If you thought the whole "head-sucking" thing with crawfish had too much innuendo, wait until a girl holds her two index fingers parallel about a few inches apart and tells you she's seen much bigger. That was the image captured in an article published in the Washington Post last week about how the Louisiana shellfish are running a bit inadequate this year.
The Houston Press told a similar "tail" earlier this spring. Stephen Minvielle, director at the Louisiana Crawfish Research & Promotion Board, noted ice storms and cold weather were keeping mudbug catches at unprecedented lows. He feared the weather might affect the entire season. Thankfully, though, things are starting to look up.
Vu Tran watches over the crawfish at Tasty Tales, a Cajun restaurant tucked into an Asian food court in Plano, and he says they're coming in bigger and bigger each week. "The season has started late," he says, but he thinks they'll be completely caught up in a few more weeks. "Right now we've mostly medium to large," he said. "We should be all jumbo by May."
The same holds true if you want to buy your own live crawfish. "We are behind last year, but catching up quickly," says Jon Alexis of TJ's Seafood. He sells to customers who want to host their own crawfish boils at home. Alexis echoes that the crawfish are likely only to get better in the coming weeks, and while that's good for the picking, it also means we're going to start paying a little more, too.
Either way if you're the type who skips over crawfish until the peak of the season, it looks like your wait is just about over. Fire up those propane burners and crack open a beer, it's time to get yourself some tail.
