Cajun Food By Bus
I had a vision.
In this vision I am standing in the front of a bus, talking to a small group of barbecue lovers. This group is embarking on a journey to the best barbecue joints in the state. In the deluxe version of this vision, the bus is a sleeper coach with HD televisions spread throughout, so we can watch barbecue television in between stops - or take naps. Deluxe edition or not, this bus is headed on a food tour.
Until recently, the food tours I’ve been on have been completely selfguided and the only tourists involved were Son and Paw-in-Law. Both were barbecue-related and both were in North Carolina - and neither one involved a bus. But through a curious set of circumstances, my culinary tour history just moved up a level.
A few months ago I was thumbing through one of those free magazines you see around town (which I always pick up - I may have a low-grade free magazine hoarding tendency.) The cover story happened to be for the Cajun Food Tour in Lafayette, Louisiana. I’ve spent a few nights in the Lafayette area over the past few years, and taken full advantage of being in one of American’s great food cities. But a guided tour sounded pretty interesting, so I logged that information away in my food memory bank, the most active part of my brain. Shortly thereafter, The Wife and I decided to go to Lake Charles, Louisiana for an old friend’s retirement celebration. My food brain kicked in. The event was on a Monday night in Lake Charles, and I had the weekend off. Lafayette was on the way to Lake Charles, and we’d need to spend the night on the way. Why not spend two nights in Lafayette, and take the Cajun Food Tour? Why not, indeed.
It was suggested that we skip breakfast and wear “stretchy pants” on the day of the tour. I didn’t quite follow the rules, but I did limit myself to fruit for breakfast (let’s call it a warmup) and wore pants that could be subtly unbuttoned if necessary.
Marie Ducote, the tour guide, company owner and bus driver, picked us up along with three other couples at our hotels. On the exterior the bus was completely covered with pictures of crawfish, shrimp and king cake, along with the words “Allons Manger!” Those words, which mean “Let’s go eat!” were also our code words throughout the tour when it was time to leave one place and head to another. Inside, the bus was equipped with coolers (in case a guest wanted to take home leftovers or extras) and was strung with tiny Tabasco lights. Our fellow eaters had come from Atlanta, Mississippi and Louisiana - quite the eclectic bunch. But enough about the bus and the tourists - Allons Manger!
We began the morning at a little coffee shop called Jammin’ Java. I was a bit skeptical at first - I love my coffee and all, but it wasn’t immediately obvious why the first stop on a tour of Cajun foods was at a coffee shop. When the plates were passed around, however, I figured it out. We had a fresh strawberry, a piece of iced oatmeal cookie, a wedge of pulled pork panini, and the star of the platter: a boudin-stuffed biscuit. Boudin is the classic Cajun sausage, normally made with pork and rice. Marie told us that it originally developed from the idea that no part of the pig should be wasted - the earliest iterations of this sausage used whatever scraps were around after a pig was slaughtered, and the rice was added as a thickener of sorts. An even earlier version of boudin used fresh pork blood as the thickener until rice became more widely available. I found it fascinating to learn that “red boudin” could still
be found, but it is rare, and there are some crazy stringent FDA regulations that have to be followed to make it. Ours was not red. Ours was taken out of the casing, fried, and drizzled with local Steens Cane Syrup before getting stuffed in the biscuit. And though I left no crumbs of anything, it was definitely my favorite bite at this stop.
Not far from Jammin’ Java (these first two stops were in Youngsville) was Nunu’s Market. Marie described this store as a “specialty meat market, which happened to carry other groceries for the convenience of the shoppers.” We learned that the words “specialty meats” on the side of a building meant you could reliably buy boudin there, but Nunu’s had so much more than that. We tried their boudin, some smoked pork sausage infused with Steen’s, their famous chicken patty, and a cracklin’. A cracklin’ in that part of the world is not just a pork skin, and not necessarily the kind of cracklins’ we see in bags around here. A cracklin’ from Cajun country is layered - the skin is there, but also layers of meat and delicious fat (from the pork belly). Nunu’s truly lived up to the name “specialty meat market.” If I lived nearby, I’m not sure I would ever have to prepare meat again. I might still have to cook the whole boneless chicken stuffed with crawfish, or the ribeye bites wrapped in bacon. The stuffed and seasoned brisket might still require me to put it in the smoker. The “turducken” is by special request, as is the “turporky”. (That’s a new one: boneless turkey stuffed with a pork roast.) And 15 varieties of fresh sausage made daily. I might eventually work my way through everything, but it would be a long, long, lovely time.
Four more stops to go, and I’m nowhere close to loosening the waist on my shorts. In case you were wondering.