In Arkansas, Delta Crawfish Gives The Ozarks a Taste of Louisiana (2024)

A tiny, reddish-brown crawfish wiggles its pinchers in the bottom of what looks like a giant fast-food fry basket on a pleasant but overcast morning in Paragould, Arkansas, about 15 miles west of the Missouri bootheel border. It’s all the little mudbug can muster. There are a few more of its compatriots scattered throughout 12 baskets in a halved fuel tank, but most of these leftovers are no longer moving; the rest are in coolers waiting to be sold or cooked.

“It’s nothing fancy,” shrugs Devalyn Duke, co-owner of Delta Crawfish in Paragould. “It’s a dirty job, but the end result on the plate is awesome.” The repurposed fuel tank is a crawfish vat that Delta’s founder, Ron Pigue, specially made for cleaning and purging the crustaceans. The other half of the fuel tank is at another crawfish company in Parkin, Arkansas.

Duke and his wife, JaShena Turner Duke, also own Duke’s Hot Shot Delivery in their hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas, about 30 minutes southwest of Paragould and the home of Arkansas State University. Duke was cooking crawfish sourced from Pigue in the parking lot of a liquor store (“What goes hand in hand? Beer and crawfish.”) when an unexpected opportunity arose. Pigue’s father-in-law, who delivered the crawfish, told Duke that they weren’t necessarily looking to sell the business but would if the right buyer came along.

“What did I think? I thought he was crazy,” JaShena says as her husband laughs. “Well, first off, he said we wouldn’t have to work. But you can see I’m up here working!” The office phone interrupts her. “The phone rings off the wall – you can’t get anything else done because of the phone,” she says, picking up. “Delta Crawfish?”

Crawfish can be harvested in their natural habitat – it’s as simple as putting out traps in a pond, lake, marsh or swamp – but in the 1950s, research was conducted on reflooding rice fields after grain harvest to yield crawfish. Today, more than 50 percent of the crawfish aquaculture in Louisiana, the largest crawfish producer in the nation, is practiced in conjunction with rice production. Rice is planted in about 2 inches of water in March and April; “seed” crawfish are added when the rice has grown tall enough to shade the water and keep it cool. As it gets hotter, though, the crawfish burrow into the ground to lay eggs; when the rice fields have drained, usually between August and October, the crawfish are underground as rice is harvested.

The fields are then reflooded to create a crawfish pond, and female crawfish will start coming out of their burrows with babies – about 400 to 900 – in tow. As the crawfish mature, harvest can begin as early as November and continues throughout the winter until it’s time to drain the pond again and plant more rice.

Pigue, a commercial farmer who started Delta in 2001 after cooking out of a “shack” to high demand, once farmed his own crawfish in the rice fields just behind the building, and Duke hopes Pigue will do it again next season. Pigue’s boat, complete with a mechanism to push it through the flooded fields, sits expectantly at the edge of the parking lot. “They’ll set traps every 8 feet or so – I think he’s got 26 acres he’s planning on farming,” Duke explains. “He could probably get about 16,000 pounds out of that, which isn’t a lot, but it’ll help.”

Since Delta doesn’t currently farm crawfish, Duke gets about 10 deliveries of crawfish Tuesday through Friday from Eunice, Louisiana, and each insulated truck carries anywhere from 2,000 to 9,000 pounds. Duke has his crew unload the tiny crustaceans onto pallets in the hangarlike area behind the main building and hose them off while the vat fills with water. Two 35-pound sacks fit in each basket; the vat features aerators that clean the crawfish over the course of a few hours; they can stay in the water up to 24 hours for purging, which clears the digestive tract for customers squeamish about that little brown line you find in crawfish (and shrimp). After they’ve been cleaned, the crawfish are dumped out onto a few tables and divided into two groups before they can be sold: dead and alive.

There are nearly 60 species of crawfish native to Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Louisiana has 39, while Missouri has at least 35 (there are about 350 known nationwide), but only a handful are used for human consumption; the rest are too small.

Crawfish are also known by many names: crayfish, crawdads, mudbugs or even yabbies (in Australia). It’s mostly a regional preference: The term crawfish is used most often in the Deep South, specifically New Orleans, as well as in the Northeast, while crawdad is preferred throughout much of Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas. Crayfish appears in northern Midwestern states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as the Northeast. The different names don’t denote different species or sizes – just your hometown.

“Those of us who work on crayfish professionally have a saying: Crayfish eat everything and everything eats crayfish,” laughs Bob DiStefano, a resource scientist and stream ecologist at the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).

More than 200 animals have been documented as preying on crawfish in North America, including humans, and crawfish themselves prey on species in nearly every level of the food chain, from microorganisms in the water to fish.

