Chefs Samantha and Cody Carroll
On waterway bird diets, delighting a camera crew, the Country Roads Supper Club, and what their next restaurant might look like.
Comfort is not the first feeling you’d associate with chefs who prepare deep-fried veal brains and smothered duck hearts. But Samantha and Cody Carroll, chef-owners of Sac-a-Lait in New Orleans and Hot Tails in New Roads, have grown from Cajun kids to culinary students to celebrities in just a few short years by nailing the balance between familiar and thrilling. On their new Food Network series, Cajun Aces, the husband and wife hunt, farm, fish, cook, and travel between their two restaurants. We invited the pair (who were also part of our first class of Small Town Chefs in 2014) to travel a bit further west this March, to prepare a bird-themed dinner on the banks of Lake Martin at Maison Madeleine. We spoke with Samantha recently about waterway bird diets, delighting a camera crew, meeting fans, and what their next restaurant might look like.
What excites you about Supper Club?
SC: We are looking forward to this event because it’s very Louisiana. I’m excited for the scenery—with people dining outside along Lake Martin. We love any kind of dinner or experience where it’s in the element. As restaurant owners, we try to provide an element for people to dine in here, but this is like the end-all be-all of it. I’m excited to be there myself and for people to take in that experience: with the food, the scenery, the birds, everything.
What inspired you and Cody when creating the menu?
SC: We pull from memories—maybe we were bird hunting or seeing a bird or going to another sanctuary. We thought about what the birds eat, too. It’s not scary at all. Everybody thinks it’s going to be worms or something. If you just look around at the different waterways: the birds eat shrimp, the spoonbills eat crawfish. The waterway birds don’t eat the scary things. They eat fish.
So we’re doing a crawfish dish for sure. At Sac-a-Lait, we have a crawfish tourtière—an Acadian style pie—but we’re tweaking it for the Supper Club to make it more deconstructed. So it looks like maybe a bird has gotten a hold of it—not in a messy way, but an artistic way!
We’re also doing a hot quail dish that has a 400-day fermented hot sauce that we make. We started making this hot sauce when we first opened Sac-a-Lait and we’ve let it sit for over 400 days. It turns a little dark—it’s a deep auburn color. It’s still very hot, but we mellow it down with a little lemongrass, brown sugar, garlic, a little honey.
What’s it like with Cajun Aces having people see you in your element?
SC: Whenever the camera crew showed up, we wondered, “How professional do we need to be? Because we still like to have fun.” But you’re just working with a camera, so you’re talking to a camera. There are no emotions on that camera! But we knew that everyone was interested and that they were learning something new when, after we would quit filming a certain scene of us farming or fishing, the crew would come back and ask us questions. It was very reassuring that we were getting our point across. Our crew became very interested and had more questions. They were researching: “Oh, so they do do it like this over here!”
Was Cajun Aces a surprise for you? Or was it a goal to get national viewership to what you’re doing?
SC: It definitely was a surprise. But we’d been through so many different castings for television projects: Guy’s Grocery Games, all these kinds of things. We’ve always been approached by casting calls, but we never went for it. “I don’t know if that’s really my style.” But then we got a Facebook message from a girl that worked at the production company. We were on our way to boil crawfish in Alabama, working. I thought, “I’ve got time. I can answer this message now.” She asked if we were really a husband and wife couple. I said, “Yes, and who are you?” She told me her name, that she was with a production company, and that they were searching for a husband and wife chef team.
It was very reassuring that we were getting our point across. Our crew became very interested and had more questions. They were researching: “Oh, so they do do it like this over here!”
With some of these shows, you can get lost in the jumble really. Nobody knows what’s going on. I don’t like feeling like that. But these people were very professional and supportive. They sent us a camera and we filmed our lives for two weeks, then they edited that into a little video and sent it off to Food Network. Food Network said, “We love that! Send a crew out there.” They sent a crew of four people who followed us for two days. And then they bought a miniseries, technically. They called us and said, “We have some interesting news. We definitely have a pilot, but then they want three more episodes after that. So it’s like a miniseries.” They were too afraid to air one episode and piss everybody off. So that was a good feeling.'
With some of these shows, you can get lost in the jumble really. Nobody knows what’s going on. I don’t like feeling like that. But these people were very professional and supportive.
