The Southern Gumbo Trail | Oral Histories

Since 1899 the Vaucressons have been mainstays of the meat business in New Orleans’ 7th Ward. Robert Levinsky Vaucresson was a butcher. His son Robert “Sonny” Vaucresson made sausage his specialty. Sonny was one of the first cooks of Creole heritage to have a restaurant on Bourbon Street. From 1966 to 1974 he operated Vaucresson’s Café Creole, where the filé gumbo was famed. Today, Vance Vaucresson carries on the tradition with Vaucresson’s Sausage Company. Restaurants throughout New Orleans swear by Vance’s smoked sausage, andouille, and chaurice for their gumbos. Many of his customers were his father’s customers. For more than a century the Vaucressons have held on to their Creole roots and shared them with their community.

Listen to this 2-minute audio clip of Vance Vaucresson talking about the legacy of Vaucresson Sausage Company. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

---

What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subject: Vance Vaucresson
Date: August 9, 2006
Location: A friend’s home – New Orleans, LA
Interviewer: Amy Evans

---

Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006; I’m with Vance Vaucresson in New Orleans at a friend’s house, and we’re here to talk about sausage. Vance, if you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself and also stating your birth date for the record.

Vance Vaucresson: Okay, my name is Vance Vaucresson. I was born December 3rd, 1968; I’m thirty-seven years old, and I am a third-generation sausage maker in New Orleans. My company, Vaucresson Sausage Company, we traced our roots back to 1899; the company wasn’t officially founded until—or established as the current entity until—in 1989. No, I’m sorry, 1983. But my great-grandfather—no, my grandfather—had—he had a butcher—he was a butcher and he made sausage. And actually, his sister was the one who really got them started in the business, and we traced it back to right around the turn of the century.

And what were their names? Your grandfather and—?

My grandfather was Robert Levinsky Vaucresson. His parents Levinsky Vaucresson, who was a French Polish Jew, married a woman named Odile Gaillard, who was a French woman of color. And they were from the Alsace region of France. And they migrated to New Orleans, and then my grandfather, Robert Levinsky Vaucresson, had siblings, but he was mainly the one that was in the business as a butcher.

And so then the sausage making, do you know how it evolved or how it became the mainstay of the business?

Well, you know, many butchers, back then, when they would buy pigs or whatever they needed, if they bought it whole, you know, in order for them to really reap the benefits monetarily, would try to use as much of the whole carcass as possible. And because of that, my grandfather probably not only made sausage but out of that he probably also made hogshead cheese; which when you have the head of the hog and the skin, you know, you want to utilize every part because you buy it on a weight basis…Either they’ll use the trimmings from the cuts that they’ve made, and then also they’ll take those cuts if they’ve gotten a little older or if they’ve tried to make certain—something else, they’ll make it into sausage to have one more product to make to sell.

And my grandfather, being a butcher, I’m sure he did that. But he also fell into the traditions and—and made chaurice, which is the French word similar to the Spanish word chorizo, where in chaurice it was typically—historically it was—in some annals of history you hear of it being an all-pork product. I think over time the version my dad made and the version which has been defined has been a pork and beef mixture and that was more so of—of a product that he made. And then I think also came out of that or—or then he bought hot sausage, which now hot sausage is typically an all-beef product but—but why—I think it’s more in terms of what people have gotten used to. You can make a hot sausage out of pork or beef or a mixture of the two. So it really depends on the individual butcher and the sausage maker in terms of how they want to make that product, you know. But, you know, those types of sausages, you’ll find a lot of ingredients which are indigenous to the area that seem, you know, to come into these products and, you know, we use heavily what we call the holy trinity: garlic, bell pepper, green onion, celery. We use bell pepper in different things—not in all one thing. You’ll see we’ll lend from these ingredients. Paprika, which has always been an ingredient, which has shown up a lot in Creole food, giving it that reddish color. You know, we’ve used it in hogshead cheese and hot sausage; hot sausage has that reddish color due to the fact that a lot of people are using the paprika to give it that—that particular look. So it’s a lot of things when we look back historically that came from those influences, when the ones with that pork when you had people coming from the West Indies, Haiti—you have the Spanish influence; you also have the French influence. So when you look at a lot of those culinary influences, you’ll see it within the Creole heritage—and sausage making.

---

Do you have an idea of what part of town [your grandfather’s] butcher shop was in?

