There’s No Taste Like HomeBy Todd A. Price Sixty years ago, crawfish was cheap food for poor people. "My father would say, we're so poor we're going to have to eat crawfish," says Marcelle Bienvenu, food columnist and cookbook author. "I remember my mother saying, don't eat crawfish in front of strangers because they'll think you're barbaric."
Today crawfish is an icon of Louisiana cuisine. "I think of it as a very indigenous thing," says Michelle Nugent, food director for Jazz Fest. "Nobody cultivates it, fishes it and eats it like we do." The boiled crawfish sold at Jazz Fest is definitely local, but the cooked crawfish are just as likely to have been cultivated in the south of Spain or the Jiangsu Province of China.
Louisiana crawfish, at least the peeled tail meat, is now expensive. At their peak, the tails can sell for almost as much as lump crabmeat. Even though local crawfish are widely acknowledged as better tasting, many festival vendors use imports because of the cost and, they claim, a lack of local supply.
"It's cheaper, but I don't think it's as tasty," says Bienvenu of imported crawfish. "I've cooked with it a couple of times, and I'm not very satisfied with the texture of the tails or the taste." Nugent agrees that the local product is superior. She insists that certain dishes, such as the crawfish rémoulade, be made with Louisiana tail meat. "The rémoulade is a cold product. I think it allows the quality of the crawfish to shine through," she says. "Whereas something that's cooked, it may not be quite so important."
John Ed Laborde, who buys roughly 4,500 pounds of tail meat for his popular crawfish bread, uses a mix of Spanish and Louisiana crawfish. The Spanish crustaceans, he says, taste the most like the local product. Pierre Hilzim also prefers Spanish crawfish over the more common Chinese imports for his Crawfish Monica.
Vendors who use fewer pounds of crawfish are more likely to buy from local sources. Jamila's Café will use up to 300 pounds of Louisiana tail meat for its crawfish, spinach and zucchini bisque. Wayne Baquet of Li'l Dizzy's Café will stuff 500 pounds of Louisiana tail meat into 7,000 crawfish heads for his traditional bisque.
Nugent and several vendors claim that Louisiana does not produce enough peeled crawfish to supply Jazz Fest. Roy Johnson, director of market development for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, disagrees and notes that Louisiana should generate 2 million pounds of tail meat this year. "By the time the Jazz Fest starts there is plenty of Louisiana tail meat on the market, but at a price," Johnson says. "What they mean without saying is that they can buy the Chinese meat cheaper."
"The supply is there if you're willing to pay for it," agrees Semolina's Gregg Reggio, who buys up to 30,000 pounds of fresh Louisiana crawfish tails annually for his chain of restaurants. He pays between $7 and $9 a pound for local crawfish, instead of $4.50 for Chinese imports. "It's a commitment that we've made. We like to help out the Louisiana economy, the Louisiana farmer, the Louisiana fishermen. I'm amazed the places that don't use fresh Louisiana product."
Matthew Goldman, the Press and Advertising Director for Jazz Fest, counters that using local products exclusively no longer makes sense. "People from all over the world come here, we have bands from all over the world," he says, "and to think of specifying one item, and saying crawfish should only be from Louisiana, I think it's not the way of the world anymore."
Nugent studied the possibility of requiring that vendors use only Louisiana crawfish, but concluded that fest goers would not pay the premium for the local ingredient. "You wouldn't be able to afford the food out there," she says. "And the vendors, it wouldn't be fair to them."
For food vendors, Jazz Fest is always a financial risk. "In general, Jazz Fest is good," says John Caluda of Coffee Cottage, "but you never know. If you have one or two bad days, that's your profit. I could have 2,000 or 3,000 crawfish strudels left over. You've really got to watch your cost in all areas."
When Quint Davis announced the lineup for Jazz Fest, he trumpeted that 87 percent of the musicians were from Louisiana. Why couldn't Jazz Fest also let the world know how committed it is to local fishermen, shrimpers and farmers? If the festival won't require vendors to use Louisiana crawfish, then perhaps it could identify those that choose to. If tourists from around the world don't know where the crawfish they're eating are, how will they know what they're missing?
