On the Cajun Coast, a Chef Grapples With Threats to a Seafood Tradition
The New York Times
From her New Orleans restaurant, Melissa Martin sees the environmental damage that could end the region’s rich culture of food and fishing.
NEW ORLEANS — Days before Hurricane Ida hit last August, Maxine and Lanny Martin bought 150 pounds of shrimp in Chauvin, the coastal Louisiana town where they live. The shrimp came from fishers along Bayou Petit Caillou, which runs a few blocks from the house where the Martins raised six children, including Melissa Martin, a chef and cookbook author in New Orleans.
That seafood stockpile is one reason the Martins initially resisted their daughter’s pleas that they evacuate in advance of the storm, which devastated communities on the southeast Louisiana coast, including Chauvin.
“I wasn’t worried about my house,” Melissa Martin said her mother told her later. “I was worried about my shrimp.”
