KINGWOOD — Cory Harper’s Cat Daddy’s Ragin’ Cajun Cafe, on S. Price Street, will celebrate its first-year anniversary in November.
“I was born and grew up Carencro, La. Carencro is called Cajun Country,” Harper said. “If you’ve seen the TV show ‘Swamp People,’ that’s the area I grew up in. We had a camp, and I’d go out there with my dad and granddad and we would go fishing, shrimping and crabbing.”
He said his grandfather, Roy Alleman, loved to cook and that inspired him to carry on the tradition.
Harper said as a teenager he worked at Paul’s Pirogue, a popular Louisiana restaurant owned by his cousin.
“In my family, cooking was a way of life. Growing up, we always cooked and hung out in the kitchen. It was something I liked to do,” he said. “My buddies would call and say, ‘We’ll bring the food, if you’ll do the cooking.’ I got a lot of free meals. I would bring some beers, and it was all good.”
Harper said that love of cooking is what encouraged him to start his own cafe.
Among his offerings, he serves up shrimp, boudin balls, sausage and barbecue sausage po’ boys. Side dishes include seasoned fries, two types of rolls and boudin balls. Boudin is pork sausage made with rice and seasoning, usually stuffed into a casing. For boudin balls, you remove the casing, roll the mixture into balls, and bread and deep fry them. Voodoo rolls are deep-fried egg rolls filled with crayfish in a creamy, cheesy sauce. Bayou rolls are deep-fried egg rolls filled with boudin and pepper jack cheese.
“Everything I serve here but the barbecue sauce is made from scratch, all the sauces and soups,” he said. “I have my burger ground, and I season it here. It’s all stuff my family or my wife Elaina, who is also from Louisiana, taught me.”
Desserts at the cafe are also made from scratch by employee Kim Hartman. Some of her specialties are pecan cobbler, Reese’s peanut butter pie, pecan pie, mixed-berry cobbler, Nestlé Toll House pie and King Cake, a cake that is usually reserved for Mardi Gras.
He said some of his bestsellers are Voodoo rolls, shrimp po’ boys and Bayou Lasagna.
“I make my own homemade sausage for the po’ boys,” Harper said, referring to a traditional Louisiana sandwich that most often consists of meat — usually roast beef or fried seafood, often shrimp, crayfish, fish, oysters or crab. The meat is served on French bread.
Next year, Mardi Gras will be held the first day of March, and Harper plans to decorate for it.
“We decorated for it this year. We played Cajun music and served King Cake,” he said. “We did the best we could. Maybe next year we’ll have a float in the Buckwheat Festival. During Mardi Gras, they throw beads and candy from the floats. We could be in costume and have speakers playing Cajun music.”
For Harper, family and friends are important. He said his great-grandparents on his mother’s side moved from Nova Scotia, Canada, to Louisiana in the 1800s.
“During World War II, my grandmother wrote back and forth with one of the soldiers named Walter Harper. They never met, other than by letters and pictures, but got engaged by mail. When he came home, they were married. He wrote a book called ‘The Shangri-La’ that’s in the U.S. archives. It’s about life aboard an aircraft carrier and some of the things he experienced during the war.”
The USS Shangri-La earned two battle stars for its World War II service and three for service in the Vietnam War.
Cat Daddy’s Ragin’ Cajun Cafe is at 119 S. Price St. The Cafe offers eat-in and take-out. Hours are 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m Thursday-Saturday. For more information, call 304-216-1695.
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