It was in the 7th Ward [neighborhood of New Orleans], you know. Most of our existence is—has been in the 7th Ward and that’s why our ties to the area have been so long. Because, you know, we’ve had opportunities to leave. We’ve never wanted to go too far from the community and the people that have—that could just walk—walk to get our product so—. Where we have always—we have tried to grow the company to where now we—we reach out to different areas. We, you know, never left the neighborhood…We always felt we were going to stay there as long as we could because we felt investing in this community was very important.

Did your father [Robert “Sonny” Vaucresson] take over your grandfather’s butcher shop?

You know, my grandfather started—during his—his time he was where the Circle Food Store is, which is on the corner of Claiborne—North Claiborne and St Bernard Avenue; it was once called the St. Bernard Market. And within the St. Bernard Market—it was a very open market, and they had many different meat purveyors. They had a lot of different butchers that had what they called stalls. And in those stalls you heard names that some people would recognize as Oddo, Mule', Bachemin, Vaucresson, Grillier; you had these names and they had different stalls. And a lot of those butchers and sausage makers developed a clientele to where eventually they moved out of the stall situation and got their own places in which my grandfather did. He went from the stall at St. Bernard Market to a self-standing butcher shop, which was located at 19—I want to say 1927 St. Bernard Avenue, which is now a Liberty Bank and Trust branch. And then from there he migrated down the street to another self-standing building which was what we call The Point, which is one of those island type buildings you see in New Orleans where the building is there’s—it’s not—it’s just by itself, and it’s actually on St. Bernard Avenue at—I forget the exact address. But that’s where we had our Vaucresson Meat Market and my grandfather had—he had six kids; he had three daughters from a previous marriage—first marriage; no children from his second marriage, and then his first son—my dad—and only son was in his third marriage and two other kids. So he had older daughters and one of his daughters—Mildred’s husband was a butcher and joined my grandfather in the business and then they became Vaucresson and Bordenave. And then when my grandfather passed, when my dad was a sophomore at Xavier University, my father gave up his schooling at the time and then joined and took over the business—the Vaucresson side.

Well eventually, my dad closed the meat market down after his brother-in-law died and he decided to open up a sausage company, you know. He said, “Well, you know, I really just want to make the sausage.” And in the early [nineteen] seventies he had developed plans to open up his own sausage company. Well he went to the State [of Louisiana] and was rejected in terms of developing his sausage company, basically, for all intents and purposes because of his color. Now those that knew my dad knew that he did not look like a man of color. He had sky-blue eyes; he was just a very fair Creole and he never really, you know, as they say in the Creole culture you hear about people being passé-à blanc, which means passing for white. He never really did that, but in business, in order for him to get ahead, if you didn’t ask him, well he didn’t say. And that’s actually why he was able to—he was the first man of color to have a business on Bourbon Street from 1966 to 1974. They had a restaurant called Vaucresson’s Café Creole at 624 Bourbon, which is now the Pat O’Brien’s annex bar. And it was just—it happened that way because a man named Larry Bornstein owned the building and he was an art dealer, and he became friends with my dad because my dad did a lot of business in the [French] Quarter—excuse me—and they came up with this idea to have a restaurant—a Creole restaurant. Well they went ahead and—and—and made it happen…and it became a very popular breakfast and lunch spot. And one of the items that was a favorite was the chaurice. A lot of people, you know, was exposed to that and—and that was one of our big things—chaurice with grits and eggs. And to this day I still have people who—who when, you know, they ask me if that was—I was related to the people at the restaurant; they reminisce about, “Oh, I used to go there every—every morning on my way to work and get my chaurice, grits, and eggs.”

So, you know, we—my dad’s sausage influence stayed with him in whatever business entity he went into. And then when he was lucky enough to be in a position where at the restaurant, that was where they basically brainstormed the idea for New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival…And from there, George Wein left from there and developed the concept and made it happen. And they asked my dad right then and there, would he be a food vendor. And so he was—he made sausage po’boys at the restaurant, wrapped it in foil, and then would transport them out at the booth at the Congo Square. And since then we’ve—we’ve been in the festival every year; we’re the only original food vendor at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for thirty-seven years, and we’ve always sold hot sausages at the festival, so you know—and every particular business entity my dad went into, there was always sausage.

[M]y dad then decided back in [nineteen] eighty-two that he wanted to try the a sausage factory thing again…And from there we opened our factory in October of [nineteen] eighty-three on the corner of St. Bernard and North Roman in the neighborhood in an old grocery store and did it on a wing and a prayer.

