Travel around Cajun country and it seems that no town is too small to have its own a car wash, its own dance studio and its own butcher shop — one with tasso and andouille and a universe of smoked, trussed, seasoned, stuffed and double-stuffed meats, and hot links of boudin and paper sacks of cracklin’ to eat on the spot.
Only recently have more of those Cajun meat markets been turning up in New Orleans, but now more New Orleans neighborhoods can claim their own.
Just this season, two distinctively different meat markets opened their doors, with Chris’ Specialty Meats bringing a traditional Cajun-style shop to Lakeview, and a joint called Bourrée at Boucherie opening in Carrollton as a combination market and eatery with both familiar flavors and a modern chef’s ideas about where they go.
That first place, Chris’ Specialty Meats, is the New Orleans offshoot of a well-established Baton Rouge store that can trace its family roots back to Maurice, a town in Vermilion Parish known as the spiritual home of the turducken.
Chris’ looks and functions a lot like the places that have long inspired New Orleans people to make foraging road trips across the state to pack their ice chests and freezers — right down to the temptation of boudin and cracklin’ served over the metal counter.
Those are also on the menu at Bourrée at Boucherie, though this second new shop is a little different. It’s an offshoot from chef Nathaniel Zimet’s restaurant Boucherie, which is just next door.
It’s a three-part prospect built around meats by the pound for home, fresh fruit daiquiris dispensed from swirling machines at the butcher counter and a short menu of snacks to eat on the spot, starting with chicken wings, cracklin’, spicy boiled peanuts and hot boudin.
There are traditional links, while others that are not exactly your parrain’s boudin. There’s one called the mixed grill, for instance, with chicken, beef and duck mixed with black rice, all bound up in the link. Bourrée at Boucherie normally has three types hot and ready.
All of this is bolstering the thin ranks of spots for true quick, grab-and-go butcher shop snacks in New Orleans. There are a few others, like Gourmet Butcher Block in Gretna, and Boudreaux’s Boudin & Cajun Meats outside Mandeville. Uptown, the butcher shop Cleaver & Co. most resembles a Cajun transplant on Fridays and Saturdays, when it adds cracklin’ and hot boudin. And downtown, Donald Link’s Butcher is more international and functions mostly as a restaurant, but it too can send you off with andouille and tasso for the black pot and a hot boudin link to gobble in the car.
Back in boudin’s home turf around Acadiana, there are many traditional purveyors, and loyalists will argue over and defend their beloved version over any other on the basis of texture, peppery spice, the presence or absence of liver, casing consistency, meatiness and grease levels. In New Orleans, things are a little more open, at least for now. Loyalties not yet fixed, favorites not yet determined. But as new shops add more links to the sausage circuit, we’ll have plenty to chew over.
Boudreaux’s Boudin & Cajun Meats
4624 Hwy. 24, Mandville, (985) 845-5001
Bourrée at Boucherie
1510 S. Carrollton Ave., New Orleans, 504-510-4040
Butcher
930 Tchoupitoulas St., New Orleans, 504-588-7675
Chris’ Specialty Meats
6251 West End Blvd., New Orleans, 504-309-0010
Cleaver & Co.
3917 Baronne St., New Orleans, 504-227-3830
Gourmet Butcher Block
2144 Belle Chasse Hwy., Gretna, 504-392-5700
