Quest for Crawfish & Boudin -- May '08
Quest for Crawfish & Boudin -- May '08
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Quest for Crawfish & Boudin -- May '08
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Post #1 - April 4th, 2008, 11:55 amNow that I am eligible to draw Social Security benefits, my chosen perk is to fulfill a 30-year old dream by attending the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and spending the rest of the week by searching for world-class roadside boudin. In our family, this is known as Goin' Trillining.
The forum is chock full of references to New Orleans food, but very little about the Bayou Teche delights surrounding Breaux Bridge and Lafayette. I would greatly appreciate learning about everone's favorite places to eat/buy/stuff-yourself-silly-with foods in this area.
Thanx for your help. I will report upon return...Jim
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Post #2 - April 4th, 2008, 11:58 amjimwdavis wrote:In our family, this is known as Goin' Trillining.
I love this.
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Post #3 - April 4th, 2008, 2:21 pmI put a phone call in to my law school friend Hebert who lives in Lafayette. He claims every self respecting coonass (thats how Cajun's refer to themselves and no it isn't derogatory in the least) eats at Poche's, Bayou Boudin and Charlie T's in Breaux Bridge. West of Lafayette on the way to Lake Charles in Jennings Louisiana is Boudin King which lots and lots of people love. My friends in SW Lousiiana say it is pretty great. I confirmed these places still exist on boudinlink.com. DO NOT fear roadside Boudin at your local gas station. That and fried chicken on the hood of the car is good eats. Bring Tums.
Poche's
3015-A Main Hwy
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
Bayou Boudin
100 W. Mills Ave.
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
Charlie T's
530 Berard Street
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
Boudin King
906 W Division St
Jennings, LA 70546
BTW find me some real Boudin (not frozen ever) within 90 miles of Chicago and I will be indebted to you forever.
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Post #4 - April 4th, 2008, 2:38 pmI'm going to self-quote what I read on another thread.
I just got back from spending the holidays with my folks in Baton Rouge, and I made a trip to Breaux Bridge to get some boudin and stock up on encased meats a couple of days before leaving. I hit Charlie T's, where the boudin was excellent and the meat selection was great as well. In addition to getting some andouille, smoked jalapeno pork sausage, and uncooked beef and pork sausage to bring home, we picked up a really nice crawfish and rice stuffed chicken (deboned whole chicken) which we cooked one night for dinner at my parents' and it was outstanding. The andouille and jalapeno pork sausage are/were great as well. I also hit Poche's on the other side of I-10, where the boudin was also very good (a bit spicier than at Charlie T's, although I would rank Charlie T's slightly ahead of it overall). I also picked up some andouille, smoked chaurice sausage, tasso, frozen chicken and duck sausage, frozen boudin and frozen boudin balls to stock the freezer back home. I had some of the tasso (very smoky and very good) and andouille (very good as well, although I think I prefer the Charlie T's product -- but the Poche's version seems as if it would hold up better in gumbo). As I polished off just under a pound of boudin prior to 11:00 a.m. and had the 50 mile drive back to BTR looming, I wasn't in much of a mood to stop and eat, but Poche's had really great looking plate lunches as well.
Both worth a stop if you end up taking crrush's advice to hit Breaux Bridge.
Charlie T's Specialty Meats (not official website)
530 Berard Street
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
(337) 332-2426
Poche's Market
3015A Main Hwy.
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
(337) 332-2108
In addition, if you're in and around Lafayette, the Best Stop in Scott (which is mentioned in Trillin's famed boudin essay that appeared in The New Yorker and Feeding a Yen and which is just west of Lafayette -- on the other side from Breaux Bridge) has some of my favorite andouille ever and the boudin is very good as well.
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Post #5 - April 4th, 2008, 4:05 pmjimwdavis wrote:Now that I am eligible to draw Social Security benefits, my chosen perk is to fulfill a 30-year old dream by attending the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and spending the rest of the week by searching for world-class roadside boudin. In our family, this is known as Goin' Trillining.
This website should give you a lot of good ideas for boudin:
http://www.southernboudintrail.com/
It is a website prepared by the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Missisippi and covers most of the great boudin places in SW Louisiana.
