Photo: Bob Carriker
"For some people, the way they eat boudin is to bite off the first bite and squeeze out the filling the rest of the way," explains event organizer Bob Carriker, who created the web site The Boudin Link to chronicle his ardor for the spicy, rice-y, pork-based snack. "And some people like to eat the casing as they go."
Carriker polled attendees at last year's cookoff, the first edition of the festival, and discovered the crowd was almost evenly split: Discarding the casing was favored by 117 voters, while 86 boudin fans claimed they liked their casing on.
"This is a raging debate in South Louisiana," Carriker says. "Health care, schmealth care."
As Carriker's lingo suggests, he's not a Louisiana native. He moved there from Washington for a job, and immediately set about acquainting himself with the state's cuisine.








