The Kitchen Culture of Evangeline

Understanding the complicated culinary landscape of the Smoked Meat Capital

by

“The 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.

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 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.”

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.

“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 and Pig Stand Bar-B-Q Sauce down the street—say something similar, photographers Dagan and Valli Soileau and I each nod in 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.

[Read a story about the cast iron skillet's crucial place in Acadiana cooking here.]

“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 almost seventy years now, Teet’s Food Store has established itself as the most distinguished smokehouse in town, a bastion of the smoking tradition in a parish that once supported up to twenty smokehouses at a time. Now, according to Teet’s third generation owner Luke Deville, there are only five. The secret to his store’s success, he said, is the simplicity in their sausage’s ingredients: “Salt and red pepper,” he said, standing in front of their smokehouse, the tasso scent settling into all of our hair and clothes. “Everyone else tries to put black pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder. Our sausage has a clean taste.”

“I think it’s funny,” said Lafleur, “that people love the taste of smoked sausage, but it wasn’t done that way to have that flavor at all. [Our ancestors] raised everything in their backyard and had to find a way to preserve it. It’s just basic cooking.”

Against a broader backdrop of Louisiana cuisine that is worthily exalted for creativity and ingenuity, in the tight-knit communities of Evangeline Parish—isolated as they are at about a thirty minute drive from any interstate ramp—it is this spirit of authenticity that prevails. We’re still making our great grandmother’s gumbo, and we’re still using every piece of the pig.

“I think it’s funny,” said Lafleur, “that people love the taste of smoked sausage, but it wasn’t done that way to have that flavor at all. [Our ancestors] raised everything in their backyard and had to find a way to preserve it. It’s just basic cooking.”

"That’s for the hog head cheese,” Paul “T-Boy” Berzas casually offered as explanation for the wide-eyed, waxy-skinned pig’s head sitting behind the meat counter at his store and slaughterhouse. The Mamou institution’s freezer selection includes ponce, eight varieties of boudin, plus sixteen varieties of sausage (green and smoked), four types of tasso, marinated everything; and chickens stuffed with cream cheese, cornbread, crawfish etouffée, and more.

[Read a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired chronicle of the Boudin Trail, including T-Boy's, here.]

T-Boy’s boudin is widely recognized as some of the best in the region. When he was first opening the store in 1995, Berzas said he worked from several of the traditional recipes he’d encountered growing up in Mamou, tinkering and toying with them until, finally, his friends and family confirmed that he had nailed it. Like Deville, Berzas claims that his recipe’s prominence comes partially from its resemblance to the old way of doing things: using fresh liver and black pepper in his secret seasoning blend when most boudin purveyors have moved away from both. He also attributes his success to using exclusively fresh meat he purchases live and processes himself, and the freshest green and white onions available, “We started off making one hundred to one hundred fifty pounds every day,” he said. “Last week, we made about five thousand pounds.”

T-Boy’s is the last of Evangeline Parish’s slaughterhouses, and Berzas noted that, for a while, the demand had slowed. “It is a lot of work,” he said. “But last year, this turned into a whole new business.” The COVID-19 meat scare had people turning what Berzas described as “the old businesses” back into the new. “We used to kill a calf or two a week throughout the whole year,” he said. “Now, people want to have a calf in the freezer. Last year we would kill fifteen to twenty per week.”

[Read about how Acadiana meat markets are sharing the taste of the region through deliveries in this story from our June 2020 issue: Meat in the Mail.]

And so, in a way, life and business in Evangeline has come full circle. Evangeline Parish has seen plenty of change in the last fifty years. A small but largely thriving conglomerate of communities throughout the twentieth century, more recently Evangeline has seen a significant economic downturn that can mostly be attributed to the establishment of I-49 in the 1980s. The interstate bypassed Ville Platte, and through traffic in the town essentially ceased entirely. Now serving an almost exclusively local, largely low-income clientele, businesses have closed left and right for the past few decades—and restaurants have been hit especially hard.