One place that I particularly enjoyed was:
Don's Specialty Meats and Grocery
730 I-10 Frontage
Scott, LA 70583
(337) 234-2528
www.donsspecialtymeats.com
Do realize that in the territory between Abbeville, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, there are more butchers than you will find in Chicago. No kidding.
I also like Poche's in Breaux Bridge ***BUT*** run a Mapquest as it took me an hour to find the place.
I also enjoyed the Boudin King up on the main drag in Opelousas, LA.
As for boudin in the Chicago area, Pappadeaux's serves a pretty good boudin as an appetizer.
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Post #6 - April 4th, 2008, 7:02 pmA few suggestions...
Check out wino66's post Suggestions for our road trip through the Deep South. A lot of great info on that area if you read the whole thread.
Cafe des Amis
140 East Bridge St.
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
337.332.5273
Also, consider a trip to nearby Abbeville. There's a great market in town (name escapes me) and you can't go wrong gorging on smoked oysters at Black's Oyster Bar and Restaurant.
Black's Oyster Bar and Restaurant
319 Pere Megret
Abbeville, LA 70510-4631
(866) 443-8019
For a good boudin hunt, check out The Boudin Link.
If your travels take you along 190w (a back road that runs sort of parallel to 10 outside of Baton Rouge), you'll run across two of my favorite food pitstops in Louisiana:
For righteously good meat pies, boudin balls and crawfish rolls (pistolettes stuffed with very, very good crawfish etoufee-like filling):
Andre's Cajun Cracklins
12910 Hwy 190W
Erwinville, LA
For a sit-down lunch:
Joe's Dreyfuss Store
2731 Maringouin Rd W
Livonia, LA
(225) 637-2625
I also like driving through New Roads (home to Bergeron pecans, a great local produce stand, and you can take a ferry from New Roads to St. Francisville--boats run every 1/2 hour). If you take 1N off of 190 (the road is between Erwinville and Livonia), you'll run smack into it.
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Post #7 - April 7th, 2008, 2:06 pmThanx for the great leads. I truly appreciate your taking the time to do the research – even calling old friends in the area – and to offer suggestions. It's always comforting to know that there are other people who will help you with your obsessions. Re-reading Calvin Trillin may have provided the spark for this trip, but it's the LTHers who have been fanning the flames.
The crawfish quest should be made simple by attending the three-day festival in Breaux Bridge and by eating at any non-chain restaurant in the area. They all seem to offer no fewer than six ways to prepare and serve crawfish.
The search for sausage needs to be better organized. I now have a notebook of Google Maps that show the location of every specialty meat shop and roadside stand on the Boudin Link list whose boudin rating ranges from A++ to A- (see reference to OBSESSION, above). Since I doubt that even the most devoted LTHer could do the Crawfish Festival and a 33-link whip-around in six days, while still making it onto the return flight, the selection process needs refining. Hence, my call for help.
Part of the problem is striving for the perfect balance between boudin and all of the other culinary treats in the seven-parish area. Thanx again for the tips on your favorite eating places.
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Post #8 - April 7th, 2008, 2:34 pmjimwdavis wrote:The crawfish quest should be made simple by attending the three-day festival in Breaux Bridge and by eating at any non-chain restaurant in the area. They all seem to offer no fewer than six ways to prepare and serve crawfish.
The search for sausage needs to be better organized. I now have a notebook of Google Maps that show the location of every specialty meat shop and roadside stand on the Boudin Link list whose boudin rating ranges from A++ to A- (see reference to OBSESSION, above). Since I doubt that even the most devoted LTHer could do the Crawfish Festival and a 33-link whip-around in six days, while still making it onto the return flight, the selection process needs refining. Hence, my call for help.
I don't want to state the obvious BUT ... you will be lucky to hit 3-4 places per day. Pick a few places from the list ... or wait until you get down to Breaux Bridge and ASK THE LOCALS as they will always have some suggestions that we are unaware of.
Personally, some of the best cajun food that I ever experienced was at St Joseph's Catholic Church in Vinton, LA (near Lake Charles). I was sent there by a lady at the LA Welcome Center on the Texas border. I would have skipped it and headed to Lafayette for Festival Acadiens except that I was feeling under weather and decided to stay in Vinton.