Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou

The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans―all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many, in America and around the world? 

A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French—speaking mother’s gumbo often got started with a chicken chased down in the yard. In Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou, Wells shares his lifelong quest to explore gumbo’s roots and mysteries. He spends time with octogenarian chefs to make a gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; and observes the gumbo—making rituals of an iconic New Orleans restaurant where high—end Creole cooking and Cajun cuisine first merged.

Gumbo Life, rendered in Wells’ affable prose, makes clear that gumbo is more than a dish: it’s an attitude, a way of seeing the world. This is a tasty culinary memoir―to be enjoyed like a simmering pot of gumbo.

This edition includes recipe additions as well as a story about the author’s quest for authentic Cajun Dark Roux, which involved a hunt for (thankfully scarce) bear lard.