---

What kind of food was on the menu besides the chaurice and grits in your father’s restaurant?

Well he would have the chaurice; he would have well, you know, red beans and rice was the staple; he would have a version of grillades and grits. He would also what we call panéd meat or breaded veal, you know; and he would have the stuffed bell peppers in the Creole tradition. He would have different types of gumbo. Certainly etouffee. He would have jambalaya, which would be more of a brownish jambalaya than say, a reddish jambalaya…You know, more to the flavoring that they were used to where they came from, you know. A lot of breading, a lot of sauces; it—it was a—it really introduced that end of the [French] Quarter to an eating difference. You know, a lot of palates were giving a little different type of flavor profile in their foods, you know. I mean yeah, you had the Antoine’s and the Arnaud’s [restaurants] and everything, and they had their own Creole tradition of cooking, but there is a little difference, you know. You get a little bit of a difference in say, the kitchens of Creole people of color in the neighborhood. The flavor profile would be—and I think that over time, that influence has now gotten into those restaurants, you know, because a lot of the cooks, you know, the sous-chefs, when you start to look at them they’re—they’re people of color, so they’re bringing those things that they pick up from their—their mothers and their grandmothers that they then take to culinary school and they tweak over time, you know.

---

Well aside from your rich family history behind the business, what would you say sets your product apart from other products?

Well I think that when you look at the individual products, from what I’ve heard from my customers who have tried other products, it’s a—it goes back to what I said in regards to that flavor and tradition. It’s just that they’ve had a certain flavor for a while that they like; they like the way that I take the seasoning and flavor the products to create that profile. And you know, I’ve had people tell me they didn’t like my product because they were used to another flavor product. I’ve heard people say, “Well your product is not hot enough.” You know, I learned from an old seasoning man a long time ago, he said, “You can always add pepper, but you can't take it away.” So I’d rather add just enough, you know…You know, my dad said, you know, “When you talk about the product, say it’s a product that you make with love.” Because we put more emphasis on seasoning rather than pepper. It’s the overall seasoning of the product. So I just try to create a product or whatnot—I take one of my own products; I make sure that it has a seasoning profile that I think when it hits your palate it will be distinctive. It will have a robust flavor that you can say, “Wow, you know it—it’s just—it’s good; it’s pleasing.” And because a lot of us—a lot of other meat producers in the area, we make a lot of the same stuff; and over time they’ve become very similar, but I think they always still have their distinctive flavor profile based on the those people and their stories or their histories and where the influences come from.

---

Do you make a gumbo?

I do make a gumbo. I make a gumbo. I make our usual, you know, basic flour and oil roux…Dependent upon—it’s got a little—I guess a hint of—after I put all my stuff in it’s kind of like a—a pecan—kind of like slightly reddish [roux] because of, you know, I might put a little—you know, I put like—when I put my sausage in that, you know, you get a little bit of pretty color from that, so you get a little bit of that. But it’s, you know—it’s more of a pecan-ish color; it’s—it’s a light—it’s not a very thick gumbo. It’s lighter in consistency; it’s more—it’s not like a soup but it’s—it’s like almost—it’s in between like a soup and—and when I say about a soup, like say—say you get a chicken noodle broth, like chicken broth and then you take—you go all the way to a thicker gumbo roux, like a thicker—in between there. So it’s a little lighter in—in texture. So like when you take a spoonful, rather than it—let’s say you take a spoon and then you turn it; rather than it go in a stream, it will drip. You know, like—it will drip. So it’s more sort of, I guess, on the side of—of like a thicker soup almost, but we all love the stuff I put in it. It’s—you see everything in there. It’s a good gumbo. I learned that; it was a trial-and-error-type gumbo. My mom made it, and it was a little bit—it was a little more soup-ier. And then when I started making my own, I kind of thickened it up a little bit.

Are those two gumbos anything like what your father had at the restaurant?

Yeah. Actually, I think that’s more of a Creole tradition of filé gumbo. And that’s the way I’m talking about filé—it’s a lighter Gumbo. Now when you go to okra, you know, that’s obviously thicker, but the key for me is really how I manipulate that okra and make sure it’s not slimy. I can't stand a slimy okra. [Gasps]

So wait, when you are talking about filé gumbo, is that a roux-based gumbo? Is filé added at the end or is it—?

