[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 99 (Thursday, June 28, 2012)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1168-E1169]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       WALL STREET JOURNAL RECOGNIZES BOUDIN CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

                                 ______
                                 

                     HON. CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR.

                              of louisiana

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 28, 2012

  Mr. BOUSTANY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the article on 
the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning recognizing the 
fantastic food and culture in my South Louisiana.
  I invite any of my colleagues to travel with me to Louisiana to enjoy 
the fantastic boudin and Cajun culture that comprises our proud 
heritage in South Louisiana. All along South Louisiana we enjoy the 
best homemade Cajun boudin, zydeco music, and Cajun charm that is truly 
unique to the United States. Today, the Wall Street Journal recognized 
this vibrancy in its article titled ``Cajun Towns Feud About Sausage 
With Links to the Past.'' To commemorate this fact, I include the 
article, written by Timothy W. Martin, into the Congressional Record in 
its entirety here:

       Scott, La.--Few would dispute that southern Louisiana is 
     boudin heaven. The local version is a sausage made of pork, 
     rice and various seasonings. Trickier to answer is which of 
     three competing Cajun communities is its official mecca.
       In April, Louisiana's state legislature bestowed the 
     coveted mantle of Boudin Capital of the World on Scott, a 
     bustling town of 8,600 on Interstate 10--the busy east-west 
     highway linking Houston and New Orleans. It churns out 1.3 
     million pounds of the sausage a year.
       ``No one comes close'' to Scott's sausage output, boasts 
     Mayor Purvis J. Morrison, who lobbied hard for the title, 
     plying lawmakers with industry statistics to make his case.
       UPS trucks collect boudin (pronounced: Boo-DAN, while 
     swallowing the N) shipments here twice a day, he says. Sales 
     help stuff city coffers.
       ``If you like hot, you'll get hot. If you want mild, you'll 
     find mild. We have boudin balls as big as a softball. We have 
     smoked boudin. I don't even know if anybody did it before we 
     did it,'' he says.
       But Scott's new title--which it uses for marketing 
     purposes--has left a bad taste in the mouths of residents of 
     Broussard, 12 miles to the southeast. They insist their town, 
     population 7,600, is the Boudin Capital of the World--a title 
     they say lawmakers gave them in the late 1970s. True, 
     Broussard doesn't hold its annual boudin festival or crown a 
     Boudin king anymore. But townspeople don't see that as a 
     reason for the legislature to snub them.
       ``For some reason, Scott wants to be the Boudin capital, 
     and they're trying to take our title. Doesn't hardly seem 
     right,'' says Billy Billeaud, owner of a grocery store in 
     Broussard.
       Billy Billeaud's grocery store in Broussard, La., 
     advertises its boudin.

[[Page E1169]]

