NEW ORLEANS (WGNO)— To begin the Lenten season, crawfish prices are a bit higher than anyone wants to pay, but for the love of mudbugs, we buy them anyway.
The seafood season is officially open and across New Orleans, the outlook this year, especially for crawfish is pretty good.
Chi Nguyen of Cajun Seafood said, “It’s a lot. It’s abundant, and the sizes right now are coming in real good.”
On the not-so-good side, prices for live crawfish are a little high at about $3.00 a pound for live crawfish, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring anyone who wants them from buying them.
According to Samantha Carroll, Louisiana Seafood Executive Director, “I think that’s kind of one of the things that’s a blessing for Louisiana when it comes to crawfish season because you only have it for a certain period of time. Whenever it’s time to start eating crawfish again, you don’t really care about how much it cost. You might complain about it a little bit but you still have the craving.”
There wasn’t much complaining at Cajun Seafood in Treme. The Nguyen family says they sold over 1,000 pounds of boiled crawfish per day over the weekend.
The business was also brisk at Deanie’s Seafood. Chandra Chafici’s family runs three restaurants locally and she says the lack of extreme cold this winter has helped the local seafood supply.
“Crawfish have come in strong, we’re not at peak yet, but they were really good this past weekend over Mardi Gras. With shrimp season, the shrimp have been great. Crabs with that hot to cold affect that some because they like to bury themselves when it gets cold, but we’ve had some crabs coming in, said Chifici.”
At the Westwego Seafood Lot, vendors reported steady sales all day.
