Food Chefs
COOKING CAJUN: AT TOUPS’ MEATERY, A CELEBRATION OF THE LAND OF BAYOUS, BOUCHERIES, AND ROWDY FAMILY FEASTS Raised deep in Cajun country, chef Isaac Toups draws inspiration from his family’s 300-year-old ties to the region—and its rich, pork- and seafood-laden cuisine By Crystal Shi
Isaac Toups, Louisiana “born and braised’ chef and owner of Toups’ Meatery in New Orleans.
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TOUPS’ MEATERY
66 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022
was declared by Lagasse to be the best he had ever had. Another best-seller is Toups’s own creation: double-cut pork chops glossed with cane syrup gastrique, served with caramelized meat-streaked dirty rice. “I’m super proud of my heritage, what my parents and my family and my culture have brought,” Toups said. “I see a lot of dilution in culture nowadays; I see a lot of things get lost.” He’s working to keep it alive, both in and out of the restaurant. Take boucheries, traditional whole-hog roasts, which are experiencing a small revival. Toups didn’t grow up with them, but later made them a twice-annual family tradition,
feeding anywhere from 20 to 100 people at a time. He has a picture of one of his daughters, Poppy, when she was 3 or 4 years old, handing out cracklins at her first one. They’re not much like the practical rituals of yore, which were community efforts to share the labor and use every scrap of the pig. Now it’s “more of a party, a get-together”—with plenty of whiskey to go around. But it’s also “a remembrance,” Toups said, something that brings you closer to the land and the past. It’s a reminder to “have a little more respect for your ancestry, and the things you have now.” “This is what we used to do, and we should remember that,” he said.
DENNY CULBERT; COURTESY OF TOUPS' MEATERY
saac toups has deep roots A perennial best-seller: in Cajun country. He grew up the double on the outskirts of the south cut pork Louisiana town of Rayne, popchop with ulation 8,000, in Acadia Parish; cane syrup gastrique. his ancestors first settled there in the Atchafalaya Basin in the 1700s. Toups’s mother grew up a PraiToups’s gulf rie Cajun on flat plains where seafood rice, corn, and sugarcane grew in couvillion is abundance and people bred pigs based on his and hunted wild game. His father grandmother’s— Maw Maw came from a family of Coastal Cajuns, raised by the bayou on Toups's—famed recipe. a bounty of fish, crab, shrimp, and oysters. He reaped the best of both worlds. Cracklins, Cooking Cajun means eating a boucherie from the land, Toups said, and staple, are Cajuns are a resourceful bunch. another “We started cooking what we restaurant do out of necessity. But then we favorite. decided we liked it, and traditions were born,” he said. Toups’s whole family grew up learning to hunt, fish, and cook. “You get into it so early that you don’t actually have a first memory of it; you’re just always into it,” he said, before referencing when he began cooking professionally Location: at age 21. “I had a leg up because I 845 North could shuck oysters better than a Carrollton lot of chefs.” Ave., New After a decade of cooking un- Orleans der Emeril Lagasse in New OrleWhat to ans, sharpening his fine dining Order: experience, Toups opened Toups’ Double cut Meatery with his wife, Amanda, pork chop, in 2012. The food takes a sophis- Couvillion, ticated approach to rustic Cajun cracklins, cooking—a tribute to his family meatery board recipes and deep-rooted heritage. Phone: The charcuterie is housemade; 504-252the cracklins are legendary. 4999 The Couvillion, a stew of local Gulf Website: seafood served with a gleaming ToupsMeatery. mound of crab-fat rice, is based com on his grandmother’s recipe—and
