Sulphur-style Gumbo

After a day of broken elevators, electricity outages, snarky desk clerks, sluggish highways, crappy convenience store junk food, and a torrential downpour, we were exhausted by the time we arrived in New Orleans. For four days, we had been driving through the fabulous and storied West. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But, except for the coast, I hate the West. Deserts are ugly—sorry, but I’ve never understood the beauty of a barren landscape except when I’m looking at a photo of the desert while I'm in a coastal city. My dislike is so intense that I believe that people who choose to live in the desert are scary, unfriendly, and never leave the air conditioning of their homes, trucks, or offices. Also, their wifi is embarrassingly slow, though always advertised as “high speed," they let their toddlers ride in the backs of pickup trucks, they don’t wear helmets on motorcycles, and they actually like food from Sonic. Nuff said. 

I couldn’t wait to get out of the West and into the South. So no matter how bad the rest of the trip might have been, finally crossing into Louisiana made it all worthwhile. It was exactly what I had hoped for. So many of the states we drove through were just an endless string of chain hotels, restaurants, and gas stations replicating along the I-10. But this border crossing was different. It was clear we had left the familiar behind when we stopped for dinner at The Boiling Point in Sulphur, Louisiana, heart of Cajun Country. We knew they were worth a visit because their website only listed three links: “menu,” “catering,” and “deer processing.”

I've discovered that the quality of the food at local restaurants is always in inverse proportion
to their grammatical accuracy. The Boiling Point was no exception.

At four in the afternoon, they were doing mainly takeout business and serving a few locals. We were the only non-Cajuns in the restaurant, and also the only patrons who didn't order a massive platter of boiled crawfish (which comes with a plastic bucket for the carcasses). J had the crawfish platter so that we could dip our toes in the crawfish pool. When I ordered the gumbo, the motherly waitress asked if I wanted a side of potato salad. Confused, I asked if the gumbo came with a side?  “No, hon. But everyone here eats their gumbo over potato salad instead of rice. If it makes the food messy, that’s how we like it.” So I ate my gumbo like a Sulphur native. And you know what? It was fantastic. Just like our waitress and the rest of Sulphur, I’ll never eat gumbo over rice again.

One of my goals while I’m here is to learn how to make gumbo. Gumbo has always seemed like a particularly American food, one that combines the best of the old world (France contributed the roux and Spain the seafood and cayenne pepper) with the new (the okra in gumbo originates from Africa, the Choctaw tribe provided the distinctive flavoring of filé or sassafras, and Cajuns added the “holy trinity” of celery, onion, and bell pepper).

While I was eating my gumbo over potato salad, I felt like I could easily slip into this friendly, offbeat, Cajun culture. Even the whole bit about eating crawfish by sucking the meat through the head felt like it might actually be doable. As we finished, one of the men who greeted us so warmly when we arrived, got up to leave. He’d been drinking sweet tea and gossiping with the owner while we were eating. As he walked to his car, I noticed the large handgun attached to the waistband of his stretch slacks.

Maybe it’s not so easy to slip into a new culture after all.