LSU contributed tools, lumber, and custom-built crab shedding boxes, while other organizations contributed volunteers and marketing efforts. At the Ledets’ dock, Boston-based Legal Sea Foods, a restaurant company with 32 units on the East Coast, contributed volunteer labor. “One of the things we can do, that perhaps we have not done enough of, is bring seafood from Louisiana to our restaurants up north,” said Legal Sea Foods president Roger Berkowitz during a company leadership meeting held in New Orleans.
The Louisiana Seafood Board estimates that 50 percent of the state’s 2,500 crabbers might be back at work on the water.
In late September 2005, just three weeks after Katrina, Hurricane Rita hit the western and south-central parts of the state, including the Tabasco factory on Avery Island. Billy Boswell, director of foodservice marketing for McIlhenny Company/Tabasco Brands, and his colleagues waited nervously as the floodwaters crept up to one of the company’s mash aging warehouses. “[The floodwater] came to about six inches of going into the factory—the only location that makes Tabasco in the world,” says Boswell. “It was a close call.” To protect the island and its product, McIlhenny Company is building a levee 23 feet high and 95 feet wide on the north side of the island.
Harold “Took” Osborne, vice president of agricultural operations at McIlhenny Company, recalls seeing whitecaps in the pepper fields. “We had a 10-foot surge on the island, and it put half of our fields under water,” says Osborne. “We were concerned about the salt water staying in the fields as it did in some of the sugar cane, but we had a record crop last year.”
Other farmers in south-central Louisiana were not so fortunate. The area produced sweet potatoes, rice, crawfish, peppers, and sugar cane—what Osborne calls “the king” of crops for the region. Some of the small farmers are getting aid from the Louisiana Small Farm Survival Fund, which is run by Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance. The Survival fund has raised about $175,000, which will be distributed to subsistence farmers.
By all accounts, Mardi Gras 2007 was a party—in the old-school way. Where the 2006 event was kept small, for reasons of respect and practicality, this year’s celebration felt more like old times. Some 30,000 hotel rooms were available, compared to just 13,000 last year, and most of them were filled. Flights into the city were packed. An estimated 700,000 revelers filled the 12 street blocks surrounding Bourbon Street earlier in the day, and flowed into the French Quarter as the parades wound down and the parties started up.
Even a brief evening storm—far from the “biblical” rains the farmers need to wash away the salt—didn’t slow the revelry.
The day after Mardi Gras, Billy Jacob reflected on Creole ingredients and cooking and the Cajun way of life after the hurricanes. “[The displaced residents] have moved the culture and the flavors with them,” he says. “I’ve seen authentic Cajun seafood and po-boy shops opening up all over—in Memphis, Atlanta, even Alaska. I’ve been in Atlanta going on 15 years, but I cook the same way my parents raised me, and I’ve introduced all our neighbors to that cuisine.”
For Popeyes, he adds, it means the company’s fan base is spreading out all over the country. “Cajun foods and cooking are part of the culture, part of the way of life,” he says. “Popeyes is entrenched in the culture of Southern Louisiana, and New Orleans is in our food.”