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T-Rey’s Boudin: Cajun Sausage and Family Tradition [1]
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Date: 2025-05-30
Chef and owner Trey Herty describes the cuisine at T-Rey’s Boudin in southern Louisiana as “artisanal gas station food, without the fuel pumps.”
The reference is to “meat and three” mom and pop shops, often found in rural gas stations across the Southern United States. Styled on these classics, T-Rey’s is a purely take-out storefront with a daily meat-and-three lunch special menu. One day, that was smoked sausage in a tomato gravy with freshly steamed jasmine rice, served with slow-cooked Lima beans seasoned with house pickle meat and smothered green beans. Another day’s special was oak smoked pork spare ribs, served with homemade Coleslaw, Mexican cornbread and slow-cooked black beans.
T-Rey shoppers can also stock up on specialty foods for home. Grab-and-go mainstays of the shop are three low-country charcuterie favorites: a salami-sized andouille sausage, hogshead cheese, and the store’s namesake boudin (pronounced boo-dan). Boudin, for the uninitiated, is a traditional Cajun sausage composed of pork, rice, and liver with an abundance of seasonings, stuffed into a casing.
These three are popular in southern Louisiana and were Herty’s favorite treats growing up. He says Cajun cuisine is hyperlocal, with recipes varying parish to parish and even family to family. Lafayette, Louisiana, his mother’s hometown, is a destination for boudin fans. “It is made at almost any gas station in Lafayette,” he said. “We would take ice chests to stock up when we visited because it just tastes better there.”
In other dishes, Herty strays from the traditional. The chicken salad is smoked, and the queso has crawfish meat. He also experiments with boudin variations: one fashioned in a Vietnamese-style, and for Lent, one stuffed with seafood instead of pork. He has brought all those traditional and innovative flavors to Mandeville, a town on the North Shore of the Ponchartrain, 45 minutes from downtown New Orleans.
Smoked chicken and andouille jambalaya. (Photo courtesy of T-Rey’s Boudin)
T-Rey’s just celebrated one year of operation, and Herty is deepening its relationship to the local community. Herty and his team have supported two charity events, the Chef Soiree VIP party and Hogs for the Cause barbecue competition. The first supports at-risk youth and their families, the second raises money for pediatric brain cancer. His hogshead cheese was the featured ingredient at the soiree, served with a charred scallion white remoulade and radish sprouts on a bacon fat toasted saltine cracker.
Moving from sous chef to running a business has proved challenging, and Herty says he is learning something new every day. He offers this advice for those considering such a move: “My place is as small as can be and is a lot of work. You have to have passion and love what you do.” When things are more settled, he hopes to take on more creative projects like the Magnolia Supper Club, a pop-up fine dining, farm-to-table experience he developed with a friend.
It Goes Back to Family
Family is at the center of Herty’s culinary story. Growing up on the bayous of St. Bernard Parish with a Cajun mom, the kitchen was the centerpiece of everything. Food was a huge part of his childhood. Even at a young age, he would watch cooking shows with Julia Childs and Cajun chef Justin Wilson instead of cartoons.
Through high school and college, he moved up through the ranks of several kitchens until he decided that, rather than his original plan of teaching English, he wanted to be a chef. After attending culinary school in New Orleans, he spent years at the renowned fine dining restaurant Arnaud’s in the French Quarter.
Trey Herty, second from left, and staff at a fundraiser. (Photo courtesy of T-Rey’s Boudin)
“It was a mind-opening experience for me, working on that scale at a place with that kind of reputation,” said Herty. “I went all in and never looked back.”
He gathered experience in other cities, but when he was ready to come back home, he settled outside of New Orleans in the more suburban North Shore. Again, family factored into his decision. St. Bernard Parish, south of New Orleans, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and all of his family had moved near Mandeville. He developed the recipes and clientele for T-Rey’s while working in his uncle’s grocery store in nearby Abita Springs. Last year, he decided it was time to strike out on his own.
“T-Rey’s may be totally based on nostalgia,” said Herty. “When I was really young, my great grandfather also owned a small-town grocery store and lived right next door. It had the same feel as my uncle’s store. I feel like I am carrying on a family tradition.”
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