Today, around eighteen eating establishments total serve Evangeline Parish’s population of 34,000. The oldest of the set is a beloved local landmark called either The Frosty Inn or Zoyon’s, depending on who you ask. It’s been around since 1960 and is little more than a glorified hamburger stand. Similar, casual concepts have survived the longest: Tom’s Fried Chicken in the backwoods of Bayou Chicot at least has three or four tables inside, and it's been around since 1983. David and Lori’s in Mamou has a menu soaked in greasy golden goodness, plus daily plate lunch specials. And The Crawfish Barn in Vidrine opened in the late nineties, with the same sort of fare plus boiled crawfish, oysters, and a massive dance floor. Growing up on the Pine Prairie end of the parish, our family spent many a night at Joe’s Diner and The Pine Cone, both of which have been around long enough to have doubled for many years as video rental stores. And then we’ve got three Chinese restaurants and “The Mexican Restaurant”: El Charro has been run by the same family for decades now, and many locals insist they use Slap in their seasoning blend.

As far as a truly traditional Cajun menu, Café de La Salle has been serving up its lunch buffet of gumbos, rice and gravies, and etouffées since 1998. “When you eat here, it literally feels like you’re eating something you cooked at home,” said Elizabeth West, the Marketing Director for Evangeline Parish Tourism, gesturing toward my overflowing plate of stewed fish and crawfish fettuccine. “I know I'm gonna get good food, and good food as it if it were cooked in my family's kitchen, but I didn't have to do all the work.”

Besides these old timers, various concepts have rotated through the wilting historic buildings of the parish, most lasting no more than six months, a few making the two year mark. Whenever a new restaurant opens in town, people generally hold their breath and say a prayer for the owner. In recent years, a handful of daring entrepreneurs’ new restaurants have survived the challenging food landscape, often thanks to reliance on other revenue streams or limited menus and hours. The Krazy Cajun Café opened up just down the road from the historic Hotel Cazan in Mamou a few years ago; Mrs. Sheila's soups and sandwiches have become a hallmark at the local gift shop Cottage Couture. The folks at David and Lori’s opened up The Bait Stand in Pine Prairie, which pairs its extensive selection of fishing lures with some of the best poboys around, plus plate lunches. Big D’s Smokehouse recently settled into a closed-down meat market to offer a selection of smoked meats and plate lunches throughout the week. Point Blue BBQ’s got the same idea, but they are only open on the weekends. Then, there are Evangeline’s real treasures: gas station meat markets like Paul’s, B&S, Charlie’s, and The Quick Stop, who frequently offer cheap and indulgent plate lunches weighted down with Boston butts or rice and gravy or other local delicacies.

The Cajun Catfish Buffet, opened in 2014, is an outlier. Offering the same good old Cajun food as many of our other restaurants, the Buffet has managed to draw a following off of the interstate, coming from all parts of the region to try their seafood. In 2020, the same owners finished renovating the long-abandoned Pizza Hut in Ville Platte into a fried chicken joint, The Cajun Coop.

Perhaps the most ambitious of our surviving restaurateurs is Chef Jay Gielow, who opened Café Evangeline in 2019 in the historic La Banc de la Ville Platte, built in 1907. One of the best-maintained historic buildings in the parish, the gorgeous space has in recent years hosted one restaurant or bar concept after another: it’s been called The Bank Note, The Cock’s Tail, and simply “the old bank”. From Minnesota, Gielow’s background includes a decade of managing Landry’s Seafood in Breaux Bridge and New Orleans, and a six year stint serving as the Culinary Director at the Dewey Balfa Cajun and Creole Heritage Week, which for many years was held at Evangeline Parish’s Chicot State Park. Though a transplant, Gielow has managed to energetically immerse himself in the community, and currently serves as President of the Evangeline Parish Tourism Commission. His menu offers a selection of local ingredients presented in a more elevated fashion than other offerings in the parish—Trout Amanadine, Seafood Crepes, Crab Cake Stuffed Trout—along with more casual, seasonal offerings of sandwiches and plate lunches. “Our original menu changed before we even opened because I realized the significance of smoked meat here,” he said. “That was fun, to start using smokehouse stuff and learn how to cook with all of that.” It’s been an uphill climb certainly, he said, but this July, Café Evangeline celebrates its third anniversary.

When asked about the parish’s limited restaurant scene, which stands in contrast to its distinct influence in Louisiana’s food landscape as a whole, Miller, Lafleur, Deville, Berzas, and West each admitted to the region’s economic struggles, but then pointed out something else: People like to cook here.

“When we see each other, our family and friends, the very first thing we do is say, ‘What you cookin’ for supper?’” said Berzas. “We always go to someone’s house, to cook and visit. Sometimes there’s a little cold drink here and there. That’s how we gather in Cajun country.”

