202 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
I t ’s
problematic to decide what Dustie
Latiolais loves more: fishing or cooking.
His job is cooking. He is executive
chef and general manager of Crawfish Town USA, a
Henderson-Breaux Bridge seafood landmark.
After fishing (see Butte La Rose Bailout in this
issue), we headed right for the kitchen to prepare
some of our catch.
He had a sur-
prise, too.
“I’ve got some
really good
tripletail in at
the restaurant
right now,” he
said. “Let me
cook some of
that, too.”
I didn’t argue. I
love tripletail as
much as fresh-
water catfish, if
not just a little
bit more.
Dustie’s background is a combination of formal
culinary training and country Cajun cooking.
Way before he attended the Louisiana Culinary
Institute, he cooked with his grandparents, Jackie
and Wiley Latiolais of Cecilia. They cooked from
scratch every day.
He remembers having to stand on a stool to stir the
pot. When he got old enough to go to his grandfa-ther’s deer camp near Krotz Springs, he used to peel
potatoes and onions.
“That was my first real job cooking — doing the
grunt work that they didn’t want to do. I was about
9 or 10,” he remembered. “After a couple of weeks
doing that, they let me stir the pot. I was excited
about them letting me do something. I was the only
kid at the camp interested in cooking. The others
were all gone riding four-wheelers.
“The epiphany was when they let me make the first
roux late in the season. I said, ‘This is cool!’ Poppa
was an expert on any dish. I started to cook more
with Granny. I would cook for adults and my friends
that came to the camp. A big thing was smothered
deer cooked outside on a burner — rice and steak
gravy, corn maque choux and smothered potatoes
or turnips.”
Dustie got his first job cooking at a restaurant at
14 at his great uncle Pat Huval’s restaurant, Pat’s
Fisherman’s Wharf in Henderson. From there it was
steady up the ladder, with each job offering new
learning experiences and responsibilities.
One of the fun things about cooking informally
with a chef is that they often improvise as they go.
That’s what Dustie did with these two recipes.
For the Creole seasoning ingredients listed in
the recipes, he naturally used Crawfish Town USA
Seasoning, but any Creole or Cajun seasoning blend
can be used. ■The fishing chef works
his magic
Dustie Latiolais is equally
at home in a kitchen or
on a boat catching fish.THe seAfooD bible
Jerald & Glenda Horst
Jerald and Glenda Horst are the authors of six excellent
books on Louisiana seafood — The Seafood Bible: Shrimp,
The Seafood Bible: Crawfish, The Seafood Bible: Crabs, The
Seafood Bible: Oysters, The Seafood Bible: Fish: Volumn I
and The Seafood Bible: Fish: Volumn 2. Jerald and Glenda
may be contacted at [email protected].