Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail: Unique Flavor Awaits You

LAKE CHARLES, LA. -- Venture into Richard's Boudin and Seafood Mart in Sulphur, and you're likely to greeted even before the door closes behind you. Under a sign that proclaims "God Bless Us Cajuns," you'll be served a fresh, foot-long link of mild boudin plucked from a steamer. You can sit down and eat among the patrons, who might be dressed in anything from coveralls to Sunday clothes -- or you can get it to go, then head out for your next stop along the Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail. Richard's is just one example of 17 locations on the nothing-else-like-it Boudin Trail. The self-guided tour is tastiest drive you'll take along (and around) Interstate 10 in the Gulf Coast corner of Cajun country. You'll eat just like the locals do, enjoying a favorite Louisiana fare that you won't find anywhere else.

The Lake Charles/Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau has teamed with the area's top boudin creators to create the Boudin Trail. Arm yourself with a tank of gas, a free Boudin Trail map, and an appetite, and you'll be on your way. Boudin is Louisiana's spiced-up hybrid of pork or beef sausage. It's a tender, savory mix of pork, rice, liver, parsley and onions, variously seasoned with salt, red pepper, black pepper and garlic powder.

Everything's stirred together, stuffed into casings and sold hot by the pound.  Call it "BOO-dan" -- or, better, "BOO-dehh," with a French-style fadeoff at the end. Call it a "link" if the regional sound escapes you. Either way, call it delicious. There's mild boudin and hot boudin. There's smoked boudin, with a crispy casing. There's shrimp, crawfish and even alligator boudin. Bite it, slice it or squeeze it, and you'll discover Louisiana's love of food crammed inside.

No two boudin recipes are alike. Whether it's sold at a restaurant, a grocery store or a gas station, boudin has fillings and flavors reflecting the individual tastes and traditions of each boudin maker.

The stops on Boudin Trail are centered in Lake Charles, but they extend in all directions, according to Shelley Johnson, executive director of the Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau. A starting point for a tour might be Abe's Grocery, which has been a fixture in Lake Charles for decades in various incarnations. Abe's boasts a familiarity and a following that spans generations. Wrapped, ready-to-eat packages of Abe's boudin have been picked up for years as lunch, dinner or a snack. (Some souls even swear by boudin for breakfast.) Measured by sheer years and volume, Abe's is perhaps the best-known boudin maker along the trail.

    Also in Lake Charles, Homsi's has a pair of locations in the central part of the city. The customers range from construction workers on lunch break to office people picking up several pounds of boudin for co-workers. One person, a stray New Jersey native, was willing to give Louisiana boudin a try. Though she was more accustomed to German and Italian sausage from back home, she sampled some of the moist, rice-filled boudin favored locally -- and said she like it. Then she had some more.
 
    In southeast Lake Charles, easily accessible by the Interstate 210 Loop, you'll find Hackett's Cajun Kitchen. They've been doing boudin and other foods for 22 years at Hackett's -- mild, spicy, crawfish and shrimp boudin, plus a smoked version. Karen Hackett, who co-owns the establishment with husband Charlie, says some people driven from out of town for boudin -- "and then they'll buy 40, 50, and 60 pounds of it to take back home," she says.

    Billedeaux's Cajun Kitchen serves a diverse clientele along U.S. 90. On any given day, its parking lot is filled with pickups of plant workers and the sedans of retirees. The restaurant stays open even after the kitchen stops cooking, and there's a meat case for other products -- but for boudin, the locals keep an eye on the steamer right behind the counter, looking to buy mild and smoked links.

    North of Lake Charles is Peto's Deli, a Boudin Trail stop along the main drag in Moss Bluff. Look past the gas pumps and the convenience store, and you'll see the walk-in area with a concrete floor and old-school meat cases. Look again, and you'll see the framed copies of its local food awards -- proof of the widespread popularity of Peto's offerings.
 
    The Boiling Point in Sulphur captures traffic off Interstate 10. While your order's being prepared, laugh at the two fanciful photographs above the service counter. One picture shows a toddler preparing a huge Cajun cookpot at 7 a.m.,  and the other shows the same child, apparently exhausted, when the job's done at 7 p.m. The junior "cook" in the pictures is actually the grandson of the Boiling Point's boss man, John Williams, but the photos do give an idea of the nonstop cooking that takes place. Also in Sulphur, the Sausage Link beckons passersby with painted storefront windows that tout all sorts of good things to eat. Order at the counter, then watch your order being made in the kitchen. You can eat in a sit-down area surrounded by Louisiana festival posters while people on the opposite side do some shopping from a floor-to-ceiling self-service meat case.

The westernmost stop of the Boudin Trail is in Vinton, where a rustic-style storefront welcomes you to Cajun Cowboy's Restaurant. Even close to the Texas border, homemade Louisiana boudin is served hot and fresh. You can wait at the bar while placing an order to go, or you can sit down under a large-screen TV and enjoy your food with the locals.

    Meanwhile, Rabideaux's Sausage Kitchen in Iowa is the easternmost stop of the Boudin Trail. At Rabideaux's, it's all about the food -- from bags of cracklins sold by the cash register to the deer-meat processing service offered during hunting season. Boudin is among the specialties on the menu. Each link of boudin here comes as a fresh-wrapped treat. You can peel down the foil after taking each bite of its regular or smoked boudin.

Boudin masters can be found at other points around the area, too. Bring along a cooler, and you can pick up boudin from a wide variety of places within the space of one day. For example, DeQuincy, a short drive up from Sulphur, is the home of Comeaux's Cajun Gold. It's the northernmost stop along the Boudin Trail. Also, Westlake, along the Calcasieu River in western Calcasieu Parish, offers Boudin Trail travelers the Bar-B-Pit Stop. Down in the residential-and-retail area of south Lake Charles, the Market Basket supermarket on Nelson Road has carry-out boudin at the butcher case that has earned the Boudin Trail designation.

The Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail isn't limited to Calcasieu Parish, either. Closer the coast, the full-service Brown's Grocery offers boudin at its Cameron Parish store in Hackberry. Its boudin is also sold at a second location, Brown's Neighborhood Market, on the Gulf Highway near the Calcasieu-Cameron Parish line.  Part of the fun of the Boudin Trail is seeing how local places create boudin in their own unique way, then sell and serve it with such friendly, come-as-you-are informality. The other part of the fun is taking away plenty of boudin as a tasty souvenir for later. There's only one real challenge here : Seeing how boudin is left by the time you get home.

    For more information on the Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail, call 1-800-456-SWLA, connect to www.visitlakecharles.org or visit the Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau office along the Lake Charles lakefront.