Culture
J U LY 2 0 2 1
46
THE
HEART OF CUISINE ON
THE
CAJUN
PRAIRIE
//
SMOKED & SEASONED
W
F O O D WAY S
sausage anywhere else in the world that lives up to Teet’s, or boudin that holds a candle to T-Boy’s. And to, as a child, be just a little bit confused when you heard out-of-towners or people on television refer to the misogynistic slur: “Women belong in the kitchen.” “In Ville Platte, the men learn to cook before the women do,” said Kermit Miller, the second generation owner of Jack Miller’s Bar-B-Que. “They learn from their dads, and they teach ‘em young.” Listening to him—and then a few hours later to Ross Lafleur, the third generation owner of Kary’s Roux down the street—say something similar, photographers Dagan and Valli Soileau and I all nod in MEAT CAPITAL understanding. In both of our homes, we wives do fine work in the kitchen. But when it comes to the traditional Evangeline Parish delicacies—rice and gravy, gumbo, a roast—it’s the men who, generally, take the lead. Settled across a sparsely-populated expanse of prairieland (Ville Platte means “Flat Town” in French) made up mostly of soybean farms, rice fields/crawfish lakes, and cow pastures—Evangeline Parish’s food culture is a very particular thing. In contrast to the seafood-heavy diets of our Cajun cousins settled along on the bayous and coastlines of the St. Mary, Terrebonne, and Lafourche regions, our ancestors excelled in meat. “I have quite a few friends from Houma and Thibodeaux, and it’s so interesting talking to them because they don’t put chicken or sausage in a gumbo,” said Lafleur. “They never ate a meatball stew. And I had never heard of a shrimp and egg stew until I was older.” Ville Platte claims the title “The Smoked Meat Capital of the World,” a designation locals hold with utmost pride. Even to step just outside of the envelope of the rural prairie into Lafayette or Alexandria or Lake Charles is to threaten the quality of smoked sausage available. The skin is never crinkled just right, the taste of various added seasonings overwhelming the taste of smoke. For
The Kitchen Culture of Evangeline UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLICATED CULINARY LANDSCAPE OF THE SMOKED Story by Jordan LaHaye Fontenot • Photos by Parish Road Media
“T
he ballpark,” I thought to myself, one leg hanging out of my car’s open door on a recent May morning, parked in front of the Jack Miller’s Bar-B-Que Sauce factory. “It smells like the ballpark.” Like sno-cones and sweaty babies and visor-clad moms yelling “Hot Boudin, cold couscous, come on Ville Platte push push push”. I could practically taste the tangy, onion-y sauce dripping down my chin, staining my fistful of napkins a bright orange and totally relinquishing the burger of any responsibility for bearing significant flavor of its own. And I hadn’t even stepped inside yet. 46
J U LY 2 1 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
To grow up in Evangeline Parish is to share in such a universal trove of food-centric experiences. To associate Jack Miller’s with a slice of orange-blotched Evangeline Maid bread, soaking atop a Boston butt and some dirty rice in a Styrofoam box on a Sunday after mass. To automatically equate any recipe’s suggestion for “salt & pepper” with Slap Ya Mama, and to always add extra. To use The Pig Stand as a geographical marker, even though it’s been closed for close to a decade. To drive down Main Street early in the morning and catch a whiff of burning roux on the air, saturating its way through town from Kary’s down the street. To always, for the rest of your life, struggle to find smoked
