For zydeco musicians, the Boudin Trail is the circuit of clubs and dancehalls between Houston and Lafayette where bands prove their mettle. For the road-tripping Epicurean, the boudin trail is a loose network of grocery stores, meat markets and lunch counters throughout Cajun country that serve up the incomparable rice, liver and pork sausage native to southwest Louisiana.
For the best boudin, you must cross over the feral, prehistoric wonderland of the Atchafalaya Basin and hit the scenic byways along either side of Interstate-10. Once over the basin’s geographic and cultural boundary, you will find boudin at almost any corner store, usually kept unceremoniously in steamer trays by the cash register for quick service.
Late in July, a traveling companion and I made a weekend road trip with the express purpose of sampling as much boudin as an aggressive eater can handle. Without exception, all of the boudin we found was wonderful. What surprised us, however, was the variety of flavors and styles of preparation from town to town. Aside from one home-cooked meal served by friends, we consumed virtually nothing on the trip but boudin, Miller High Life and Coca-Cola over the weekend and still found each link satisfying and delicious.
There are a few things about the culinary boudin trail that lend it to the road trip experience. Every town in the area we drove through had at least one market renowned for fresh boudin. These towns are close enough together that travelers can eat a link, let it settle, think about it a bit, feel the craving for more and then suddenly find themselves at the door of another market in a different town. As an added bonus for the itinerant eater, it seems some of the best boudin is served from markets that also double as gas stations.
The first part of our trip was a guided tour of boudin purveyors in Lake Charles provided by no less a source on the matter than Sean Ardoin, leader of the band Zydekool. As we started our adventure, Sean warned us that our first stop would be the best of the entire trip. As it turned out, two days of eating and nine markets later, his prediction proved true. The best boudin we tried came from Peto’s Market, located on Highway 378 in Moss Bluff, just outside Lake Charles proper.
Peto’s is attached to a large gas station and convenience store. Country music is piped through the outdoor sound system. Inside, there is a cautionary sign for patrons reading: “Eat cracklin’s at your own risk. Not responsible for broken teeth.” Fortunately, boudin holds no such dangers and Peto’s version was divine. The rice stays together in distinct grains and the rest of the filing is more pork than liver, lending a cleaner flavor overall.
We tried both the spicy and the mild, but there was no point in the latter. Once you have a bit of spicy boudin, the heat and flavor completely dominate your mouth no matter what you eat next. The only advantage of the mild version is that you can wolf it down faster.
Next, Sean brought us to a Market Basket grocery store, where his local’s insight to the boudin scene proved itself again. Market Basket is a chain with several locations in Lake Charles and not all of them serve boudin. The one we visited, located on Country Club Road, had previously been an independent grocery store called Mere’s. The family store was known for its boudin and Market Basket kept the recipe. Go to the butcher section at back of the store, ring the bell, and ask for the smoked boudin. This variety holds a woody, richer flavor that seems to hit your nose and palate at the same time.
Another place that hides excellent boudin amid the grocery aisles is Abe’s Market, on Highway 14. Abe’s makes a wide variety of boudin, including the crawfish and shrimp varieties. Eating seafood boudin feels a little like eating an etouffeé with your hands as you squeeze the rice and crawfish or shrimp tails into your mouth from the casing. Abe’s is stocked with everything from malt liquor to 50-cent baseball caps, but people line up at the boudin counter like there isn’t anything else in the store.
A lot of the boudin markets we visited posted signs that were either inadvertently funny or plain disconcerting, like Peto’s warning about teeth-cracking cracklin’s. At Abe’s, a hand-lettered sign advises customers that “food stamps may not be used with hot boudin but may be used with cold or frozen boudin.” Fair enough.
After sampling the best of Lake Charles boudin and Ardoin hospitality, we set off for a self-directed jaunt through the countryside on our way back to New Orleans.
Peeling off I-10, our first stop was in Church Point. Richard’s is the big local name in boudin in Church Point. They make it there and farm it out to small markets all over town. We had it at a Bayou gas station on Highway 178, served in foil wrap for 99 cents a link. Less than a mile away, we had Richard’s again at a store called Curly’s, a low-slung rustic structure on Highway 35 that looks like it had been knocked down and rebuilt with a few of the pieces missing. You can get more than boudin at Curly’s; notes pinned to a bulletin board by the front door advertised pit bulls for sale for $100 and, separately, pigeons for $1. We stuck with the boudin and found it delicious, with a juicy flavor and strong taste of black pepper.
A few miles down the road we came upon Ronnie’s Boudin and Cracklin House, on Highway 357 in Opelousas. The image on Ronnie’s roadside sign of a pig gleefully roasting itself by a fire was all the recommendation we needed. The consistency of the rice in the boudin here was much softer than at other places, making for a very smooth filling.
From Opelousas, we followed Highway 182 to Swifty Food Market in Carencro, just outside Lafayette. The boudin here was very spicy and fresh but what really set it apart was the price. At most of the places we visited on our trip we paid between $2 and $2.50 per pound. At Swifty’s, we paid $1.21 for a pound.
Finally, we stopped at Poche’s Market on Highway 31 in Breaux Bridge. If you like the liver flavor in boudin more than the pork, you’ll love Poche’s spicy boudin, which is bursting with liver. Poche’s has a wide assortment of milder boudin, including the seafood varieties. They also sell their stuff frozen and packaged, which is helpful for bringing back samples for your friends at home who otherwise won’t believe how good the boudin is out in the country.
Should you go on a boudin road trip, remember to bring a knife. Few of the markets we stopped at had anything like a dining area, so we ate in the car and used a pocketknife to slice the links of boudin into manageable hunks. But eating on the road was a big part of an overall wonderful experience. The whole time, radio station KBON 101.1 FM gave us an unlikely soundtrack of zydeco, country and Motown tunes while we rolled across the sunny, verdant prairies of the Cajun countryside, wiping spicy boudin from our mouths and but never the grins from our faces.