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, it’s a roux-based gumbo, where you would add filé at the end and, you know, we always—if you wanted more filé, you could do it on your own, but it wasn’t where it’s not a filé gumbo where you—filé, yeah. It’s more so you can take your time to taste it but you know, we leave it for—we’re wrapping a whole bunch of other flavors in it and sausages and oysters, the—in my gumbo, the sausage—hot sausage, smoked sausage, pickled pork, you know, a little bit—not too much; I put oysters and—and I put shrimp. That’s all. That’s all you need.

You look hungry for it now.

That’s all you need. You know, some people put chicken, some people put—well, crab. I would put crab for those that want crab. Personally, I don’t feel like fussing with the crab. My wife will throw them crabs in there, which is fine; I don’t mind it. It’s really—it all depends on how I wake up on the side of the bed, if I’m going to put crab. It doesn’t really matter in terms of that, but I usually just put that in the—some people put chicken, some people put—what else—. You know, I just don’t know. You know, gumbo is like the individual, you know. You can give somebody—the same five people the same gumbo recipe; it will be different.
You know, I went up there to this gumbo cook-off in New Iberia, when I went there. And the rules to this place is, you had to create your gumbo on-site from the roux. You cannot bring roux; you had to make your roux on-site. And I was wondering around, and I’m like, first of all, everybody makes their roux different, and I really learned that everybody makes their gumbo different, and you see all the different influences. And I mean in certain categories—yeah, they had a filé gumbo category, and every gumbo was different. Every okra gumbo was different. Every, chicken and sausage gumbo was different and it was crazy, you know, but it’s just—it’s really just—when you taste mine, I think you get a lot of, you know—that’s my family’s traditional gumbo.

---

Do you think there’s any one thing that makes a good gumbo?

[Sighs] I really feel that if you really, you know, develop your roux and, you know, you can develop your roux where it’s not too flour-y tasting, it’s not too oily, and you really cook it down and take your time with it, and you really develop it, once you get it and you then start to add to it, now you can—you’ve got people who do it every day; they boil the shrimp and then take the shrimp stock and throw it in there, and you can boil the chicken and the chicken stock and put it in there. And they’re just going to get chicken broth, you know, or they might just take water and do it from that. Everybody has their own way. But as long as they’re cognizant of the building process that they’re really—it’s all—it’s just building that flavor. They just stick with it and, you know, they don’t, you know, really make it too far this way, too far that way, it will be a very pleasing gumbo.

---

Well what would you want people to know about your family and your sausage?

[Sighs] Vaucresson Sausage Company came out of a tradition of men who—who really took heed to their community and the desires of their community and really tried to make products within the traditions of the specifically the 7th Ward Creole community. From that the exposure into maybe more of a Creole heritage and then in cooking style and product making and then also creating products and really making sure that we one, put a lot of our love and effort into our products. But also that we felt was consistent with what we felt was our family tradition of making a—a very good flavorful product that when you would bite into it, the bite of the product would be pleasing, the flavor profile of the product would be pleasing, and then the—the digestion of the product would be pleasing…So we just want to make sure that it’s—it’s an overall enjoyable eating experience and that they know, you know, that there’s a lot—a lot of history behind these products and that, you know, we’re—we’re—the people that made this product have gone through a lot and a lot of diversity, you know, and that what they’re getting is the product of a lot of that. So that’s what I want them to know that, you know, it’s one thing to start something overnight and it take off, but it’s something to last as long as we have through all the struggles, and I think I’m facing probably the biggest challenge that my grandfather or my dad might have ever faced—it will be to survive and then from there, just to make sure that those traditions—those things that people hold dear that they can look at one portion of that history in us and say, “You know, it’s like how it was. That’s like how it was.” So that’s what we want, just to carry on the tradition.

---

Do you have any final thoughts about what you do and what you make and where you make it in New Orleans, Louisiana, and when you’ll be making it again?

Oh, yeah. I’ll be making it again, and I think that I’m looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be a challenge, you know. It’s going to definitely be a challenge because the market has changed, and you have less people to work with so you have a bigger fight to get your product out there. I’m going to try to start shipping more product, you know, to customers that I know and then really just trying to get back to carving my own niche and—and getting back to growing my business to where it was and then maybe bigger than that. It’s a challenge, you know. I’m just going to try to do what I know and work with it and experiment, you know, and take risks and go from there, you know.

---

To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.