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ORAL HISTORY
Beverly Giardelli
Beverly Giardelli grew up so close to the boudin at C. Hebert’s Slaughter House & Meat Market that she hardly even remembers eating it as a young girl. Her mother worked at the market, her cousins worked at the market. Everyone in town, it seems, spent weekends across the highway from the market, where its founding owner, Clement Hebert, also ran a bush track for horse racing. It took Beverly several decades and a long spell living in Chicago with her horse trainer husband to find her own place at the Abbeville market, but she’s now ensconced as the head boudin maker there. Every employee—from the butcher to the current owner, Junior Luquette—pitches in to aid the boudin production, but ultimately Beverly is the only one whose hands and palate guide it every step of the way. Now employing its third generation of Hebert relations (fourth if you include the children who hang around after school and on weekends, bagging cracklin’ and fetching ingredients), C. Hebert’s is one of the few true slaughterhouses left in southwest Louisiana. And, because it is a slaughterhouse, C. Hebert’s boudin contains parts of the pig—the trimmings and the innards—unavailable to boudin shops that rely on commercial pork shoulders and butts.