Happy Juneteenth from The Food Section! While there’s no single way to mark the holiday, you might consider adding Black-owned restaurants to your eating itinerary this weekend.
Do you know what it means to compete with New Orleans?
Shreveport sure does. The gambling-reliant metropolis in the northwest corner of the state, about 10 times closer to Texas and Arkansas than Bourbon Street, has been mocked, derided, and dismissed as a culinary backwater by Louisianians living elsewhere. But the city’s champions have long contended that it takes just one stuffed shrimp to reeducate even the haughtiest Gulf Coast gourmand.
This spring, State Rep. Joy Walters and State Sen. Sam Jenkins tested that theory. Before asking fellow legislators to support a bill designating their hometown as Louisiana’s Stuffed Shrimp Capital, an honorific intended to boost hospitality spending, the Shreveporters invited them to a stuffed shrimp supper at the lieutenant governor’s apartment in Baton Rouge.
“Absolutely, there was commentary about the fact that we are nowhere near the Gulf, and how they don’t believe we can cook,” Walters said in a phone interview. “I wasn’t going to change their minds just talking about it. I had to let them taste it.”
Following the meal prepared by chefs from Orlandeaux’s Crosslake Café and Eddie’s Seafood & Soulfood, not a single legislator voted against the stuffed shrimp bill. It was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry on May 29.
“It’s definitely significant to this area, and it’s a wonderful thing,” said Damien Chapman, chef-owner of Orlandeaux’s and great-great-great-grand-nephew of one of the restaurateurs who originated stuffed shrimp. In addition to carving out Shreveport’s foothold in the state’s culinary tourism economy, the Stuffed Shrimp Capital title was concocted to honor the legacy of Freeman & Harris Café, the pioneering Black-owned restaurant which created and popularized the dish.
Opened in 1921 as a barbecue joint by Van Freeman and Jack Harris, Freeman & Harris was jointly owned by Pete Harris, Wilmer Wallette, Arthur Chapman, and Alice Freeman Harris by the 1960s, when it was common for local businessmen and visiting civil rights leaders to plot strategy over platters of stuffed shrimp. “That is what Pete Harris gave us that was so wonderful—a warm meal and a place to talk,” Shreveport Times columnist Larry English eulogized when Harris died in 1992.
Freeman & Harris closed two years later, but stuffed shrimp remained on the menu of restaurants founded by relatives of one-time owners and former employees, including Eddie Hughes. Hughes, who died in 1995, was widely credited with helping to devise stuffed shrimp as a teenage line cook at Freeman & Harris in the 1950s.
“It was one of those things where I don’t think they even realized at the time that it was great,” said Chapman, who estimates he sells thousands of stuffed shrimps each week. For the at-home crowd, other companies with familial ties to Freeman & Harris sell frozen stuffed shrimp.
“You can air fry them,” Sam Jenkins, the state senator, told The Food Section. “Every month or so, I pick up a package.”
Jenkins and Walters—whose stuffed shrimp consumption has fallen off since her father told her to quit ordering them from his food truck—agree that few home cooks try to make stuffed shrimp from scratch. That’s because “stuffed shrimp” doesn’t mean the same thing in Shreveport as it does down south, where chef John Besh once published a recipe that entailed butterflying shrimp and tucking a nubbin of crabmeat dressing between its halves.
Shreveport-style stuffed shrimp also calls for crabmeat, garlic, and the holy trinity of celery, onion, and bell pepper, as well as what Chapman describes as “the blend of spices near and dear to this area.” But what distinguishes the dish is the split shrimp is secured within the Creole dressing, or applied tightly to a cylinder of it, then battered and deep-fried. Consequently, a traditional stuffed shrimp looks more corn dog than crustacean.
It’s also served with a tartar sauce that both Walters and Chapman cited as crucial but struggled to describe. A local radio host may have come closest to the mark in a blog post which opened with a confession that “I didn’t even realize this was a Shreveport ‘thing.’” Further admitting that the familiar sauce’s components were a mystery, the writer likened the condiment to “a cross between the house dressing at a Mexican restaurant and Cane’s sauce,” which implies mayonnaise, garlic powder, paprika, and sugar.
According to Chapman, diners drive hundreds of miles for Shreveport’s stuffed shrimp and try to figure out how to haul more servings home.
“People always ask, ‘Why don’t you franchise into California or Texas or Chicago?’” he continued. “We’re designed to bring them here.”
Going forward, “them” may even include eaters from New Orleans.
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