9 Things Louisianans Miss Most After They Move Away

Leaving Louisiana means getting used to a new address, a new routine, and, often, some disappointments.

The hardest parts to replace aren’t always the ones anyone thought to appreciate while they were close to home.

These are the things Louisianans miss most after they move away.

1. Boudin From a Gas Station

Thousands of Louisianans leave the state every year, and boudin is usually the first thing they bring up when someone asks what they miss.

Scott, a small town outside Lafayette, sells so much of it that the Louisiana Legislature named it the Boudin Capital of the World in 2012.

Best Stop, one of the town’s boudin shops, says Scott’s makers turn out about 4 million pounds of it a year.

Not from a butcher counter.

From a gas station, scooped warm out of a steam table next to the beef jerky and the lottery tickets.

Try ordering that anywhere outside Cajun country and see what the cashier says.

2. Crawfish Season

Louisiana grows and catches more crawfish than any other state, somewhere between 100 million and 120 million pounds a year, according to the state’s wildlife agency.

A backyard crawfish boil isn’t a quick meal.

It’s a folding table covered in newspaper, a pot big enough to bathe a toddler in, and a couple of hours nobody’s in a hurry to end.

Grocery stores in other states sell crawfish tails sometimes.

They don’t sell the ritual of peeling forty pounds of it with your bare hands next to people you love.

That part stays home.

3. A Rouses Down the Street

Rouses Markets has stayed in the same Louisiana family since Anthony Rouse Sr. opened his first store in Houma in 1960.

His grandson Donny runs the company now, still headquartered in Louisiana, still stocking the boudin, the file, and the Community Coffee that a national chain wouldn’t bother carrying.

The chain only operates about 76 stores, all packed into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Move a few states over, and a Rouses run stops being an option at all.

No substitute exists.

Publix and Kroger don’t come close.

4. Community Coffee in the Pot

Community Coffee has filled Louisiana kitchens since 1919, when Cap Saurage started blending it behind the counter of his Baton Rouge grocery store.

His family still owns it.

Five generations of Saurages have run the company, and it markets itself hard to Louisiana expatriates.

A Mardi Gras King Cake coffee comes back to the seasonal lineup every Carnival season just for them.

Grocery shelves outside Louisiana and a few nearby states mostly don’t carry any of it.

Transplants order it online instead, paying shipping to keep the same bag by the coffee maker their parents always kept.

Community Coffee comes with a return address.

Lots of people pay extra postage to keep getting mail from home.

5. King Cake Season

Louisiana bakeries treat Carnival season like a second Christmas rush.

Haydel’s, a New Orleans bakery three generations of the same family have run since 1959, ships king cakes across the country every year.

Randazzo’s, a bakery in Slidell, ships king cakes across the country too, all through Carnival season.

It’s worth the shipping cost.

That’s not tourists buying a souvenir.

Those are transplants paying to have a plastic baby mailed inside a pastry because the grocery store where they live now has never heard of a king cake.

6. Snowballs Worth the Wait

Louisiana’s snowball culture runs through New Orleans, where vendors shave ice fine enough to soak up syrup instead of just wearing it.

Hansen’s Sno-Bliz has run the same corner since 1939, and the founders’ granddaughter Ashley still runs the machine her grandfather built by hand.

Lines wrap the block on a hot afternoon.

It never disappoints.

Move to a state without a snowball stand.

The best a transplant can find is a gas station slushie machine, and it doesn’t come close to Hansen’s.

7. A Second Line on Sunday

New Orleans, Louisiana’s biggest city, throws several thousand second line parades a year.

Brass bands lead a crowd of strangers through the Treme and the French Quarter, waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas.

Many of them aren’t tied to a festival at all.

A Social Aid and Pleasure Club just decides a Sunday afternoon deserves a brass band, and the whole neighborhood falls in behind it.

Anybody can join in.

Move somewhere without that habit, and an ordinary Sunday starts to feel like something is missing.

8. Saturday Mornings at Fred’s

Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, Louisiana, has opened for four and a half hours every Saturday morning since 1946, and nothing else happens there the rest of the week.

A local radio station has broadcast live from the bar since 1962, the disc jockey calling the whole show in Cajun French.

Fiddles and accordions start up, and grandparents two-step next to teenagers on a dance floor the size of a kitchen.

It’s ten in the morning.

Move away from south Louisiana, and Saturday mornings go back to being just Saturday mornings.

9. Saturdays in Death Valley

Louisiana State University (LSU) packs 102,321 fans into Tiger Stadium on a Saturday, a crowd that counts as the state’s sixth-largest city for the afternoon.

Almost everybody calls it Death Valley.

The Sporting News named it the best gameday atmosphere in college football back in 2009, and the reputation never left.

Tents and grills fill every parking lot around campus a full day before kickoff.

Other schools have stadiums.