In this episode of DETOURS, James and Jordan are joined by Baton Rouge Chef Yvette Bonanno to discuss the ins and outs of Louisiana's challenging 2024 crawfish season.
Courtesy of Yvette Bonanno
Yvette Bonanno, the spokesperson for the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board.
As the spokesperson for the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board, a lifelong Louisianan, a chef, and a foodie—Yvette has had an up-close-and-personal look at this year's struggles and their impact on Louisiana food culture as a whole. The three of us also explore the historic role of crawfish in Louisiana culture, its future as a delicacy product, and Yvette offers some recommendations for chefs using the protein to its fullest potential.
The State of Louisiana's 2024 Crawfish Season
Yvette's Restaurant Recommendations
During the episode, Yvette makes several recommendations of chefs doing really special things with Louisiana's most culturally-significant crop, crawfish. Add these restaurants to your "Must Try" list this crawfish season:
Michael Dardenne at The Saint Restaurant at The St. Francisville Inn
Yvette recommends the Eggplant Lucille with Louisiana crawfish, jumbo shrimp, and fire roasted peppers. (Read more about Chef Dardenne, who was one of our 2020 Small Town Chef Award Winners, in this article.)
Jeremy Langlois at Houmas House
Yvette recommends the Sweet Potato Curry Crawfish Bisque. (We've written about Chef Langlois's mastery in the kitchen time and again. Read his story here and here and here.)
Gino Marino at Gino's
Yvette recommends the Crawfish Arancini.
Yvette recommends the Crawfish Sausage and the Crawfish Arancini.
Darrell Harris of Southern Fusion Catering
Yvette recommends the Crawfish Fritters.
Anne Milneck of Red Stick Spice
Yvette recommends you try her recipe for Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Crawfish. (Read more about Red Stick Spice in these Country Roads stories from 2016 and 2022.)
Jim Urdiales of Mestizo's Louisiana-Mexican Cuisine
Yvette recommends the Crawfish Tamale.
Other Shoutouts Go To:
Chef Don Bergeron of Bergeron's City Market
Erik Loos at Luke New Orleans
Eric Sibley at L'Auberge Casino's 18 Steak
Tony's Seafood & Deli (who supplied us with the crawfish étoufée and boiled crawfish during the episode)
Other Crawfish Resources
Find information on Louisiana's crawfish industry, recipes, nutritional information, fun facts, and more.
This mobile app, created in 2017, shares all the best places to get live and boiled, crawfish and provides up-to-date pricing.
Recipes from the CR Archives
We've pulled some of the most delicious crawfish-focused recipes we've got from our long backlog of culinary coverage in Louisiana. So go buy a pack of Louisiana crawfish (or save some for peeling from a boil) and get to cooking.
Crawfish Enchiladas
An étouffée, with a cheesy twist
Crawfish Cornbread Dressing
Cast iron recipes from Charmaine Dupré's Life Around the Table
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Crawfish Pie
Create the Frugé Farms’ experience in your own kitchen.
Lucie Monk Carter
Crawfish Mac & Cheese
Chef Peter Sclafani's Italian-Creole take on an American classic
Crawfish and Tasso Chowder
From Red Stick Spice's Test Kitchen
Photo by Lucie Monk
Linguine with a Crawfish, Mushroom, and Tarragon Cream Sauce
A superior trio
Photo by Frank McMains
Reading List
Here, find articles, interviews, and other materials that we either mentioned in the episode, or that we think might enrich and/or further the conversations we had.
The Folklife Commission's Tradition Bearers of 2023: The Makers of the Crawfish Bisque
Jan Collet Webre and her sister Jill Collet Zimmerman make a traditional crawfish bisque every year for the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival.
Photo by Joseph Vidrine, courtesy of the Louisiana Folklife Commission.
Jan Collet Webre and her sister Jill Collet Zimmerman make a traditional crawfish bisque every year for the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival.
Crawfish Tales
A Spicy Pilgrimage Down the Bayou Country Crawfish Trail
Alexandra Kennon
Brandishing a hefty boiled crawfish outside of A&B Seafood in Houma.
The Crawfish Season 2020
Remembering the unique set of challenges COVID-19 brought for producers and distributors of Louisiana's most culturally significant crop.
Paul Kieu
This crawfish season has been a difficult one for Louisiana farmers, who are struggling to sell their product to a market in which gathering is forbidden—leaving most of March and April's sales totally dependent on individual drive-thru purchases.
A Crawfish History
A Q&A with author of A Succulent History of the Cajun Crustacean, Sam Irwin
Crawfish Etouffée: The Good, the Bad, and the Serendipitous
The Country Roads staff of 2009's search for the best crawfish étouffée in the land.
Despite English and Australian roots, publisher James Fox-Smith happily dives into the Great Etouffée Debate.
Pairings for Pincers
Camerata at Paulie's sommelier Chris Poldoian shares the perfect wines for crawfish season
Meet Your Co-Hosts
Photo by Raegan Labat
James Fox-Smith
James Fox-Smith is the Publisher of Country Roads magazine, and has been on the masthead since 1995 when he followed a Louisiana girl (Country Roads' Associate Publisher Ashley Fox-Smith) to her hometown of St. Francisville to take over her mother's magazine. The past two decades have made this Aussie into a true Louisianan, as passionate and knowledgable about the intricacies of this region's culture as any bayou-born Cajun. Overseeing the company for much of its forty-year history, he's worn almost every hat the magazine has to offer, from sales to editorial to marketing—and writes a monthly publisher's column, titled "Reflections" which you can peruse, here. You also might catch him hosting the Louisiana Public Broadcasting's weekly series Art Rocks!—which spotlights artists, performance, culture, literature, history and the impact of art in our world.
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot
Jordan LaHaye Fontenot is the Managing Editor of Country Roads magazine, and has been a part of the editorial team since 2018. Born and raised in the heart of Acadiana, she came to Country Roads with a passion for Louisiana storytelling. She holds a degree in English from Louisiana State University, where she received the 2018 Sarah Sue Goldsmith Award for Nonfiction. In addition to her work at Country Roads, she has published stories in regional and international publications including inRegister, Atlas Obscura, and the Oxford American. Her first book Home of the Happy: A murder on the Cajun Prairie, will be published by Mariner Books in 2025.
Alexandra Kennon
Alexandra Kennon is the Arts & Entertainment Editor at Country Roads since 2020, and has been writing and photographing stories about Southern culture, cuisine, history, and art for the magazine since 2016. She holds degrees in Journalism and Theatre Arts from Loyola University New Orleans, where she was Managing Editor of Pacemaker-winning university newspaper The Maroon, and could typically be found flitting between the newsroom and black box theatre. She has acted in productions ranging from independent festival films to Tennessee Williams world-premiere stage productions, and previously led historical, culinary, and cultural tours of New Orleans. Her book Classic Restaurants of New Orleans, published by Arcadia/The History Press with a foreword by Walter Isaacson, is available most places one finds books.
