---

Listen to this 1–minute audio clip of David Papania talking about serving only gumbo when he reopened Seafood Palace following Hurricane Rita. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

Listen to this 1–minute audio clip of Scott Landry talking about hand-fishing. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.

---

NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

---

Subject: David Papania and Scott Landry
Date: September 11, 2007
Location: Seafood Palace—Lake Charles, LA
Interviewer & Photographer: Sara Roahen

---

Sara Roahen:  This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Tuesday, September 11, 2007. I’m in Lake Charles, Louisiana, at the Seafood Palace Restaurant. I’m with Mr. David Papania and Scott Landry. And if I could get y’all in turn to say your name—how you say it—and your birth date, that would be great.

David Papania:  David Papania, November 30, 1954.

Scott Landry:  And I’m Scott Landry—birthday February 19, 1957.

And how do y’all know each other? David, you own this restaurant and I know there’s—and you [to Scott] don’t work here technically, but you work together sometimes?

SL:  We work together on shows and—and some catering from time to time, but I mainly know David because I eat here every day. [Laughs] And then the other part is, we grew up together. Lake Charles is not that big a town.

And what do you eat here when you eat?

SL:  Well I eat gumbo and I eat the fried shrimp; I eat the fried catfish; I eat [Laughs]—. Oh well, David’s phenomenal about bringing in fresh speckled trout or red fish or venison or duck—whatever we’ve hunted or fished for in the area, so our little group that meets here every day for lunch is privy to those delicacies.

Tell me: how long has the restaurant been open?

DP:  This restaurant has been opened 36 years. A lady had it for 30 years, passed away, and I took it over six years—and I’ve had it six years myself. And then, but my family has been in the restaurant business for 40 years.

Can you just briefly describe what your menu is like?

DP:  Well we do a lot of Cajun stuff. It’s like the gumbos and étouffées and different things that are Cajun-wise, and we also just do normal, like, fried fish, seafood platters, all the way to whatever—.

SL:  But you sell yourself short. You boil crabs and you boil crawfish, and you—

And we just sampled your gumbo—your seafood gumbo a little while ago. And can you tell me without revealing any, you know, state secrets what goes into that gumbo?

DP:  It would be hard to tell without revealing secrets other than, you know, like Scott said earlier that there’s just 100 different ways to make a gumbo, and this is just our way and it’s worked out good, and we have a very good restaurant gumbo.

SL:  I mean as far as restaurant gumbos, he has one of the best in the area, and—and he makes both the chicken and sausage, and he makes a seafood gumbo. And the hurricane [Rita] changed it a little bit. You used to have oysters in it, and we kind of—the oysters are not as plentiful as they used to be, so we don’t have those in the gumbo anymore, but nobody noticed. [Laughs]

DP:  Oysters right now are really expensive, and to put it in the gumbo it would drive the price of the gumbo up which is—most people kind of like a moderate priced gumbo. They don’t like to spend a whole lot of money on the gumbo.

SL:  Yeah, it’s ‘cause we were, like, we were talking about earlier that gumbos and jambalayas are a low-end price break because people couldn’t afford to eat—the Cajun people, you know. It’s like my family, they would go hand-fishing every—during the spring and summer, and then they would hunt ducks in the early fall, and then they’d hunt ducks in the middle of—I mean deer—in the middle of the winter. And then in the spring they would hunt quail, and—and that’s what they ate. I mean that’s—that was it and you’d cook a pot of rice, you know.

I had several people before today tell me that the best gumbo in town was here. What do you think it is that people are liking?

DP:  It’s our roux to start out, I think, and then the seasonings we use, and we—we are pretty consistent on the way we do things. We measure everything out and all our seasonings and get it together, and we have excellent gumbo cooks and just start with that and just try to be consistent all the time, where it tastes the same all the time.

SL:  If the same lady cooks it time after time after time, it’s her unique gumbo, just like when I make my gumbo it’s my unique gumbo or David’s unique gumbo. Each gumbo takes on the characteristics of that particular cook. I may like a little more garlic; David might not like much garlic at all—okra, you know. It’s like I always say: recipes didn’t come down with Moses and the Ten Commandments, so if you don’t like something don’t put it in there. Or if you like something a lot, add to it. But David simmers for the better part of the day, and they’re cooking it every day, and it’s just a good product.

We sort of met the woman who made today’s gumbo. What is her name?

DP:  Stella Lavergne. She came over from our other restaurant, and she’s probably been with us 15 years—18-years—something like that, between both our restaurants.

Does she make the gumbo often?

DP:  Yes, every day. We sell out just about every day, but what Scott also said—we do a lot of times, we cook a gumbo today and let it cool down and refrigerate it and then we’ll serve that gumbo the next day, you know. That’s generally how we do it, but sometimes we get so busy that the one she’s making today, we get to it and we serve that also. So it just depends, but gumbo in the refrigerator is good for a couple days, you know, with no problem.

