Stuart Bell may have left Baton Rouge for Tuscaloosa this past summer, but he clearly still has a taste for Cajun cuisine.
Cody Carroll, owner and chef of Hot Tails in New Roads and Sac-a-Lait in New Orleans—not to mention an LSU alum and devoted Tigers fan—says he was “super surprised” to get a call from Bell requesting the chef travel to Tuscaloosa this week to prepare a south Louisiana meal for him and 35 of the university’s top trustees on Thursday night. Bell stepped down as LSU executive vice president and provost in June to take the top job at Alabama.
“We’re hardcore LSU fans and when I told my friends what I was doing this week they didn’t like it,” says Carroll, who spoke with Daily Report just as he was about to prepare the eight-course meal at the Alabama president’s mansion on campus. “I actually considered not doing it.”
But the lure of the big game proved too great.
“We wouldn’t have been able to come otherwise. I really wanted to. I have been here twice for the LSU-Alabama game before, but I’ve never been in the stadium,” Carroll says. “And they’re hooking us up. They got us six tickets.”
And so Carroll and some of his head chefs, along with his wife, Samantha, loaded up a truck with their ingredients this week and headed to Tuscaloosa. The menu Carroll devised for Bell and the trustees included alligator, frogs legs, boudin balls, duck gumbo and his signature Speckled Trout Perdu entrée, which won him the coveted King of Louisiana Seafood title in 2013.
“It’s been very cool and everyone has been super nice to us,” Carroll says. “(Bell) said they were a little nervous about LSU jokes and all that and we’ve had a lot of fun. But I’m an LSU alumni, so there’s going to be a little bit of something.”
The Bama fans are clearly just as eager to egg on Tigers fans a little in the runup to Saturday’s showdown between No. 4 LSU and No. 7 Alabama.
“We went to this little place for breakfast at the suggestion of some of the Alabama fans here and we had all of our LSU gear on—and they served me a pancake shaped like an elephant,” Carroll says with a laugh. “I couldn’t touch it.”
As for Carroll’s prediction for the game, at which he’s been assured he’ll be sitting among a contingent of Tigers fans?
“I would say 27-12 Tigers,” he says.
—Steve Sanoski
