that Rouses’ success is part of a pattern: the proclivity of certain South Louisiana families to begin enterprises based upon a passion and a belief that service and quality are the elixirs for success.

Consider, for example, the Cormier family of the Best Stop boudin enterprise in Scott. From a tiny one-shop operation opened in 1986 and the size of the average 7-Eleven, the Cormiers in 2020 completed a $6 million, 15,000-square foot, state-of-the-art USDA-certified distribution facility that produces tons of boudin a day and ships retail to scores of wholesalers all over America, including Rouses Markets.. They have plans to build a 10,000-square-foot addition, dedicated to sausage making, in 2026. And the Cormiers are hardly alone. A subtext of the Louisiana boudin origin story is how so many Cajun and Creole families — the Bourgeoises, Bergerons, Comeauxs, Richards and Savoies, among others — have leveraged a single and simple thing, a family boudin recipe, into literal fortunes. And yet I am totally convinced that for them, while the money is no doubt terrific, it’s not just about the money. It’s a sincere effort to spread the joy and share this South Louisiana comfort-food icon with the wider world. Or in the case of Rouses, to make sure its food-loving customers can hew to their time-honored cooking traditions and yet gather the best possible, Louisiana sourced ingredients for that quick gumbo, if that’s what their busy schedules call for. Now if they would only open a market in Chicago…

BAYOU BOYS ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT We grew up boiling on the bayou! The Bayou Boys was our campaign for all things outdoor cooking and boiling. We filmed those commercials at Attakapas Landing on Lake Verret — just west of Napoleonville and south of Pierre Part.

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