NOLA.com has a good article on the Andouille makers in Laplace, Reserve, Vacherie and others. The pictures are great if you go to the website. These places are now known as the Andouille trail. I think this coming weekend I'm going to go give them some business.

LINK

Tradition endures as River Parishes andouille makers get smoking again after Ida

Lester Folse holds up a rack of smoked sausage at La Bon Boucon, his butcher shop in South Vacherie, part of the Andouille Trail.

By generator power, Dale Cox was able to reopen his third-generation family grocery store and butcher shop Cox’s Meat Market in Reserve just two days after Hurricane Ida ripped through this River Parishes community. A few days later, by the power of pecan wood and tradition, he stared smoking andouille sausage again.

“We had to get open,” said Cox. “There wasn’t much else around that could open, and people were stuck at home, they were cooking, we started seeing all our regulars from close by coming through again.”

Cox’s grandfather first opened the meat market in 1933 just up the road from its current location close by the Mississippi River levee. Its signature product, the andouille, is linked to a tradition going back much further in Louisiana history, and in particular to the food heritage of the River Parishes.

Today, a circuit of small, independent butcher shops carry on that tradition. After Ida, many of these smokehouses and butcher shops are getting back to business, though others face a longer road ahead.

While andouille sausage is now a grocery store staple - at least around Louisiana - the type produced in the River Parishes stands apart as a regional specialty. The classic examples here are thick, dark and deeply smoky and packed with large chunks of pork with a blend of seasoning that changes from shop to shop. This is the bedrock ingredient for countless traditional Louisiana dishes, especially gumbo and jambalaya.

The best-known keepers of this tradition are in LaPlace, which proclaims itself the “andouille capital of the world,” holds its annual Andouille Festival and crowns its own Andouille Queen. It was one of the communities ravaged by Ida.

With the annual three-day Andouille Festival beginning Friday, the rush is on to make enough of the spicy, rich German sausage to feed the many visitors who will pass through LaPlace.

Jacob’s World Famous Andouille is a small shop in LaPlace with wide renown. Holly Lions is the fifth generation of her family to operate the business, started by Nelson and Camille Jacob in 1928. She could only wonder about its fate as Ida roared above, but was relieved the next day to find its building still standing. It took some roof damage but the smokers were intact and Jacob’s quickly got back to business.

Even with the local post office out of commission, Jacob’s has restarted its normally-prolific shipping service, which counts customers across the country.

“It’s either Louisiana people who moved and tell us they need their fix, or people who say someone from Louisiana recommended us and so they have to have it,” Lions said.

With a cobbled together system of emails and phone calls, the orders have been coming in again.

“We’re finally getting somewhere and it feels good because people are reaching out saying they want to support us,” Lions said.

At Bailey’s Andouille, located practically next door to Jacob’s up Airline Highway, the status is unclear. The shop has been closed, and management could not be reached for any updates. However, the strip mall it calls home does not appear seriously damaged, and other offices in the same building have been functioning again.

About a mile away, closer to the river, Wayne Jacob’s Smokehouse remains temporarily closed after losing a substantial portion of its roof during Ida.

In in the days after the storm, owner Jarred Zeringue was able to salvage some of the store’s inventory that was still cold in large freezers and gave this away to neighbors and people coming by.

But just when he’ll be able to start producing more is a question that hinges on insurance and rebuilding. He is hoping to be ready to resume in time for Thanksgiving.

Just last year, the River Parishes Tourist Commission started a new campaign called the Andouille Trail, showcasing the shared heritage of many different butcher shops and restaurants around the area through their traditional flavors. That runs from the famous LaPlace purveyors to neighborhood groceries, like Don’s Country Store in Reserve (also back open after Ida) and small outposts across the river.

In South Vacherie, Lester Folse, owner of La Bon Boucon (“the good smoke”), is dealing with significant damage to his home after a tree crashed through it during the storm. But his cottage-size butcher shop made it through in better shape, and after two weeks it reopened. Folse has been slowly replenishing his inventory, one smoker load at a time.

“This is go time, this is the time of year of we need to rolling,” Folse said.

Indeed, while andouille is a year-round product, seasonal demand runs highest at this time of year, from the start of football season through the holidays. The traditional producers do the lion’s share of their business then.

At Cox’s Meat Market, Ida hit immediately after the family suffered a much different blow. Henry Cox, father of the current proprietor, died from cancer just shy of his 94th birthday. But his son and the grocery’s tight-knit staff got the store back open Sept. 1. The first customers entering that week found a mourning wreath to the elder Cox by the butcher case, and a fresh supply of staples for their own home cooking.

Cox's Meat Market, which dates to 1933 in Reserve, reopened two days after Hurricane Ida hit, operating on generator power. It was temporarily "cash only."

The grocery was born in hard times, in the midst of the Great Depression, and it has served its community in different ways through the generations. For many years it operated a grocery truck that went house to house with meat and dry goods, working a territory from the Sunshine Bridge to Kenner.

As soon as water pressure returned after Ida, Cox began making fresh sausage again. The smoker is now turning out hot sausage, smoked sausage, tasso and other specialties, including, of course, the andouille. It’s providing the bedrock ingredients for the comfort food home cooking that many of Cox’s customers are returning to now.

“We lost a lot for the time being,” Cox said. “But we will make it.”