Do you feel like you get to give a good representation of what you do and what you care about?
SC: Oh, yeah! We get so much good feedback, mainly from locals. So many people I don’t know are messaging us on Facebook and Instagram, leaving us little notes about how much they love the show. Leaving us voicemails at the restaurant. It was very well received by Louisiana, that’s for sure.
How do Hot Tails and Sac-a-Lait differ and how do you keep them separate as they grow?
SC: A lot of people that have been to Hot Tails that have come here say, “It’s totally different, but I can still feel that vibe.” At Hot Tails, we focus on having that down-home Southern feeling. A place where you can roll in after work or just with your family. At Sac-a-Lait, we have that same feeling. Hot Tails has more fish camp-type food: seafood and poboys, steaks and burgers. At Sac-a-Lait, it’s a lot more elevated. We use crazier ingredients too: organs like duck hearts, we have venison on this menu, we have tuna tartare with venison sweetbreads. We have a pan-roasted clam bisque that we make with sweet potato and ginger. It’s definitely not Hot Tails, cuisine-wise. But you can still tell that they’re related.
When you opened Sac-a-Lait, was that an opportunity to let Hot Tails be Hot Tails while you got to explore more?
SC: When you think about people making albums, their albums never sound the same. With Hot Tails, we reached a point where we knew that artistically we had more to give and more to show. We have more that we’ve learned and we want to have an outlet. That’s what Sac-a-Lait was. Cody and I were in here, after we signed the paper, after it was ours, and it was just empty—we said, “Okay, this is going to be Sac-a-Lait. We’re going to make this Sac-a-Lait.” That idea of refined yet edgy Louisiana cuisine is what we wanted to go for.
That idea of refined yet edgy Louisiana cuisine is what we wanted to go for.
How do you and Cody work together as husband and wife and as chefs?
SC: We really like the divide and conquer strategy. He’ll take that part and I’ll take this part, then we meet in the middle. We’ve always done that. Whenever we hire someone new, a lot of times they don’t know we’re a husband-and-wife chef team, because we’re not affectionate at work. We’re not lovey-dovey or anything like that. When we’re at the restaurant, we’re at work. We have a job to do. But it’s nice because we do have that level of understanding that goes along with being in a relationship, while still keeping things separate.
Is there a third restaurant down the road?
SC: Definitely. We’ve had a lot of time in the past three years just to travel. We’ve been to Japan. We’ve been all over the country. We’ve been to Jamaica, and it’s been so enlightening and very refreshing and inspiring. We have three or four concepts in our minds that we want to do. Now we’ve got to play out one or the other. Which one’s going to win?
Will there always be some Cajun element to what you do?
SC: Always. That’s what we do. I’m not saying we couldn’t do Japanese or whatever, but it would always have a flair of Louisiana.
How do you interact with your audience as it grows?
SC: The people who take the time to travel from Texas or Florida or wherever to come eat at this restaurant because they saw this little twenty-eight-minute show … more than anything we want to make those people feel like they belong here. We just want people to feel like they can come here—that they’re like a relative of ours. They know us. Especially if they pull us to the side and talk to us. Those people are taking time out of their days. First off, they watched your TV show. Then they got in their car and drove hours to come and eat here.
Those people are taking time out of their days. First off, they watched your TV show. Then they got in their car and drove hours to come and eat here.
The other day, we had a father and his two daughters. He said, “We’re from Texas. My daughter saw your show, and I said, ‘Well, New Orleans is just a hop and a skip. Let’s just go this weekend.’” So they loaded up their car, came to New Orleans, and ate here. When I walked to their table, the little girl froze up. I said, “You cannot be starstruck for watching me for four episodes! And definitely not with Cody.” She said “Oh my God, I didn’t know you were actually going to be here.” I said, “Well, Cody’s here too. Wanna come in the kitchen?” She looked at her dad, like, ‘Is this really happening right now?” I brought her in the kitchen and they were the happiest people ever, taking pictures, saying, “I can’t wait to tell my friends!” It was a good feeling. More than anything, we just want people to feel at home—wherever we’re cooking.
Tickets to our March 25 Supper Club here. Learn more about Chefs Cody and Samantha Carroll here.
This article originally appeared in our March 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.