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Gautreax’s Cajun Meats "We, my grandpa, had a cow in the pasture and we’d go and pull the horn off and cut the tip off and we’d stuff the boudin like that, by hand." – Henry Alfred Gautreaux’s Cajun Meats is a food counter inside a Chevron truck stop off I-10 in Duson, Louisiana. No interstate signs advertise the meat market, but plenty of roadside signs announce Miss Mamie’s Café, with “good food and fast Internet.” The Internet they advertise is actually a gambling parlor, and all the good food outside the noon lunch hour comes from the kitchen of the meat market, which is tucked in the front corner of the truck shop. The term “meat market” might be a bit misleading; customers won’t find a butcher at the Chevron or fresh cuts of pork chops. But they will find delicious boudin, hot and ready-to-eat, or packaged frozen for travel. And cracklins under the heat lamps are a regular offering. Most days, Henry Alfred is staffing the kitchen. He makes the boudin, works the register, and occasionally fries up a hamburger on request. Though Alfred has been making boudin for years, after he partnered with friends in the meat market business, he’d rather talk about his real passion: horse racing. He starts his day at 4:30 a.m. to care for the horses he trains at the nearby track, and then later reports to Gautreaux’s to make boudin (though, by “later,” he really still means early morning). The end of each day requires a return trip to the stables to check on the horses again, and weekends are busy with races. When asked how he manages the boudin business on race weekends, Alfred confesses he has to make extra large batches of boudin during the week, in advance, to satisfy weekend customers. Alfred claims to know most of his usual customers by name, but occasionally there’ll be strangers, whose shopping habits reveal them as out-of-state visitors. Locals, he claims, stop by Gautreaux’s and pick up a link of boudin for breakfast. Visitors look for biscuits. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Henry Alfred Mary Beth Lasseter: All right; today is Tuesday, February 17, 2009 and I’m here at Gautreaux’s Cajun Meats. Could you please introduce yourself for me? Henry Alfred: My name is Henry Alfred from Carencro, Louisiana. I was born June 30, 1973. Can you tell me a little bit about where we are and what you do here? Right now we’re in Duson, Louisiana; it’s a little town right outside of Lafayette. And you know it’s a little town; they don’t have much people--about 500--600 people that live here maybe and you know--and that’s about it and close to the interstate and easy to get to. Can you tell me a little bit about the store, the history of it and what you do here? Well the store been here about 10 years now and my buddy and--and--a friend of mine, his name is Gary Gautreaux, who owns this place, his dad built this store and the truck stop and the casino. And you know one day you know we were just fooling around and said man, you know I want to make boudin and crackling. I said you know it’s just something we just come up and we decided to do it and we come up with a little recipe. Picked up a recipe here and there from different people and we put it together. We tried this and tried different recipes and no, this one ain't working and then we mixed a few things together and we found the one we liked and a lot of people around here liked it. And--and it’s not too pepper; it’s you know it’s just right for what the older people around here that can eat it and a lot of young kids too. ----- Tell me a little bit about how you first started with boudin. How did you learn to do this and was it a family tradition? Yeah; well I grew up on a pig farm. I was raised on a pig farm and my grandfather from Amaudville, Louisiana. I was a little boy like every holiday with my grandfather and would go out there around Christmas time and we’d kill a pig and we’d go to like you know my grandma and them would have a big old foot tub. We’d cook the meat; boil it in there, take the pig head and make hog-head cheese with it. And I learned and you know we used--we made boudin with a cow horn. We--my grandpa had a cow in the pasture and we’d go and pull--pull the horn off and cut the tip off and we’d stuff the boudin like that by hand and the boudin intestines, they call it the casing, we’d take the intestine from the pig. And my grandma would sit there with a foot tub and wash it out; clean it, piece-by-piece and we’ll stuff our boudin with that. And I was a little boy like four and five years old; I wanted to do that so you know my grandpa would always tell me next year--next year. No, no, no; pop I want to do it. But I was always the water boy you know. I’d take the pot and boil the water and keep it hot to keep the casing clean and stuff like that and--. I want to tell one day my grandpa said boy, you want to make boudin? I said yes--yes, sir; I’ll make boudin. And I was like five--four, five, six years old. And I started making boudin