       Mr. Billeaud calls Scott a boudin arriviste whose meaty 
     reputation is the product of aggressive marketing by numerous 
     restaurants and meat specialty shops that have popped up in 
     recent years on the edge of town to stuff boudin-loving 
     travelers on busy Interstate 10.
       ``We don't have I-10 in Broussard,'' says Mr. Billeaud, 51 
     years old, the fourth generation Billeaud to own the store 
     since it opened in 1889.
       ``Broussard can't claim nothing. They had the title and 
     haven't done anything for 15 years,'' fires back Aubrey Cole, 
     owner of Don's Specialty Meats just off I-10 in Scott.
       Meanwhile, in Jennings, 35 miles or so west on I-10, Mayor 
     Terry W. Duhon can't understand what the hot-dogging is all 
     about. Jennings is Boudin Capital of the Universe, thanks to 
     famed boudin chef and Jennings resident Ellis Cormier, who 
     roamed the state decades ago promoting boudin and won the 
     title for his hometown in the 1970s.
       ``We've got squatter's rights,'' says Mr. Duhon, who has 
     the phone number of his favorite go-to joint--Mr. Cormier's 
     Boudin King--on speed dial. No signs or billboards in the 
     town mention Jennings's intergalactic ranking, because, 
     ``What do we need to promote it for? We know,'' he says.
       Such lofty titles are of no small importance. Sales of 
     boudin are on the rise, according to restaurateurs, online 
     grocers and locals. The sausage has been featured on the menu 
     at Cochon, a contemporary Cajun restaurant in New Orleans's 
     trendy Warehouse District, which started serving a fried 
     version of the sausage with pickled peppers last year.
       ``Until we got the title, we never heard anything from 
     Broussard or Jennings. Now they are coming out of the 
     woodwork,'' complains Donna Thibodeaux, who works at a 
     tourism center in Scott next to one of the town's five boudin 
     sellers.
       Boudin's precise origins are not a matter of noir and 
     blanc, though the sausages have been made in southern 
     Louisiana since the mid-1800s. Back then, French Acadians--
     ancestors of the Cajuns--took leftover parts of a slaughtered 
     pig and mixed them with rice, vegetables and seasonings and 
     encased them in intestines. Some modern takes on boudin 
     substitute pork with crawfish or shrimp. Mr. Cormier's 
     version used more rice than meat, helping popularize the 
     sausage to non-Cajuns because it masked the taste of bolder 
     ingredients like pork butt and liver.
       Boudin connoisseurs aren't taking sides. Mr. Billeaud's 
     boudin in Broussard earned an ``A+'' on ``The BoudinLink,'' a 
     review website operated by Bob Carriker, a history professor 
     at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the city that 
     both Scott and Broussard border. But he also praises Scott 
     for its juicy version and Jennings for letting rice take on 
     ``the starring role.''
       Lawmakers, for their part, are unapologetic about the 
     grilling they are getting now from boudin makers about the 
     multiple titles. ``This is not about the past, it's about the 
     future,'' state Rep. Stephen Ortego said on the floor of the 
     legislature, explaining his reasons for sponsoring the bill 
     favoring Scott. He says his staff couldn't find any 
     legislation anointing Broussard as boudin capital, and the 
     state representative who allegedly backed that bill is 
     deceased.
       As for Jennings, he says, the titles of ``world'' and 
     ``universe'' can coexist because Jennings doesn't promote its 
     status. ``Anybody can claim a title. But are you using it?'' 
     he reasons.
       On a recent morning, Mr. Ortego, who grew up near Scott, 
     laid a paper napkin across his left leg and tucked into a 
     link of Mr. Billeaud's boudin. ``This one has too much 
     pepper,'' he said, arguing that Scott's is superior.
       Winning the title of Boudin Capital of the World was one of 
     Mr. Morrison's first legislative goals when he became mayor 
     in January 2011. Boudin makers employ 83 people in the town 
     and account for $5 million in annual sales, helping anchor 
     the local economy's growth over the past decade. ``Without 
     boudin, we'd just be a regular I-10 exit, with a McDonald's, 
     a Burger King and a Chevron,'' says Mr. Morrison, sitting in 
     his office next to a two-year-old fire and police station 
     that tax revenue from boudin sales helped fund.
       Rob Pelissier pulled off Scott's I-10 exit one recent 
     morning and headed to Don's Specialty Meats. The store has 
     billboards promoting its ``best homemade boudin'' some 40 
     miles to the west--just a few miles outside Jennings. ``Maybe 
     Jennings or Broussard had the title years back. I'd say yeah, 
     they were good back then. But nowadays, this place here has 
     got it,'' he said, staring at his empty plate. ``If you spend 
     a day here, you can see all of the traffic coming here from 
     out of town.''
       Mr. Ortego's legislation doesn't ask Broussard to cede its 
     title. For their part, Broussard town leaders have accepted 
     their new role in the boudin world and have downgraded their 
     expectations. The town's mayor has considered seeking the 
     title ``Boudin Capital of Louisiana'' next year.

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