West agreed, saying that she—a millennial—didn’t grow up ordering food or going to restaurants as often as her family ate at home, though she loves to eat out and support local businesses these days. “So many people really do just cook at home,” she said. “That’s how most of us grew up around here.”

Deville pointed out, too, that celebrations in Evangeline tend to revolve not just around food, but around the stove. “Prime example,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re having a birthday party for my two boys. Most people would go buy a pizza or something. We’re going to smoke a Boston butt.” Just before Memorial Day, Bertrand at T-Boy’s spoke to the same phenomenon. “For this weekend, we fixed up a bunch of little small hogs, stuffed and seasoned for the Cajun microwave.”

“When we see each other, our family and friends, the very first thing we do is say, ‘What you cookin’ for supper?’” said Berzas. “We always go to someone’s house, to cook and visit. Sometimes there’s a little cold drink here and there. That’s how we gather in Cajun country.”

The result of a longstanding homesteading culture, combined with a lack of outsiders and a struggling economy—Evangeline Parish’s cuisine takes place mostly in private homes, where tradition reigns. Which explains the prominence of products like Jack Miller’s sauce, The Pig Stand Bar-B-Q Sauce, Kary’s Roux, and Slap Ya Mama. This place’s contribution to Louisiana food culture is derived from the home cook, and that is where its sense of innovation is most powerful.

Deville pointed out the unique opportunity Evangeline’s isolation provides for meat markets like Teet’s, which expanded into a full-fledged community grocery store in 2019. “We’re such a small community,” he said. “Everybody has got the same taste. In a bigger community, you have people from all over the world, all over the state. All these different cultures and tastes. It’s a good and bad thing. But being small, everybody eats the same, everybody cooks the same.” And smoked sausage is on everybody’s grocery lists.

What Gielow has tried to do with Café Evangeline is daring. “The idea was always to go against the grain a little bit, to offer something that isn’t offered or hasn’t been offered up here for a while,” he said. “Fresh cocktails, fresh local ingredients, something beside the eight dollar plate lunch full of carbs. Just to try to do something that didn’t exist in Ville Platte, so that people don’t have to drive to Washington or Sunset or Opelousas for a nice dinner.”

The biggest challenge, Gielow said, has been getting the locals to accept him into the community and trust he’s there for the long haul. In addition to simply listening in to what his customers like, he’s also decided to put his money where his mouth is; he and his wife moved from Breaux Bridge to Ville Platte in 2020, going all in. In addition to his work with the tourist commission, he’s also been involved with the Main Street Revitalization program, and before COVID-19 was hosting the first live music events the city had seen in years, including a full-fledged street dance in front of the restaurant in November 2019.

“People don’t like change here,” he said. “And Ville Platte is about ten years further behind socially than a lot of the places I’ve lived. Everything moves at a slow pace.” But it’s moving, he says, and the city’s support of Café Evangeline shows it. “If I can get over to Café Evangeline at least once a week, I’m happy,” said Miller, who told me he makes a point to eat out at one of the local restaurants every day for lunch with his wife.

Just a few streets over from Gielow’s restaurant, a brand new development has been causing a stir throughout the parish: Ville Platte now has a gourmet coffee shop. Speaking with Hundredfold Coffee owners Steven and Sarahi Sawtelle, and their daughter and manager Jennifer Hopkins, I learned that they had been hoping to start something meaningful in their hometown for quite some time. After buying one of those old abandoned buildings off of Main Street, they brainstormed ideas ranging from a soup kitchen to a youth center. They almost decided on a gathering place where people could bring their own lunches that also offered drip coffee, when Hopkins—who has worked as a barista in Austin, Texas for four years—suggested they expand to a full coffee menu and transform the space into a coffee shop. After extensive renovations and the addition of tasteful, coffeeshop-quirky furniture and décor, the space feels “like you are leaving the little town and stepping into a big city,” according to Sarahi. In Ville Platte social media circles, it’s all anyone is talking about.

When I visit, a man approaches me, introduces himself as Dirty Daryl, and tells me that he painted my parents’ house when I was three. I overhear someone a few tables down talking about going to a wedding this weekend for one of my high school classmates. And if you step outside and breathe in deeply, you can catch a hint of burning roux. The little town, it’s still here, too.

evangelineparishtourism.org

[Get a recipe for Evangeline Parish Sauce Piquante, straight from a Cajun Grandmother, here.]