“They inhabit pretty much any aquatic environment that we have in [Missouri]: surface streams, lakes, ponds, reservoirs, wetlands, underground streams,” DiStefano says. One of the largest species in North America is native to the White River basin (DiStefano points out that crawfish don’t observe state boundaries, so many species are native to water systems in both Missouri and Arkansas, or Arkansas and Louisiana), which includes northern Arkansas and Table Rock Lake, a man-made lake and reservoir near Branson.

This longpincered crawfish can grow up to 6 or 7 inches in length – Louisiana’s most popular, the red swamp crawfish, is usually around 2¼ to 4¾ inches long – and in Missouri, anyone with a valid fishing license can harvest up to 150 of them a day at Table Rock. The MDC says the most productive months for catching longpincered crawfish are May, June and July, and again in September and October.

For Delta Crawfish, the season only lasts from January to July, and its roadside restaurant, The Cajun Café, is closed the other six months of the year. This made it a bit difficult for Duke to find employees, until he connected with Agape House of Paragould, which helps women transition from rehab with life skills and employment. (Delta also works with Shepherd’s Fold ministry, a similar program for men.)

“I’ve been down that road myself, and I think it’s a good thing for [people] to get back into society and feel like they’re a part of something bigger than themselves,” Duke says. “It’s like a small family. This is not a career job for any of them, but it is a stepping stone to better things.”

The Cajun Café serves up everything from frogs’ legs, oysters and crawfish to steak, alligator po’boys and catfish. One of the most popular menu items is the chicken and sausage gumbo, which he credits to longtime employee and general manager Jahmi Stevens. “That would probably be her least favorite [dish] because so much goes into it,” Duke laughs. “But she’s very proud of it at the same time. All the recipes and everything on the menu – it’s Jahmi and Ron [Pigue]. People keep coming back because there’s no other place around here that’s gonna do it like we do.”

When Pigue sold Duke the restaurant and wholesale operation, part of the deal was that Duke would grow Delta Crawfish’s legacy, a promise he plans to keep. So far, he’s added beer and wine to The Cajun Café’s in-house menu and greatly expanded distribution routes – right now, Delta supplies crawfish to Missouri restaurants and wholesalers in St. Louis, Springfield, Branson, Cape Girardeau, Festus, Dexter, Sikeston and Perryville. In Illinois, you can find its crawfish in Carbondale, Edwardsville, Troy, Vandalia and Collinsville, among other cities, as well as in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and across Arkansas.

“I see a Delta Crawfish in Jonesboro [in the next five years] for sure, maybe a full-fledged restaurant by that point,” Duke says. “This place will probably be a lot bigger – I’m either going to add on to [the main building] or add another building on the other side of the parking lot, just for boil items only, to take some of the pressure off this kitchen. On a Friday or Saturday night, there’s usually a two-hour wait.”

New Orleans native Sam Kogos often finds himself trying to reassure people who have had bad crawfish experiences to give them another shot at Riverbend Restaurant & Bar, his Cajun restaurant in Richmond Heights, Missouri.

“If you’re trying them for the first time, a boil would be the best way so you could really see what they’re like,” Kogos says. “The problem is, depending on who’s doing the boil, sometimes they just don’t do it right.”

Kogos says a good boil starts with just the right amount of salt – for 70 pounds of crawfish, he’ll use five or six 26-ounce canisters. He’ll add other seasonings, citrus, garlic, celery and more to the water until it hits a rolling boil, and then add the crawfish and let them cook 10 to 15 minutes, until they start to float. After five to six minutes floating, Kogos says to “douse ‘em with a bunch of ice” to stop the boiling and let the water become lukewarm, about 20 minutes. “If you don’t, the shell gets mushy, and it’s just a big ol’ mess,” he says.

“It’s not rocket science,” he continues. “You do the seasoning right, soak them and don’t overcook them, and they should come out fine.” On Riverbend’s menu, Kogos and his cousin, executive chef Steve Daney, use crawfish tails in Creole étouffée, crawfish Creole, crawfish and corn bisque, and specials of crawfish bread and crawfish enchiladas topped with the bisque.

They host classic seafood boils once a month during the early part of the year, through May, with all the fixins’ – traditionally corn, potatoes, onions, garlic and sausage – and offer their expertise for private parties, as well. Kogos thinks crawfish are gaining in popularity in the Midwest because so many people have personal connections to Louisiana, whether they went to Tulane University in New Orleans or have family who live there. St. Louis’ ties to New Orleans go back to the pre-Revolutionary War era, thanks to trading routes along the Mississippi River; New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718, St. Louis in 1764, and both had significant Spanish influence, as well.

The Kansas City metropolitan area, on the other hand, doesn’t have as many historical ties to the Big Easy, but Carlos Falcon, chef-owner of Jarocho in Kansas City, Kansas, still gets his hands on the little critters. Fresh fish and seafood is flown in every other day, and sometimes daily, to supply the Mexican seafood restaurant, where Falcon serves dishes like fire-grilled seasonal fish and octopus in its ink, as well as daily specials. This past April, Falcon featured a soft-shell crawfish special with chipotle sauce.