What would you say characterizes the gumbo here [to Scott]?

SL:  It’s—it’s consistent; it tastes great. Like I was telling the group earlier today, I said when I eat it I add a little salt and pepper and Tabasco to it. When my cousin eats it, he adds a little gumbo filé to it. It’s—each person is different; each person eats it his own way. I like a lot of rice and not a lot of soup; other guys like a lot of soup and a little bit of rice, so all that is going to affect the taste of that gumbo.

And the way that we had it today, the rice and the gumbo were separate and we added it ourselves. Is that how you serve it here?

DP:  Right, that’s how you serve it. Like he said, some people may want a little rice and some want a lot, so it just—just depends how you like it.

It’s a pretty dark roux, I would say?

DP:  Yeah, we use the dark roux, yeah. It’s not real thick, but it’s between medium and thick roux.

SL:  But it’s a dark roux. I mean the roux we cooked today [during a cooking demonstration] was not as dark as the roux that he uses. Now some people like a really dark, rich roux; some like a lighter roux. It—here again, 100 Cajuns give you 150 recipes on how to make gumbo.

The roux that you showed us during the demonstration that was real dark that was made beforehand, is that similar to—?

DP:  Yeah, that was our roux that we were using.

Well that’s practically black.

DP:  Yeah, yeah, but the more water you add, like anything else in seasoning, it thins it up, and it you know turns it to more brown than black—you know, a light brown.

SL:  Well the gumbo is a dark brown because of the roux itself. That’s what gives it its color, gives it a signature taste we’ll say. And the—the darker the roux, the richer the roux tastes in the gumbo. The lighter the roux, different spices will show through and not as much roux taste. So it—it varies.

Well one thing I noticed is that there’s a very strong, just, background seafood flavor in there.

DP:  Yeah, there’s probably—‘cause it’s a seafood stock also added to the gumbo.

SL:  That and the amount of shrimp and crab that’s in there. And the other thing is, it’s like we talked about with making your stocks. If you use the shells of the seafood, if you use the body parts that—that aren’t—and you strain that, that’s going to give you a wonderful taste that most people throw in the garbage. And that’s a mistake.

You mentioned filé earlier. There’s filé powder on the tables here. Is there filé in your gumbo?

DP:  Yes, there’s some filé in the gumbo, uh-hm.

Do you all add extra filé to your gumbo at—at the table?

SL:  I don’t, no, I don’t.

DP:  I will once in a while during the wintertime if it’s real cold and stuff, but it’s something—I’ll dab a little filé in there, but not particularly, no. But a lot of people do.

---

I’d like to ask you about gumbo on the road. But can you explain first, for the record, what your profession is right now?

SL:  I am an entertainer. I do a comedy cooking show, and I promote the State of Louisiana, and I teach people Cajun cooking. You teach by entertaining, and if you entertain people will learn. And so that’s what we do, and we do about 120 days of shows a year, which means I’m doing about 360—or 80 different shows a year, and I make gumbo at almost all of them. And we take it on the road, like you said. I’ve performed in 42 states and seven foreign countries, and I’ve served gumbo in all of them. And the response is phenomenal, because what happens is most people eat gumbo in New Mexico, for instance. I did my flight training in Tucson, so they took us to eat at this wonderful Mexican restaurant, and the food was good and they says, And you’ve got to try their gumbo. And I’m going, Please, I’d rather not. And it came out, and it was called gumbo, and at the end of it I said, Guys, this would be called soup in my part of the world. And we dispelled the myths that Cajun cooking has got to be so hot you can't eat it—that it’s got to have a lot of red pepper in it. That’s my job, is to make people like Cajun food.

DP:  It’s hard to describe it, but in South Louisiana, just the way we use the seasoning and cook gumbo is different than North Louisiana. It’s different than Texas. Like Scott—different than any other state. It’s just something about—from New Orleans to Lake Charles to Lafayette to, you know, all through this area it’s just the gumbo—.

SL:  Even North Louisiana will make gumbo different.

DP:  That’s what I’m saying. It’s just—it’s got the roux we make, and the way we do it is just totally different than anywhere I’ve ever been either, you know.

SL:  Yeah, ‘cause if you’re in New Orleans and they serve you gumbo it’s got tomatoes in it, and in this part of the country you’d go, What’s a tomato doing in there? Or if you eat a Creole gumbo you’re going to have okra in it. And that’s one of those things that Mikey don’t eat, is—is okra. [Laughs]

DP:  But we do occasionally—occasionally still here, some of the old French ladies still cook a lot with the okra in their gumbo.

But when y’all make gumbo, I mean at the restaurant and at home or on the road, you don’t use tomatoes—or what was the other thing—okra?

SL:  No, we don’t use either one of those.

DP:  It’s all with the roux.