and taking my finger and you just push it by hand and take all the rice and meat. We had to mix it by hand, you know. It was so hot that’s why we had to let it cool off for about two or three hours and let it make it. And I got to learn how to make it; as I grew up you know every year I was making it then you know and my--it got to the point where my grandpa, he couldn’t do it no more. So my dad, he grew up working at a slaughterhouse all his years at Kirk Martin’s Slaughterhouse in Carencro and I went up there and I used to go to Mr. Kirk and I said man I want to work for you and make boudin. And he always just said well you’re too young you know. And I was like man I’m not too young; I want to work. I want to make--I know how to make boudin. Then you know one day he called me and said you want to work and make boudin? He put me packing; I had to start from the bottom. He said well you know you’re not old enough to work with the equipment that we have ‘cause you know--‘cause of different--different rules. So I started packing it and one day I got--the time come when I got old enough. I started making boudin and I’ve been making boudin since I was about like 13--14 years old and now I’m 35. And that’s--that’s about it for that--with the boudin. Can you tell me a little bit more about your grandparents? Where did they grow up and what was their background? Well my grandfather’s name was Willis Alexander; he was from Amaudville, Louisiana and my grandmother’s name was Earline Alexander from Amaudville, Louisiana. You know they both--they’re just like me; they both grew up on a pig farm and they started off like that you know. That’s all they ever learned how to do. And we raised--they raised their own crop; they raised their own feed like chicken and stuff like that. That’s all we had to eat. You know my--every time we wanted to eat my grandpa would say we have to go kill a chicken in the yard, catch it you know and pluck the feathers. Y'all want to eat tonight? Or we’d eat like cush-cush and milk, you know stuff like that, you know cornbread; you cook it and stuff and you know my grandpa you know he was very hard on me, you know. You know he’s a rough old man; I’ll tell him like man I say man I need to get away from you. But you know I learned from it and it made me a better person. Did you grow up at your grandparents’ house, or nearby, so you could visit frequently? Oh we would--like every--you know we lived next door to them. And I was constantly frequently over there every day feeding the chickens, feeding the ducks, feeding the horses, feeding the cows, and the pigs, and you know and I’d--. Grandpa always would follow me--you know boy don’t do this when you grow up. No pop; I want to work on a farm. And then he still said you know--and that was it; you know I learned from him. Everything I learned--a lot from my grandpa and--and my grandma, you know they taught me a lot growing up and you know grandpa taught me how to respect people and stuff like that. Can you tell me a little bit about their family and your family, how many children did they have and how many siblings do you have? Well I have one, I have three girls and a boy and my mom and them they were like I think six girls and--and a whole, you know a bunch of other little nieces and nephews. I don’t know exactly how much they had--grandkids and stuff like that but we’re a big family. You know the Alfred family from Louisiana is a big family. They combine on my dad’s side; you know there were 83 grandkids combined. That’s a lot of kids--big family from my mom and my daddy’s side, altogether there were 83 grandkids. And that’s very big. ----- Can you tell me what makes your boudin different? Why are so many people from around here coming to get it? Well we have a lot of meat. Some people make boudin and it’s too--they put too much rice. The way I do it, I put a lot of meat and it makes it chunkier and people like around here in Louisiana, people like meat. And if you don’t have too much meat they’ll complain about it you know and it’s meat--that’s all they want is the meat and the flavor and the green onions. And that’s all it is--the meat; I add a little bit more meat than probably people would add to the boudin. Can you tell me a little bit about who your customers are and where they’re coming from to get your product? Well we--basically most of our customers--it’s in this area, a lot of people from here in town in Duson. We get a lot of people from the State of Texas and Mississippi and Florida. ----- Can you tell me--we were talking a little bit about your customers and I’ve noticed today that you seem to know a lot of them by name; a lot of them are running into the kitchen to talk to you. Tell me about that relationship with your customers. Well a lot of the customers you know I grew up with a lot of these people around here and a lot of people know us and the Gautreaux family around here that owns this place, they’re a big family and they’re well known around here in Rayne, Louisiana, Duson and it’s