Are Louisiana Shrimp Safe Since the Hurricanes?

[My Confusing Horoscope]

We're going to Lafayette in June. We usually buy about 30-50 pounds of fresh shrimp to take home with us in Maryland, but this year my wife is skeptical about their safety since the hurricanes last year.

Have you seen any reports on the safety of shrimp down there this year? Your own experiences? Thanks.

[Mayhaw Man]

We're going to Lafayette in June. We usually buy about 30-50 pounds of fresh shrimp to take home with us in Maryland, but this year my wife is skeptical about their safety since the hurricanes last year.

Have you seen any reports on the safety of shrimp down there this year? Your own experiences? Thanks.

←

They are great. Stupendous. Plentiful. Better than everyone else's. Much better. All of those other shrimp? Inferior poseurs, at best.

50 lbs? Hell, just rent a truck. Take some back for everyone up there! They'll love you for it.

Seriously, they are good, as is everything coming out of the Gulf right now. Frank Brigsten told me the other night that the availability was better than it had ever been since he started running restaurants.

The prices have been good and if you go buy them directly from the folks catching them (Shrimp lot on the West Bank is a good place to look-call me if you want to go and tell you when and how) you can save a ton of dough. No middleman. You know?

[Jason Perlow]

They are awesome. Shrimp, Lousiana Oysters, Soft Shells -- totally fantastic, and absolutely safe. I just spent a week gorging myself on them if you care:

http://www.offthebroiler.com/tag/new-orleans/

The irony is that if anything the hurricane IMPROVED the seafood, not degraded it. It washed all the contaminants away, making them very clean tasting, and the reduction in the number of fishermen and a large pause in the seafood industry itself caused all the seafood to grow big and juicy.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[My Confusing Horoscope]

That's good to hear! I am going to pass this along to the wife.

We get them directly from a shrimper in Lafayette, or from Seafood Express in Delcambre, or even at the docks in Intracoastal City. Not sure how Delcambre and Intracoastal City made out with Rita, though. The lower part of Vermilion took it bad (flooding from the Bay).

[My Confusing Horoscope]

Thanks for the link, Jason!

Coincidentally I was just reading about Yugoslavian Cajuns in Southeast Louisiana at http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articl...tians_s_la.html

It mentions Drago's restaurant. I had never made the connection with the Croatian oystermen.

Those oysters look great!

[HungryC]

Ditto what everyone else said about the seafood, with a short personal anecdote: in early October, when still in the throes of post-K funk, I went fishing west of Larose. I stopped just inside the Pointe-aux-Chenes wildlife management area to throw a cast net to catch some bait. Standing atop a small wooden dam, I surveyed a sorry sight: a few forllorn appliances, stranded wa-ay out in the marsh by either Katrina or Rita's tidal surge, acres of drowned, salt-browned marsh grass, and other assorted hurricane-related flotsam (styrofoam bits, a chest of drawers, the clothing from said chese of drawers, etc). I tossed out the net anyway and was rewarded on the first pull with a dozen u-16 shrimp! Ten minutes of tossing the net yielded a bucket full. Who needs bait when you catch dinner so easily? That's when I started feeling better and thinking long-term about the environment's resiliency. (Don't get me started on coastal restoration, certainly a topic for another forum).

Anyway, I encourage you to buy direct from the fisherman. Those guys need all the help they can get after last year. Right now, I'm getting my own small boat & nets ready for the inshore recreational trawling season in May. I'll probably catch more than a fair share of debris, but hey, I'll be providing a service of sorts if I haul it all out of the water.