SL: David said you start with the roux. That’s—that’s the base for all gumbo, is the roux. But like when I make my gumbo, I will sauté the meat and vegetables and then add my stock and then add my roux. There are some chefs that will start with the roux and build into a gumbo. It’s—it’s a preference. I have a cook that works for me that, when he makes his own gumbo he starts with the roux. He makes his roux, and then he adds his vegetables, and then he adds his meat, and then he adds his water, and then he has his gumbo. To me, I think that’s backwards. I think you sauté your meat with your vegetables and then build to the roux. But who—who am I to say, you know? He eats his, I eat mine; I eat his, he eats mine. I mean we just eat, you know. [Laughs] As you can tell, we’re not under-nourished.

I noticed here, and also in a couple other places I’ve seen around Lake Charles, that there doesn’t seem to be sausage in seafood gumbo, whereas in New Orleans I’ve had sausage in seafood gumbo a lot.

DP:  Yeah, they can do that. We have a lot of customers come in believe it or not and want chicken and sausage and shrimp and crab gumbo—all mixed—and we don’t mix it for them, but they’ll order like two cups as if it’s equal to one of our large, and we’ll give them a cup of chicken and a sausage and a cup of shrimp and crab. They’ll go home and mix it. Some people put everything and the kitchen sink in their gumbo; they’ll put chicken—sausage, shrimp, crab, oysters—

SL:  But if you put smoked sausage in a seafood gumbo, you defeated the purpose of your seafood because the smoked flavor is going to—in my opinion, my humble opinion—is going to override the seafood tastes.

I’d be interested to know what the gumbos were like in your households when you were growing up.

DP:  Mainly we ate chicken and sausage gumbo, I’d say. My mama, I’d get home from school and she’d have a pot of chicken and sausage gumbo on the stove. One thing about a gumbo, you just leave it on the stove. And if I ate at 4 o’clock from school—I got hungry and my brother came in at 5 o’clock and he ate and he’s fine too. And my sister came at 6 o’clock from work, and she ate—. I mean it just—it’s something that kind of stays. It doesn’t spoil and it doesn’t—you just keep it warm and eat it all day long really.

SL:  Yeah, keep it above the danger temperature. And—and the other thing about gumbo that’s different than restaurant gumbo is like I was telling the group earlier: traditional gumbo is made with hens or the old roosters, and they were boiled because the Cajun people didn’t have a lot of money and they cooked a chicken ‘til it was tender and it fell off the bone, and so that’s how they got rid of some of those older birds. Or back in the day when they had the cock fights, they used to take the losers, and they became gumbo. And so that’s how that worked.

DP:  Gumbo was something that could stretch and feed the whole family.

What was the gumbo like in your household when you were growing up [to Scott]?

SL:  Well my mother, like I said—my father died when I was very young and my mother worked almost round the clock, so when we ate gumbo we ate it at grandmother’s house. And it was not uncommon for me to spend, well, a great deal of time at my grandmother’s house. And I had 11 uncles and aunts on one side, and it was not uncommon that every Sunday or every other Sunday the entire family met for lunch. Or during the week, we met during the week. In fact, my uncle came back from World War II and he had so many brothers and sisters that they never got to sit all at the table at the same time. So he bought a dining room table with his muster-out pay, that all of them could sit at the table. So as we grew up, you made it when you got to sit at the big table. And this thing I—as a matter of fact, I still have it today. It’s going to be my dining room table in the new house we’re building right now. We’re just going to refinish it.

What kind of gumbo would [your grandmother] make?

SL:  Mawmaw would make chicken and sausage. She would—and the funny part is she would clean the chicken. I mean we had them in the backyard for a long time, and she would wring their necks and—and clean the chicken and make the gumbo right there from start to finish. Like from farmer to the—the market, right there.

DP:  That’s the way it was done. They’d go out in the backyard and wring a chicken’s neck, put it in a boiling pot of hot water, clean it, pluck it, and get it ready for the gumbo.

Did y’all ever see the wringing of the neck?

SL:  Oh yeah. It was being boys. We—you know like for instance, the traditional Mardi Gras was a time to make the rich and the poor all equal, so—and today Gueydan and Breaux Bridge and all those places still have the chicken run where the revelers go into the country. There’s a band on a hay wagon; the revelers are on horses or on foot; the captain of the crew goes on and says, Please Mr. Boudreaux—or whatever—do you have something for the gumbo or the Mardi Gras? And they normally would throw a live chicken up. All the revelers would catch the chicken and put it in the pan to take back to where a group of people— after these guys went through the entire countryside, they collected everything they needed for the gumbos: potatoes, eggs, for the potato salad, the rice, the gumbo; they’d make a big gumbo. Everybody is in costume for the Mardi Gras; that way a rich person and a poor person on that day were equal because nobody knew who anybody was—had a big dance and they had the gumbo. And it was at a religious time in the year, and that’s just how Mardi Gras started.

---

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

---

Introduction | Map | A Short History of Gumbo | Oral Histories | Recipes
How To Make A Roux | About & Contact