Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 12.15 73 FOOD& DRINK Photos by Casey Chalmers Te Seafood Lady 617 W. Oak St. THE DISH It's 12:07. Te Seafood Lady opened the window of the tomato-red food truck seven minutes ago. Already 13 people wait under an unusually warm November sun. A gentle breeze licks a silver pot boiling on an outdoor stove, slapping landlocked senses with a convincing ocean whif. Tat smell! It's home for a customer in a red polka-dot dress with a turban of twisted and piled hair. She is from New Orleans and has tried the whole menu — crab, shrimp, gum- bo, lobster. Today, it's crab fries. "Best thing here," she says, before detailing decadence: crinkle fries piled with lump crab, melted cheese and the Seafood Lady's homemade Cajun seasoning. "A meal in itself," the wom- an reports. Tere's that breeze again. Dang! It's home for me too. My husband's family is from New Orleans. A real Cajun seafood boil typically requires coastal geography, but here I am on a slab of Old Louisville asphalt, a parking lot the Seafood Lady shares with a coming-soon antique store. A young, fashionable woman behind me talks on her phone while waiting. "Where you at?" the caller asks. "Te Seafood Lady," she replies. "GET ME SOME!" Te crowd that now numbers 20-plus grumbles: "Tey need chairs out here." "Tey need two trailers." "I've started getting here at 11:45 to try and beat the crowd." "I only have until one o'clock." But no one leaves. Only more come. A young woman in rollers and pajamas. A lady with a metro-government badge. Te wait to order and receive food can stretch up to an hour on some days. Even when yellow jackets tag-team brows and biceps, customers swat and dance but are careful not to forgo their spot in line. "Tey must like the smell of seafood!" someone exclaims. Te Seafood Lady is Nichelle Turston, a 28-year-old originally from Pensacola, Florida. She came to Louisville for a job. Tried nursing school for a bit. But cook- ing's in her DNA. Her brother, she says, is known as "the Crab Boss" in Baltimore. Another brother in Pensacola owns a restaurant called Big Al's Crabs. While she was growing up, Turston's family would throw seafood boils a few times a month. "Cook it outside on propane in big pots, dump it on the table and eat it," Turston recalls. So fve months ago she started cooking at home, loading coolers with plates of seafood into her SUV and posting a pick- up location on social media. Turston buys a lot of her seafood from a fsh market in Pensacola that does same-day delivery. "I'd go and sell out within 30 minutes," she says. Tat lasted four days. For three weeks she tried selling food out of her house in the Smoketown neighborhood. "It got so outrageous," she says, laughing. One hundred orders quickly swelled to 200. "Tere'd be a line down the sidewalk from my home." She and her husband invested in a food truck, hired her cousin to help cook and recruited a few friends. "I found something that wasn't there and I did it," she says. Humana has placed bulk orders. Muhammad Ali's nephew rang her up and ordered shrimp for "Te Greatest" when he was in town. A friendly man sums it up well as he takes his place at line's end. "She's killing it. No one in town is doing Cajun like this," he says. "She needs to expand immediately." Turston has plans. She hopes to open a sit-down restaurant in the antique mall before the end of the year. For now, her truck's open for lunch and dinner Wednes- days, Fridays and Saturdays. Cash only. Doesn't sell drinks. Turston hands me my Styrofoam box that's honeydew-heavy. I've ordered a crab cake and a full combo plate — fve crab legs, eight Gulf shrimp, a pota- to, corn on the cob, a hard-boiled egg and sausage. Cost: $33. All of it Cajun-sea- soned. All of it lounging in a butter spa. "Tis is the real deal," I say as butter drips down my knuckles and my lips pleas- antly burn. For 30 minutes, I'm in New Orleans, I'm on the Gulf Coast. I'm watch- ing loved ones wrestle with crab legs and slurp out the joint meat. Nichelle Turston is not a seafood lady. Like "Te Greatest," it's only right to afx the to her title. — Anne Marshall