Chart one

When The Crawfish Are Running

Crawfish have a season and it does not care what you had planned. Here is the shape of a Louisiana year, month by month, and what this kitchen is cooking while you wait for the good part.

Twelve months, Louisiana crawfishPick a month

Bar height reads how hard they are running. General Louisiana seasonality, not a promise. Weather moves it every single year.

April
Running hard

The heart of it. The biggest crawfish of the year and the most of them. This is the month people plan a whole Saturday around, and it is the month sacks get spoken for first.

Also in the kitchen: gumbo, fried catfish, po boys, etouffee

Seasons shift. The only honest answer about this week is the one you get on the phone, so call and ask what is in the pot today.

Ask what is running

A person holding out a metal bowl of boiled crawfish and corn
A bowl in the good part of the year. Corn out of the same water.

Chart two

What The Pot Holds

The crawfish come and go. This list does not. It is the standing kitchen, the part that is there in August when the ponds are done and you still want Louisiana food on a plate.

01GumboDark roux, the trinity, stock and time. Chicken and sausage or seafood, depending on the day and on what came in.
02Crawfish EtouffeeThick, over rice. Smothered instead of soupy, which is the whole difference between etouffee and a stew.
03Fried CatfishCornmeal crust, fried to order, out on the basket so it stays crisp on the way to you.
04Po BoysShrimp, catfish or oyster on soft bread. Dressed with lettuce, tomato and pickle unless you say plain.
05JambalayaRice cooked in the pot with the meat instead of beside it. That is where the color comes from.
06Red Beans And RiceWith sausage, cooked down slow until they go creamy without any help.
07BoudinLinks, by the pound, for the ride home as much as for the table.
08Boiled ShrimpSame seasoned water as the crawfish. Peeled at the table, which is half the point.
A bowl of dark roux gumbo with rice, shrimp and okra on a weathered wood table
Gumbo. The roux decides everything before anything else goes in.
A bowl of jambalaya with rice and rounds of smoked sausage
Jambalaya. Sausage first, rice in the same pot after.

Chart three

The Boil, Stage By Stage

Five stages, in order, and the order is not a suggestion. Skip one and you can taste it.

I

Purge

Live crawfish get rinsed until the water runs clean. Everything after this depends on it.

II

Season the water

Cayenne, lemon, onion, garlic. The water is the recipe. Crawfish only take on what is already in there.

III

Boil

Hard and short. They cook faster than people expect and there is no fixing an overcooked tail.

IV

Kill the fire

Corn, potatoes and sausage stay in. The pot comes off the heat before the shells go soft.

V

Soak

The long, quiet part. Seasoning walks through the shell and into the meat. This is what separates a good boil from a red one.

A cast iron dutch oven with the lid on sitting in a live wood fire surrounded by flames and embers
Cast iron in a live fire. Slower than a burner and worth it.
A black cast iron pot hanging on a bail handle over a rock fire ring with flames underneath
The other kind of heat. Wood, a ring of rock and patience.

Chart four

The Water And The Parish

Shreveport sits on the Red River in Caddo Parish, up at the top corner of the state, closer to Texas than to the Gulf. The food does not care about that.

Louisiana cooking came up the river and up the road with the people who cook it, and a crawfish that was in a pond this morning can be on a table here tonight. What changes this far north is not the recipe. It is the paying attention.

Nobody around here walks in with a sack out of their own back yard. Everything has to be chased down, checked when it arrives, and cooked the same week. When what comes in is not right, we would rather tell you it is not right than boil it and hope.

A boil is a whole afternoon. We would rather you spent it on good crawfish.

That is the entire argument for calling first. Ask what came in, ask what the pound is running, ask whether Saturday is already spoken for. You will get a straight answer and you will not waste a drive.

Chart five

After

There is a reason nobody in Louisiana finishes a meal and goes straight home.

Beignets heaped in a dark wooden bowl with powdered sugar scattered around
Beignets, heaped
Square powdered sugar beignets cooling on a black wire rack
Straight off the rack

Fried to order, wear dark clothes

Beignets go in the grease when you ask for them and come out under more powdered sugar than seems reasonable. That is not an accident and we are not going to fix it.

Coffee alongside, if you want the whole thing done properly.

Chart six

By The Pound

There is no price printed on this page, on purpose.

Live crawfish move in price every week of the season with the catch, the weather and the size. Any number set in type here would be wrong by Friday and you would be right to be annoyed about it. Call and you will get today's number, straight.

How they are sold
By the pound, boiled or live, and by the sack when we have them to spare.
How much to figure
Three to five pounds a person is what most people land on. A sack runs somewhere around thirty pounds and feeds a table of eight properly.
Heat
Mild, regular or hot. Say which. We would rather cook to your table than to an average.
Notice on big orders
More in season than out of it. Give us the date and the head count and we will tell you honestly if we can get there.

Get today's number

Chart seven

Find Us

Telephone

(318) 688-7532

The fastest way to find out what is running, what the pound is, and whether the day you want is still open.

Write to us

crawdaddys@hotmail.com

Good for trays, party dates and anything you would rather have in writing.

The city

Shreveport, Louisiana. Caddo Parish, on the Red River. Call for hours and for the day's boil before you drive out.

Call the kitchen