Vermilion Parish seafood restaurants will be busy thanks to the start of Lent

By Laura Trahan

Every Friday during the Lenten season, Catholics and others who observe it abstain from eating meat, meaning that they do not eat it, and usually they turn to seafood during that time, and that provides a great boost in business for local restaurants that serve such things as crawfish and oysters.
“For us, it increases because people during Lent tend to eat more crawfish for whatever reason,” said Calvin Richard, owner of Richard’s Seafood Patio in Abbeville. “I don’t know if it increases all seafood businesses, but it definitely increases my business.”
The practice of not eating meat on Ash Wednesday and every Friday during Lent goes quite a far way back, to the early days of the Church. Traditionally, Catholics do not eat things such as steak and hamburgers during those Fridays for quite a few different reasons, such as to focus on the humility of Jesus Christ, fish is safer to eat for some or because of how fish was inexpensive during Biblical times. For whatever reason, abstaining from meat in favor of fish or even vegetarian food is a time-honored tradition.
Businesses that specialize in seafood such as Richard’s and Shucks know how to keep up with the demand once Lent begins. Days such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as well as every other Friday during this time, sees more and more people purchasing it. This results in the respective owners finding different ways to obtain them.
“We do see a spike in business during Lent,” said David Bertrand, one of the owners of Shucks in Abbeville. “The typical days of the spikes are Wednesdays and Fridays of course because of the abstinence from meat. We just add extra employees to each shift and we increase our ordering of seafood products.”
This increase also calls for a slightly bigger staff in order to accommodate it. This helps speed things up and naturally increase efficiency.
“We increase our staff slightly, and then of course we have to try to obtain more crawfish when they are available,” said Richard. “The demand for crawfish during Lent is higher than any other time during crawfish season.”
Alongside the hot commodity that is crawfish, oysters, shrimp and even different kinds of fresh fish are popular choices of those who go to or order from these kinds of restaurants.
“Mostly shrimp and oysters are our biggest sellers during Lent,” said Bertrand, “and now that we serve fresh flounder and red fish, these are becoming increasingly popular because they are baked.”