pretty much worldwide. They’re a well known family. And you know the customers you know--everybody around here likes us. We get along very well; we’re friendly with everybody. We have a lot of the older people that come here. We joke around and we pick on them you know. They like stuff like that. And you know it’s--it’s you know as long as you can keep your customers happy and keep them smiling every day and put that smile on their face, well then they always come back. Can you tell me a little bit about this building? You mentioned that there was a café here but could you describe it for people who are listening to the tape and can't see it? Well this building here was built you know with the truck stop and it was a café, the old Miss Mamie’s Café in Duson. And you know a buddy of mine, his father owned this place and he probably--he thought it would be best, we’d get more customers that come through here and give us a better clientele to you know come in here, putting gas, and while they’re getting gas they’d get boudin and cracklings and they’d spend a little bit more money and--and it worked out pretty good. You know and a lot of people come here and it’s world--you know everybody knows this store--Chevron in Duson and Miss Mamie’s Casino. And you know everybody comes here and it’s very noticeable; they come here and get something to eat and they go back in the casino and they gamble. Do you see that people in Louisiana might stop and grab a link of boudin in the same way that people elsewhere might run in a jiffy store and--and buy a bag of chips? Is--is it that kind of thing and why do you think boudin is so popular in this area? Well the people around here in Louisiana, they’re coming here; they’re coming here 4:30--5 o'clock in the morning. They’re grabbing a link of boudin and that’s their breakfast. They’ll eat that for breakfast and then you can tell the people from out of State. When they come here, they grab there chips and they’ll get breakfast. They get like biscuits and stuff. A lot of times I say y'all from--all y'all from Louisiana? They tell me no; well you know I can tell. But the people that’s around here they’re born and raised on boudin and they’ll come here. They’ll eat boudin all day long--lunch, breakfast, dinner--it doesn’t matter. They’ll eat it all day long but the people from out of State they’ll come mid--they come about midday, mid afternoon and just come in here and just start buying boudin. That’s how you can tell the--the people that’s from here and that’s people from around here that stays out of State. How do you eat your boudin? How do I eat it? Well you know sometimes I break the link in half you know and I--I eat it up. I make boudin sandwiches and put it between slices of bread. I take it out of the casing and call it a boudin sandwich. Or we roll it up and we roll it up into balls and we put it in batter and we drop it in the fryer and we call it boudin balls. And that’s how we eat it most of the time but me--my favorite way of eating it is like take it--take the boudin out of the casing, the rice and the meat out of the casing and put it between two slices of bread and make me a boudin sandwich. Sometimes I eat it for supper. And you know the people around here love that too; you’d be surprised--and crackers. You take a saltine cracker, take the boudin out of the casing and you just eat it just like you’re using the cracker as a spoon. ----- Can you tell me a little bit about the French language around here? Do you speak it? A few French--a few you know; everybody--a lot of the older people around here learned how to speak French and you know that’s how I learned. I’m not--you know I know how to speak a little bit. I watched my grandma and grandpa, you know I grew up--my grandpa he--that’s all he ever spoke was French. He--he didn’t know a word--English word at all, you know. You know he’s an American you know he just grew up speaking French, you know and that’s how I learned how to talk French you know. He would tell me something in French you know and I was like--my grandma would repeat it to me in English. But I would always try to come back and say it in French. And he would say no, no, no; it was hard for me to understand what he was saying ‘cause I didn’t know. But you know I was at a very--I was like five years old or six years old speaking French in school and some of my teachers was like where did he learn this from? And I was like my grandma and grandpa, but my grandpa that’s all he ever spoke was English--I mean French; I’m sorry--French. And you know people were like how did he learn this French. And I would sit down there by the older people and listen to them talk French and when they would laugh I would laugh. I didn’t know what they were talking about. I said well if they’re laughing I’ll be laughing; it was funny you know and I would enjoy it. And that’s why I learned how to speak French and that’s about it. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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