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INTERVIEWS
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Interviews and photographs by Laura Westbrook, director, Louisiana Regional Folklife Program
Wayne Schexnayder
Schexnayder’s Acadian Foods - Hammond, LA
“[Hurricane Katrina] was big mess; I'll tell you. I lost about ninety percent of my business...I lost about six thousand pounds of product out of my coolers and freezers that I had to throw away. So I mean it was a big mess; it wasn't as bad as some other people 'cause I got in quick and we got everything out.”
— Wayne Schexnayder
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of Wayne Schexnayder talking about how he got into the food business.
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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Date: November 8, 2005
Location: Schexnayder’s Acadian Foods – Kenner, LA
Interviewer: Laura Westbrook, University of New Orleans
Length: 59 minutes
Project: Gulf Coast Foodways Renaissance Project/Hurricane Katrina
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Laura Westbrook: I am visiting with Chef Wayne Mark Schexnayder at his workplace, where Schexnayder’s Acadian Foods are produced. The interviewer is Laura Westbrook and the date is November 8, 2005. Wayne, you were saying that your family has lived in Hahnville for—?
Wayne Schexnayder: Hahnville, in St. Charles Parish, is the Parish seat and in French it's called “Cote des Allemandes,” which means the German Coast. My family has been here since the early 1700s.
Were they involved with the sugar business?
No; they were German farmers that were brought there by the French to farm, to start a colony—a new colony.
I see.
And it was three original settlements, three German settlements along the river in St. Charles Parish. The Schexnayders were one of the first families in Louisiana.
That's something people don't know a whole lot about.
I think—I want to say it's the third oldest settlement in the state after New Orleans and Natchitoches.
I've heard some people theorize that the Cajun, the famous Cajun sausage traditions actually came from the German sausage tradition—that Cajuns learned a lot about sausage making from their German neighbors. Have you ever heard people talk about that?
Well it in this area it had to be because my family always made andouille, which is more of a German type sausage. And the Cajun coast, which is St. James Parish and going west or southwest, supposedly came in 1765. So they came a whole lot later than my German ancestors.
Mmm-hmm. Are there any stories in your family about some of those early settlers and their experiences?
Well,
I remember some things my grandfather and grandmother told me about; they
worked so hard they didn't live long. They died in their mid-50s you know—they
worked real hard. The elements—the mosquitoes, the wild animals,
the Indians—it was a hard life.
It was the frontier for them.
Right, right; but in other ways they lived a good life, you know. They raised fresh vegetables. I don't know what year, but they also told me that the German farmers on the German coast kept New Orleans from starving in one period in time because of the fresh produce and the milk and cheeses and that type of thing.
Yes; I had heard that too.
What year it was I don't know but—.
How did you learn to cook, and how did you get interested in it? Was it something that was in your family?
[Sighs] Well, two reasons—I come from a family that cooks. Everybody in my family cooks, especially my grandmother was a great cook, my mother, my grandmother on my mother's side; but we were born and raised in Hahnville which was my dad's side of the family. But the way I really started cooking, believe it or not, was I used to be a competitive body-builder—
I believe it—the pictures. [gestures toward wall of memorabilia and family photos]
Years ago when I was on a diet, my mother cooked for the family and everything she cooked I basically couldn't eat. So I kind of started cooking my own meals, so in the off-season when I wasn't competing, when I wanted to eat something good then I started cooking some other dishes and that's basically how I got started. And then I opened up a small catering company on weekends while I worked in the supermarket business, and on weekends I would do small catering jobs. And then I eventually went to work in the French Quarters for eleven years as a chef and I stayed there and then I bought this—this business.
Uh-hm; and what was the restaurant where you worked?
The French Market Restaurant and Bar on Decatur and St. Philip.
That must have been pretty busy.
Very busy.
What was it like? Was it mostly tourists who came in or—?
Pretty much—pretty much a lot of tourists, but we had a lot of repeat business. We had a Cajun Creole menu and we made everything from scratch—etouffee, shrimp Creole, crawfish pies, oysters Bienville, oyster Rockefeller, sweet potato pecan pies, bread pudding—I mean everything was made from scratch.
What did you find were the newcomers' expectations of Cajun and Creole cooking?
Well, one big fallacy everyone had was that Cajun food was supposed to be so hot that you really couldn't enjoy it, which is really a misconception about Cajun food that I was born and raised on. We never did really cook that hot, you know, where you couldn't enjoy it, but some people just have it in their minds that Cajun food is like having a sticker in your tongue or something.
Hmmm.
But it's just a misconception.
Well where do you think that comes from?
Well in the southwestern states they do cook spicier than what we do, but the difference is that when people say seasoning, you know, if you say seasoning where I'm from, people will say onions, bell peppers, celery, you know parsley, green onions, and garlic. If you say seasoning there they're going to say pepper, cayenne pepper, so everyone has their own definition of seasonings, you know. You look at our gumbo and it's just a ton of seasoning floating on top of it; over there it's no seasoning and it's peppered, so—so roux and ingredients, and the filling, whatever it is—chicken or seafood or whatever.
So—so you had a cooking family; what do you remember that your grandmother made? What were some of your favorite things?
Oh God; she would make you hurt yourself when you went to her house. [Laughs] Chicken and andouille gumbo, smothered pork roast, wild game, crème puffs, jelly rolls.
Ah, so she cooked traditional foods and she also baked?
