[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

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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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