Four Shreveport entrepreneurs weigh the likelihood of a freakish crawfish season
by Chris Jay
Edited by Sara Hebert
Made possible by the Stuffed & Busted Patreon
It kind of seems like a perfect storm. Not only has the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted our ability to do things like gather for crawfish boils and attend Mardi Gras parades, but a couple of poorly timed waves of extreme cold have swept through—with more on the way—making the beginning of the 2021 crawfish harvest even more complicated than it was already bound to be.
Ryan Dunning, co-owner of The Cajun Asian, says that he’s seen unprecedented wholesale prices on live crawfish.
“(In late January) there were people charging $9 or $9.50 per pound, which I couldn’t even rationalize,” Dunning said. “At the beginning, it’s always rough. But I really, honestly think they started fishing too early this year.”
The Cajun Asian recently relocated from Bossier City to a South Shreveport truckstop near The Port of Caddo-Bossier, where they have more space and the ability to serve alcohol. They introduced the wildly popular “Viet-Cajun” style of crawfish to northern Louisiana before moving out of their original location at 1964 Airline Dr. in Bossier City. That address is now home to a great-looking Vietnamese restaurant called Phở Viet.
“Short supply has been an issue with crawfish, but it’s getting better and better every week,” Dunning said. “Give us a couple more weeks, and the crawfish’ll be really great.”
I spoke to Dunning on Saturday, Feb. 6. The low temperature in Shreveport on Monday, Feb. 15 is predicted to be around seven degrees.
It may be longer than a couple of weeks.
When I spoke to Duc Duong, owner of Kim’s Seafood and Po’ Boy restaurants in Shreveport and Bossier City, he was also feeling the pinch of early-season crawfish prices.
“On February 1, I sold boiled crawfish for $6.99 (per pound) for the first time in my life, and I’ve been doing this for sixteen years,” Duong said. “It’s a double-whammy, coronavirus and not enough crawfish.”
Duong’s Bossier City restaurant is located approximately 50 yards from the Krewe of Gemini Den, scene of numerous Carnival season celebrations. During an average Carnival season, crowds would spill out of Krewe of Gemini events and into his restaurant. The night of the annual Krewe of Gemini Float-Loading Party would typically be the largest sales event of his calendar year.
“The loss of the parades is a big hit for me,” Duong said. “The parade weekends are usually our biggest sales weekends of every year.”
But whatever you do, don’t count Duong out. He has survived hard times. The levee failure following Hurricane Katrina destroyed his first restaurant, and Hurricane Rita stymied his efforts at resettling in Southeast Texas. But his Bossier City location has been a hit from the outset, the rare crawfish joint that everyone seems to be able to agree is good.
That Bossier City location recently expanded into an adjoining retail space, so he has ample room to “space people out” for dine-in, and he’s still doing swift takeout business at both locations.
“I’m hanging on, and hopefully I can make it through,” Duong said. “I’m still blessed to be able to open, and all of my employees are healthy today. That’s all I can ask for.”
Darius Spells is the owner of Red Barn Cajun Crawfish and Seafood on Pines Road. It’s one of a small handful of highly regarded local restaurants that have opted to remain curbside-only throughout the pandemic.
“We switched the whole business model to curbside, we made a whole three-sixty,” Spells said.
I asked Spells if that switch was prompted by a feeling of responsibility for the health and safety of Black and brown communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. He thought about my blunt and tactless question for a moment.
“Everybody has a free choice in America,” he said. “You do what you feel is right, and in our business, we decided that what was right was curbside-only.”
I wondered aloud whether there’d be much of a crawfish season to miss in 2021. Just the late freezes or just the COVID-19 pandemic would be enough to deal a serious blow to Louisiana’s crawfish farmers and vendors. Can they survive both at once?
“Crawfish season will be fine,” Spells said. “Considering that it’s a staple of Louisiana culture, and that it gives people some joy and a sense of normalcy. When it’s crawfish season, it’s crawfish season, no matter what.”
Henry Griffin, one of my go-to sources on the topic of crawfish economics, isn’t as optimistic as Spells. Griffin runs Shreveport’s outstanding Creole Café & Catering in partnership with his mother, Dr. Gail Griffin, and he frequently boils crawfish for local bars and businesses.
He is also a straight-talker who, like me, tends to curse more often when discussing subjects that are important to him. Strong language disclaimer: the remainder of this article is rated “R” for realness.
“It’s shit this season and it was shit last season,” Griffin said. “I wanna say either fifteen or sixteen crawfish farms have went out of business, just in the last year alone. You got family farms that are going out of business after 50 or 60 years. It’s people hurting. I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”
I asked Griffin if he could possibly lay out a basic overview of why crawfish are becoming more scarce and expensive.
“The shutdown orders, the hurricanes, and now the extreme cold,” he said. “But it’s mostly COVID-19, I think. Because when you eat crawfish, it’s a social event. Really big crowds. Even at restaurants, you’re packed in there sitting next to folks you don’t even know.
“Think about it, man,” Griffin continued. “You got three days from the time crawfish are sacked up ‘til they’re dead. If they don’t sell, you can lose $1,000 real easy. People are asking me to boil crawfish right now, and I don’t wanna do it. There’s no money in it.”
The immediate threat, as I see it, isn’t that Louisiana’s crawfish industry will disappear. The immediate threat is that it will contract, and the surviving crawfish farms in places like Branch, Church Point and Crowley will make the understandable decision to sell their product closer to home.
“It’s people hurting. I’m not gonna sugar coat it.”
-Henry Griffin,
Creole Café
“The big farms that survived last year, most of their crawfish is staying down south,” Griffin told me. “They’re friends with their customers down there.”
Duong’s struggle to secure crawfish has left him with the same impression. He considers the crawfish farmer that he buys from to be a personal friend—but still can’t finagle enough crawfish.
“Yesterday, I told him I wanted twenty-five sacks,” Duong said. “He said that he didn’t know if he could give me any at all, because the supply is so limited.”
As I was wrapping up my call with Griffin, I told him that I hated the way this story was shaping up. I’m aware that I have a reputation for forecasting gloom and doom. Maybe, I suggested, all of this is just a shifting of the seasons.
“Maybe the crawfish will come out of the ground later this year, so they’ll be bigger when we do get them,” I said. “Maybe there’s a bright side.”
Henry laughed.
“Nah, bro,” he said. “I honestly don’t think there’s a bright side to this one.”
