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Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Southern Boudin Trail

ORAL HISTORY

Shannon & Chad Bourque

Adolph “The Boss” Bourque raised a menagerie of livestock at his home in Port Barre, Louisiana, to feed his family. In 1948, he began selling cuts of meat, eggs, and vegetables to neighbors out his front door. Eventually, he turned his living room market into a freestanding business, with his three sons working at his side. In the 1970s, brothers Carl and Lester Bourque worked together to develop a family boudin recipe for Bourque’s Supermarket. Today, Adolph’s grandsons, Shannon and Chad Bourque, are at the helm of the family business. Under their watch, the boudin got some extra attention; they put their aprons on and got to work, and after approval from the Bourque family, the new boudin recipe made its public debut. It also made its nationwide debut. Bourque’s Supermarket now has an online store and ships boudin everywhere from Houston to Hawaii.

Date of interview:
2006-10-10

Interviewer:
Amy C. Evans

Photographer:
Amy C. Evans

Download Transcript

“

People who just walk in the store…if they don’t have time to cook supper, they just walk up to the counter and buy five, six, seven pounds of boudin. That’s supper because it’s like a whole meal. You have rice, you have your meat, you have onions, your bell peppers, your vegetables and stuff. It’s just like a meal. ~ Shannon Bourque

Oh, I love our boudin. I probably eat boudin probably four or five days out of the week—anywhere from two to four links each day. That’s a good bit of boudin. But I can tell you this, there’s a lot more people that eat a whole lot more boudin than what I eat…It’s good on crackers. That’s how I like it, on crackers. ~ Chad Bourque

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