🍤 Clesi Family: Serving Crawfish, Cajun & Camaraderie in New Orleans

Many people have asked us why we chose to resettle in New Orleans, a city whose weather is famous for the three H’s: Hot, Humid, Hurricanes. Well, we love adventure and diversity, and New Orleans presents both. We came for the 4 Cs: Cuisines, Culture, Community and Crawfish. The latter is a seasonal specialty running from early winter to early summer.

To those unfamiliar, crawfish are freshwater crustaceans, found aplenty in the lowland coastal waters of Louisiana. They are traditionally served in crawfish boils, hot and spicy with sides of boiled new potatoes and corn on the cob. Crawfish are also part of many popular Louisiana dishes including crawfish étouffée, crawfish pasta, cheesy crawfish bread and crawfish pie (similar to an empanada).

We pick up boiled crawfish by the bag at our local grocer to enjoy at home, usually with cold beers or chilled whites or rosés. One of our favorite casual New Orleans hangouts to eat boiled crawfish outside along with other seafood dishes is Clesi’s Seafood & Catering in Mid-City. Clesi’s serves a lot of crawfish. This year they were the official crawfish of New Orleans JazzFest. Clesi’s is involved in many community events including the recent Bayou Boogaloo which helps raise money to preserve historic Bayou St. John.

Like many New Orleans food businesses, Clesi’s is family run. James Clesi began serving his signature pop-up crawfish boils at venues around New Orleans in 2013 and expanded. Clesi’s offers award-winning boiled crawfish, shrimp, fresh and chargrilled oysters and popular Louisiana fare like blackened redfish with dirty rice, jambalaya and fried catfish in a casual setting year-round. Siblings Carlo, James and Sonya Clesi now oversee Clesi’s catering operations and a separate restaurant located at 4323 Bienville Street  Instagram

In this episode of The Connected Table Live, Carlo Clesi shares his family story and how his father went from running small crawfish boil pop-up stands to establishing a successful catering and restaurant business. He underscores that crawfish is just one of many signature dishes at Clesi’s; others include jambalaya cheese fries and blackened redfish over dirty rice. Website

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