Dining Out: New Orleans Cake Café and BakeryI was having a hard morning in the Marigny, and I blame it all on New Orleans Cake Café and Bakery. Mulling over the menu and the white board of specials, I agonized between the Spanish omelet with a biscuit and homemade jam or the French toast with pecans and orange syrup. The French toast had an inescapable appeal, but could I justify eating a slice of cake after a plate of French toast? Because how could I visit the Cake Café and Bakery without eating a piece of Steve Himelfarb's cake?
Imagine the ideal chocolate cake. A perfect balance of yellow cake and chocolate frosting. The cake is moist. The chocolate rich but not cloying and without a hint of grain. It's simple, but so hard to find. Himelfarb bakes that cake.
Himelfarb's cakes are unadorned, unpretentious and all-American. A slice of chocolate cake, white cake with strawberries or hummingbird cake can make you nostalgic for the old diners and coffee shops that made food from scratch. It's the cake you wish mom had baked for your birthday.
At lunch, I suffer no cake conundrums. The chicken salad sandwich—a textural weave of moist chicken breast, crisp celery and the occasional cool burst from grape halves—is a light, healthy lunch that leaves plenty of room for cake. A Reuben on homemade rye with slices of corned beef almost as thick as steaks and a crisp layer of pickled cabbage was more substantial, but I still found space for an excellent red velvet cupcake.
I first ate at Cake Café and Bakery a few days after it opened. It was good. Now it's great.
That morning when I faced a difficult choice, I finally opted for the French toast. The yeasty challah bread, coated in a light egg mixture, arrived over chopped pecans and a pool of syrup spiked with a bright note of citrus. I did not regret my choice, even though I couldn't manage dessert afterwards. I just took home a slice of cake for an afternoon snack. 2440 Chartres St., 943-0010, Wed-Sun 7am-3pm.
Music for Your MouthMusic may feed the soul, but you still have to feed the stomach. OffBeat asked Jazz Fest musicians what they eat at the Fair Grounds:
"What I usually do at Jazz Fest," says saxophonist Donald Harrison, "is set up a day for eating and the main focus is not the music. I don't eat the night before or in the morning. I try to eat as much as I can while there."
His advice to other eaters?
"Always go for the Crawfish Monica first [Kajun Kettle Foods, Food Area II]," he says. "Everybody does that."
Singer Banu Gibson seconds Harrison's advice. "Every year, the first food booth that I head for is Crawfish Monica," she says. "I was once asked if they were to bury me at Jazz Fest where would it be, and I said in front of the Crawfish Monica booth."
Pianist David Egan has a different top priority. "Soft shell crab [Galley Seafood Restaurant, Food Area II] is always number one on the agenda," he says. "Do not pass ‘Go.' Soft shell crab every time."
Pianist Jesse McBride also recommends crab. "Those crab cakes [C.P.G. Catering, Food Area I], they are off the chain," he says.
On the other hand, Ingrid Lucia prefers fowl to seafood. "Last year, that jerk chicken over rice was amazing [Palmer's Jamaican Cuisine, Congo Square]," she says. "That was my favorite."
Trumpeter Shamarr Allen is a Jazz Fest veteran, even though he's leading a band for the first time. "That alligator sausage, that was nice," he says. "That will be the first thing I run to this time."
Everyone's Jazz Fest memories are unique; some more than others. Baton Rouge's Benjy Davis remembers food that wasn't there. "I believe it was last year that I had a fried Snickers bar," he says, but there was no "fried Snickers bar" vendor listed last year.
"The food is an incredibly important part of Jazz Fest. That's what makes Jazz Fest so great," Gibson says. "It's a complete heritage and sense experience. Not only for your ears, but certainly for your taste buds.” Subscribe to offBeat and receive a FREE JazzFest CD! |
