Rayne, La

Overview

The drive to Hawk’s Crawfish follows gravel roads, past flooded rice fields that double as crawfish ponds. Each winter and spring, farmers pilot flat-bottomed boats across those ponds, harvesting crawfish, bound for places like Hawk’s, a tin-roofed roadhouse founded in 1983 by the Arcenaux family. In sight of I-10, Jett’s Crawfish Drive-Thru, doing business in a small metal building alongside a gas station, tells a more modern story of how crawfish, once caught and boiled by locals and served at family gatherings, became an everyday indulgence, purchased by the bag or bucket while idling in your car. A conversation with Kurt Venable of Venable Fabrication, one of the region’s best crawfish boat builders, brings into focus how both tradition and innovation course through southwestern Louisiana.