Oh she did it all; I'm serious. She was a phenomenal cook.
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Yes; well, I don't know if you've heard about
the other vendors at the Farmers’ Market—
I'm sure everybody else's has too. I mean that's why I have some guys
here that's you know—making sausage because their company was in
Chalmette and it totally got wiped out. So I'm letting them—
So you're helping them by—?
—use my building for a couple days a week.
That's—that's wonderful.
Because they're under USDA inspection also.
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All right; okay we're back. So when you first started cooking among a cooking family, what were some of the first things you learned to cook, like when you were a child the first time you were allowed in the kitchen? A lot of people say things like, “The first time I was allowed in the kitchen I could make biscuits and that was all my mother would allow me to touch.” What was your experience when you first started learning to cook?
Well, we had a lot of different breakfast items that we used to—well that my grandmother and my mother and family used to make and one of them was galette, which was a fried dough. I'm sure you've heard of a galette. Not many people know what a galette is, but it's the official doughnut of St. Charles Parish and it's a fried dough. It's kind of like a French market doughnut but it's not hollow on the inside. It's full, it's heavy, and it's cut in a rectangular shape with a slit in the middle. So it's rolled out, cut in a rectangular shape with a slit in the middle, and then it's fried. And instead of putting—when we grew up didn't put the powdered sugar; we always had cane syrup 'cause we were in the sugar cane area, so we always had cane syrup. So that, and maybe some omelets. But later on in life it was a lot of wild game, roast duck, alligator sauce pecan, shrimp stew, crawfish stew—you know, the staples.
In your family, were there certain kinds of cooking that the men did versus the women?
Well, we did a lot of the boiling—crab boils, shrimp boils, but my dad and my grandfather always fried catfish that was caught fresh out of Lake Des Allemandes; we had a camp on the District Canal, which was the main canal that went into Lake Des Allemandes, and my dad would get his five days off from Shell and we would spend the five days at the camp and we would hunt and fish.
Now, who went to the camp—just the men or—?
The whole family.
The whole family went?
The whole family, relatives; it was a club so the club members went, so it was a pretty big social outing.
Mmm-hmm?
For the weekend or whenever we went, but we also went with just our family or just me and my dad. We'd go spend a few days—hunt and fish, you know.
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Let me ask you a little bit about your business as you developed it here. We had talked about how you ended up being—
How did I start?
A
chef in the French Quarter, and that you decided that maybe having your
own business would be something you would be more interested in than working
in the Quarter? [Both laugh] How did that happen?
Well I just got tired of making money for everybody. I just said, well, I need to make some for myself, so that’s basically how it happened.
And how did you find this place?
A friend of mine told me about it, and I came and talked to the owner and he wanted to get out. At first he wanted way too much money for it and then I kind of waited and he—I don't think he really found anybody that was interested in it—and then I came back a few months later and we struck a deal.
That was quite an investment for you, though, to leave something established where you were really well known, and to invest in all this equipment and hiring people on your own.
It was a big gamble.
That must have been—
I took a gamble and everybody thought I was crazy.
Really?
And I think everybody really still thinks I'm crazy, but so far I've been successful—until the storm hit. [Laughs]
How have things changed? When you heard the news about the storm, how did you prepare for it?
There is no way to prepare for it.
So what did you do?
Mentally, you know, if you—[sighs]—it's a big mess; I'll tell you. I lost about ninety percent of my business.
Oh are there—were there preparations? Because we've had big storms before, not huge like this one—
Right; but we've always been able to come back in two or three days.
What do you normally do in your business before a storm? Are there special ways that you take care of the equipment or do you have storm doors that you can close?
Here, really nothing, because we don't have windows and we have one loading door but there's no windows in the plant so there's nothing really you can do. The only thing you can wish for is that the power stays on. I lost about six thousand pounds of product out of my coolers and freezers that I had to throw away. So I mean it was a big mess; it wasn't as bad as some other people 'cause I got in quick and we got everything out, and everything that I had was vacuum-packed so it didn't drip, and I didn't have a big physical mess.
So you didn't have the smelly refrigerator syndrome that other people had?
No—no way. And I started moving closer; I was in Houston and I came back and then I went to Denham Springs and I kept moving, you know, so when I got a chance to get in, I got in and took care of my—you know what I had—.
When did you all leave?
The Saturday before—I had a catering job that morning and they closed where we were having the catering job, Lafreniere Park, so I had to bring all of the food and load it in this lady's van so she could take it to Belle Chasse. She was from Belle Chasse and they had already evacuated Belle Chasse that Saturday morning, so once I got her taken care of—
You did the hand-off?
Right; I did the hand-off and then finished cleaning up and doing what I had to do here, and then we left. We left around four o'clock Saturday evening.
And when you got back, you said, it wasn't too bad in terms of the clean-up you had to do.
Well it was a lot of work but, I mean, it wasn't as bad as some other people. I mean I know some people that really couldn't even open because their coolers and freezers were having maggots and it was just a big—big mess. So that's why I came in early—as soon as possible.
Because you—you knew?
Oh, I knew.
Now, you did lose a lot—you lost everything that was here?
Everything—everything that I had processed, yeah.
Yes?
Yeah; about six thousand pounds.
But that was just the beginning of—.
That was the beginning of the horror. [Laughs] The horror of reality—. I'm laughing so I don't cry.
What have you been seeing in terms of how the market is changed now?
Well, there is no market. Or a very limited market.
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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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