Like crabs, crawfish molt, casting off their hard shells as they grow. In the South, this happens in April and June.

“First I tried soft-shell crab, and then somebody introduced me to soft-shell crawfish – and, oh man, is that just delicious,” Falcon says. “Just crawfish by itself – regular crawfish – it takes a lot of work to get those little tails out, but they’re very, very tasty. But when you are presented soft-shell [crawfish] and you can eat the whole thing, it changes the way you see crawfish.”

This spring, Falcon sourced soft-shell crawfish from Louisiana for the special at Jarocho, first battering them in a rice flour mixture and then flash-frying them for just four or five seconds.

“The best way to cook them is to flash-fry them,” Falcon says. “It’s so simple. When you fry it, it just becomes this bright red beautiful color, so [for presentation] you don’t need much garnish – and it’s tasty by itself. It has that umami flavor that you cannot find in shrimp, lobster or crabs. It’s a very special flavor.”

Falcon served the soft-shell crawfish with a spicy and smoky sauce made with puréed chipotles, jalapeños and housemade mayonnaise – sort of a Mexican take on remoulade, popular in the south of Mexico. The daily special was a smash hit, selling out before end of business.

“A lot of people have had crawfish in general, but when they discover soft-shell crawfish, they’re just amazed by it,” Falcon says. “Every time we bring it in, it just lasts the day we get it.”

Chef Scott Munsterman also extolls the virtues of crawfish at Shorty Pants Lounge in Osage Beach, Missouri – at Lake of the Ozarks mile marker 21.2 for those of you on a boat. At Shorty Pants, Munsterman features crawfish étouffée, plus a Creole quesadilla with peppers, onions, shrimp, andouille sausage, crawfish tail meat and pepper Jack cheese, seasoned with house blackening spice on a sun-dried tomato tortilla. Over the summer, he puts on weekly boils on Tuesdays and offers crawfish boils for private parties or birthdays.

“Crawfish is always light, it’s good for you – it’s good protein – [and] it’s not offered at a lot of restaurants,” Munsterman says. “It goes well with Creole-Cajun cuisine. Most of the people from the Ozarks know what a crawfish is – they’re in our streams and rivers, so it’s pretty popular around here.”

Back in Paragould, The Cajun Café’s modest dining room is decorated with rustic wood, deer and fish taxidermy – trophies caught by Pigue and his friends – and light fixtures adorned with fishing nets. Unlike city restaurants, The Cajun Café is usually busiest when it’s raining because bad weather means days off for the surrounding farming community. Big chemical companies and farms in the area will put on boils for employees and customers when they know it’s going to rain, too.

“When we set up a boil, we can take our cooking trailer or make it more personal: take a little canopy and a couple of pots and burners, just depending on how much we need to cook,” Duke says. “A lot of people like to gather ‘round and watch everything get cooked and sit around having a few cold ones, you know? Enjoying life.”

For your own boil, Duke says to bring water to a boil and cook one sack of crawfish – 35 pounds – for just about 10 minutes, then drain it, dump the crawfish in a cooler and add “2 pounds of seasoning on there and shake it up real good,” he says. “That way it steams in there. Open it up in 10 minutes, shut it [again] and you’re ready to go.”

During a lunch rush at The Cajun Café, a middle-aged couple excitedly tells their server that they’re originally from Louisiana but drove over from Paris, Arkansas, northwest of Little Rock.

“I forget who told us about you – I went to Missouri one time, and they put coleslaw on my pulled pork!” the man says, exasperated. The server says not to worry; she hopes Delta will live up to their expectations. When their food arrives, they seem pleasantly surprised by how much they like the fried shrimp, though it could use some butter for dipping, they say.

Meanwhile, men in work clothes constantly stream in and out of the dining room, many washing their hands in a metal washbasin attached to the wall before sitting down to order.

“It’s just fun [work] because people will come in and tell you they’re so excited to pick up their crawfish and take ’em home, have a big boil once a year, have a big family reunion,” Duke says amid the buzz. “It brings people together – that’s what I like. People don’t come together enough anymore, I don’t think. Especially families. To me, it’s kinda like Thanksgiving dinner.”

Delta Crawfish and The Cajun Café, 4460 Highway 412 E, Paragould, Arkansas, 870.335.2555, deltacrawfish.com

Jarocho, 719 Kansas Ave., Kansas City, Kansas, 913.281.7757, jarochokc.com

Riverbend Restaurant & Bar, 1059 S. Big Bend Blvd., Richmond Heights, Missouri, 314.664.8443, riverbendbar.com

Shorty Pants Lounge, 1680 Autumn Lane, Osage Beach, Missouri, 573.302.1745, shortypantslounge.com