The Banh Mi Culture Of Vietnam Is Thriving On The US Gulf Coast
Following the fall of Saigon to the Communist North Vietnamese, 130,000 refugees were evacuated from South Vietnam.
Operation Frequent Wind, the largest boat and air lift in refugee history was a rousing success that would lead to 1.4 million Vietnamese émigrés resettling in the United States between 1975 and 1994.
The Gulf Coast South was a favored destination.
It’s crawfish season in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Recently, Canseco’s Market on Esplanade had a sale on locally grown as well as Vietnamese crawfish. The price difference was remarkable. Crawfish from fisheries within 20 minutes of my 9th Ward home cost nearly five times as much as the Vietnamese fishes.
Maylie’s on Poydras where Albert Booth Campbell cooked the best red beans and rice in New Orleans
Albert Booth Campbell is one of the mythical old-school Black cooks of New Orleans.
2025 VIP Ladies and Kids Second Line Parade in New Orleans
If you like whiskey barrel-cured tobacco and andouille sausage, St James Parish, Louisiana is where the conversation begins. Purists claim this is the one true place on earth where Perique, a spicy tobacco varietal is grown, and this same region is famous state-wide for producing some of the finest andouille sausage in all of Acadiana.
KKK Stronghold Bogalusa in 1965
Sometimes you have to meet violence with greater violence.
That was the creed espoused by the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a paramilitary group of Black men dedicated to protecting civil rights workers and regular Black citizens during the bloody battles pitched on the city streets and country roads of Jim Crow-era Louisiana.
When I was in culinary school in Alabama back in the 90s, I read the Birmingham News and the Birmingham Post-Herald every single day. On Wednesdays I kept a pair of scissors handy so I could cut recipes out of the food section.
Just like my mom and grandma did in the 70s.
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