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6
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
MAY | JUNE 2015
the
Culinary Influences
issue
I
was sitting in this magazine’s editorial
office, minding my own business,
just scribbling away on a story about
artichokes or copper tea kettles or Thai-
Creole fusion cuisine or something like
that, and somebody said something about
a contest. A crawfish eating contest.
Sponsored by Rouses.
Being a team player, a company man, I
volunteered to represent Rouses in the
contest, which is held every year at the
French Quarter Festival.
Now, a reasonable man might ask: What
the hell were you thinking? Here’s an event
during which you are impelled to eat as
fast and sloppily as you can, and there are
thousands of audience members who have
come primarily to see if you’re going to puke
in front of the crowd and be immortalized
on YouTube.
What could possibly go wrong?
So my editor — my boss — she says to
me: You want to represent Rouses in the
crawfish eating contest?
She and her deputy give me the up and
down. You know:The eyes, up. And then the
eyes down. Which is what a guy generally
wants from a couple of fine-looking female
colleagues in the workplace (Like I said:
What could go wrong!) except, well — as
has generally happened all my life when
women give me the up and the down: They
were not impressed.
Full disclosure: I’m a skinny white boy, OK?
And, by Louisiana standards, I am a Yankee
also, even though I’m from Maryland,
which is technically south of the Mason-
Dixon line.
Long story short: They had their doubts.
• • •
The day finally came for me to give a
demonstration of my picking, sucking
and pinching skills to gain my colleague’s
confidence in representing the company.
And here’s where I had another new self-
discovery: Although the volume of my
consumption can be pure alpha male, my
technique is actually a bit, shall we say,
precious?
See, I have an obsession removing that black
stringy thingy that runs down the spine
of a crawfish before I eat it. I have always
assumed this thing was the crustacean’s
intestinal track, but truth is — I have no
idea what it is or why it’s there. I just know
I don’t like it.
And then there’s the
mustard.Or,what I call
the mustard — that orange-yellow crawfish
fat which some folks claim is where the true
flavor of a bug is but which — just being
honest here — kinda sorta makes me gag if
I eat very many.
It’s a textural thing. You wouldn’t
understand.
So, over the years I have adapted an eating
technique by which I break open the shell
and pinch the tail with one thumb and
forefinger while using my other opposable
thumb to scrape the black thingy and
the mustard off — all in one coordinated
sweeping motion — before depositing the
delicious — and oh so very clean — meat
in my mouth.
I always thought this a rather sophisticated
and hygienic, but after watching me ingest
just three crawfish, one colleague shook
her head as she walked away from the
table, muttering over and over; “Mustard?”
The other simply folded her arms across
her chest and said to me: “Your Yankee is
showing.”
• • •
In an effort to try to bring up my game,
my editor sometimes showed me YouTube
videos of prior competitions. In one of them,
the Black Widow, a Major League Eater,
simply ingested the entire animal — tail,
head, meat, shell, claws — and mustard!
• • •
The night before the main event, I had a
dream in which I became a vegan.
• • •
And so the day of reckoning arrived. I was
entered into the “media/celebrity” category,
which makes sense, I guess — because I
used to be both.
My opponents were mostly a collection
of TV and print journalists from New
Orleans — Fletcher and Travers Mackel,
the identical broadcast twins from WDSU,
and reigning contest champs for the past
two years.There was LBJ from News With
a Twist, Tania Dall from WWL-TV and
Shelly Brown from Fox 8 News.
There were a couple other local reporters
A
Bite
to the
Finish
by
Chris Rose +
photos by
Jerry Moran