New Orleans restaurant serves fresh po’boys, distributes meal kits to Terrebonne Parish fishing communities

Free sausage for all! Cannata’s welcomes ‘world’s largest grill’ on Sept. 24

September 23, 2021

Comcast Houma update Sept. 23

September 23, 2021

Michael Nelson, Executive Chef at GW Fins in New Orleans, has worked with folks from the bayou fishing communities of Terrebonne Parish for several years, preparing fresh seafood caught from southeast Louisiana waters. So, when Hurricane Ida ravaged through such areas as Dularge and Dulac, among others, overturning vessels and decimating homes as a powerful Category 4, he knew those fishermen and their families would require basic life necessities as they recover.

“I just felt really bad for a lot of the guys that I know down here personally…Down here, with the amount of destruction, just the infrastructure that’s gotta be rebuilt, it’s just so much of a longer, harder process [than New Orleans] to get life back to normal,” Nelson said. “When I reached out and asked, ‘Hey, is there something we could do?’ They said, ‘Yeah, people need to eat.’ And if there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s feed some people.”

The chef organized a massive food donation, with contributions from New Orleans area businesses, including Craig Borges’ New Orleans Seafood Co., Louisiana Seafood Exchange Inc., New Orleans Fish House, Jazzmen Rice, Blue Runner Foods, Coca-Cola, Magic Seasoning Blends, Ben E. Keith Foods, Sysco Louisiana Fresh Produce, Capitol City Produce, Gulf Coast Blenders, JV Foods, Leidenheimer Baking Company, Caire Hotel & Restaurant Supply, Inc., Big Shot and Chisesi Brothers Meat Packing Company. “These are just basically suppliers that we work with on a typical day,” Nelson said. “There wasn’t a single person that I asked that even questioned whether or not they were going to help.”

The GW Fins team hauled thousands of meal kits containing ingredients to make red beans and rice to the bayou area. Each kit could feed ten people, Nelson said. They distributed them at Holy Family Catholic Church in Dulac on Tuesday and Dularge Recreation Center on Wednesday. Additionally, GW Fins prepared shrimp po’boys with a side of french fries at each location, serving 1,500-plus meals to locals over the two days. “We had a line of almost two miles of cars,” Nelson said of the first distribution event. “I don’t really get enough time to interact with everybody the way I would like. But, I had people reach out to the restaurant through social media, just being really appreciative of us coming all the way down here and showing up when they really needed it.”

“All I’m here to do is just make some great food like I do every day. And I just know they’re going to love it and appreciate it no matter what,” the chef said as he sliced some fully-dressed freshly made po’boys to serve.

Shawny Burgard, a lifelong resident of the Dularge-Theriot area and one of the volunteers who turned Dularge Recreation Center into a vital distribution hub in the days following the storm, said she appreciates restaurants such as GW Fins that use seafood caught by local fishermen giving back. “It’s amazing,” she said. “[Nelson] is about the bayous and helping others and using fresh Louisiana seafood.”

Shrimp consumers may take for granted the amount of work it takes to bring seafood to the plate, Nelson said. “They might assume a lot of this shrimp is farm-raised. But this wild shrimp that’s so amazing in Louisiana — somebody has to go out there every day in a boat and catch this stuff,” he said. “So, whatever we can do to get these guys back on their feet and back on the water, that’s what we want to do.”

Find organizations helping the bayou communities and other areas of Terrebonne and Lafourche below: