There aren’t many places in the world where you can have a transcendent gastronomic experience in a gas station parking lot. One of them, as any boudin lover can tell you, is South Louisiana. But another is Italy. Here’s how I know that. Twenty years ago, before we had kids or real jobs or much in the way of responsibility, my wife and I visited Louisiana friends who were living in Rome. Although Eric and Lynne are Canadian by birth, they had come to graduate school at LSU and, aside from a year Lynne spent working for the United Nations in Italy, they’ve never really left. We were all in our late twenties—an age when friends showing up to sleep on your couch is more or less expected when that couch happens to be in Rome. After some very agreeable days spent eating and drinking our way around the Eternal City, the four of us piled into an impossibly small rental car and drove south: destination Sicily. Somewhere around Naples we stopped at a gas station and Eric wandered inside in search of a snack. What he returned with was a plastic bag half filled with chalky liquid, in which something about the size and shape of a softball was sloshing around. It was mozzarella di bufala, the legendary fresh cheese made from the milk of water buffalo and the most delicious thing any of us had ever put into our mouths. During the ensuing week we ate a preposterous amount of this silky smooth, lightly salted delicacy, which has been made in the region around Naples using the milk of Asian water buffalo, for centuries. How Asian water buffalo ever came to Naples in the first place is something no-one seems to agree upon but I for one am glad they’re there. I came home with dreams of establishing Louisiana’s first commercial buffalo mozzarella operation. Why, I reasoned, couldn’t a simple, fresh, delicious cheese made from the milk of a huge, swamp-dwelling ruminant be a hit in food-fanatic Louisiana? But then life happened. Reality intervened: there were magazines to publish, bills to pay, kids to have. Twenty years later, all I have to show for my boutique farming fantasies are a flock of chickens, a stunted avocado tree, and a strange talent for growing cucumbers.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that I was soon to be neighbors with a herd of water buffalo! Having had her own life-changing buffalo mozzarella experience, my friend Sarah Roland (Bayou Sarah Farms founder, Lake Rosemound resident, chicken whisperer, and aspiring cheesemaker) has taken the bull by the horns, so to speak, and imported eight Asian water buffalo to Louisiana with ambitions of building up a milking herd. Now these huge, impossibly gentle beasts reside in pastoral splendor not five miles from my house. On a recent evening, while lounging against a couple thousand pounds of extremely contented water buffalo, Sarah explained the finer points of mozzarella di bufala production, which depends upon the exceptionally high fat content of water buffalo milk (double that of cow’s milk, while lower in cholesterol) to achieve the cheese’s deep flavor and uniquely silky texture. Her grand plan: to produce enough milk to add artisanal cheese and hand-made gelato ice cream to the offerings of pastured chicken, fresh eggs, and blueberries that Bayou Sarah Farms already sells.
This strange, delicious development is the latest in a series of cottage industry-scale farming efforts cropping up (excuse the pun) around the Feliciana parishes. They include dozens of varieties of microgreens (Westdome Nursery), heirloom tomatoes (Bon Vivant Produce), and gourmet mushrooms (Maggie’s Mushrooms), among many others. And if the response from local gourmands, plus the Baton Rouge-area restaurant and grocery store clients they serve, is any indication, the market for high quality, locally grown food is healthier than ever. It feels a bit like a return to the Felicianas’ agricultural roots. As St. Francisville grows and evolves, with more folks moving to the parish every day, this feels like a very right and sustainable thing. If Sarah gets her way, maybe one day I’ll be able to have gastronomic revelations in gas station parking lots much, much closer to home. Until then perhaps I can score the occasional buffalo-sitting gig. If I never get to realize my dream of raising water buffalo in South Louisiana, living vicariously through the success of Sarah and others is a pretty good consolation.
