EP 513. Duck Camp Dinner Experiences Now Served

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today I am sitting in the virtual studio with one of my favorite people, certainly one of my favorite people in social media. But I really relate to this guy, I relate to the whole drama and aura and down south culture that he is spreading the gospel with. Mr. Chef Jean-Paul, my buddy. Chef, how are you?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I’m good, sir. Good to be here. Thanks for having me on again. I feel humbled to be, this is my second time –

Ramsey Russell: Shoot man, I tell you what, I love watching the show, I love keeping up with you. You travel a lot like I do. But boy, when you’re not traveling, when you’re at home, I can really relate to a lot of what you’re laying down, so to speak. I dig it. Tell me what’s going on with season two of this Duck Camp Dinners. What was season one success like? And what is this season two entail?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Actually, we’re on season three now. Season one was definitely an experiment, right? So I understand that. And season two was the one that Meat Eater produce, and season three is the one that’s out now. We’re now on our fourth episode that just came out last night on Waypoint TV and this morning, Monday morning on split read YouTube channel. So, we doubled down on cutting deep right on these episodes. And what I mean by that is really digging into each camp, each place, eat all the food, the music and the hunting that goes into those camps with a 44 minutes episode. So we have 6, 44 minutes episodes this season, 4 out currently at the point where we’re recording this podcast with two more on the way. And man, I tell you, it’s been our more than any other season, season three has been, again, we really wanted to dig in, dive in, cut deep into the narrative of Louisiana outdoors, its culture. And we thought by putting a 44 minutes episode together for all 6 was our way to do that. And there’s a number of reasons that we can go into that, but it’s going good. It’s being received well. It’s being distributed to millions and millions and millions of households around the world, which it brings a great source of pride for me, for folks from Ireland and Germany and South America and New Zealand and all around the United States to message me, leave comments that just love the Louisiana culture and story. And it humbles me to be a person that is able to bring that out into the world for folks.

Ramsey Russell: What were some of the growing pains you all had? I mean, I don’t really keep up with season so much. I mean, as I do just episode to episode, I live vacuously. But seriously, talk about one of your first episodes, how you started, where you were versus now. I mean, it’s had to been a big evolution with all these episodes. And you keep diving deeper and deeper into this subject. Where’s the bottom?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Well, just like the Louisiana bottom, there is no bottom.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: It just keeps going deeper until, I guess, somewhere in China. So the season one was, we filmed 5 days straight, we made 6 episodes, anywhere from 15 minutes to about 18 minutes, 20 minutes, I think, was our longest, actually. And really, when we started filming, we didn’t know where it was going to lead us. We didn’t know how many episodes we were going to do. We thought we would make 6 to 8 minute episodes, turned out we really wanted to continue to really put all the stuff that we had on footage. So we didn’t really know. When I went into this idea, I was like, we should make some YouTube videos of us cooking at camp. And it would be just like, 3 to 5 minute videos of cooking at camp. And it really just developed into this story of our friendship at this duck camp and all the things that we do at the duck camp and how it relates to what we do in South Louisiana. Season two obviously became more focused with the Meat Eater, and we brought it every episode, 8 episodes into 30 minutes. We tackled 3 different camps within that season instead of just the one camp that we did in season one. And then obviously, having Meat Eater’s resources was a little easier to manage. Some of the funding associated with doing this type of production, because I will say this, I don’t know how much other hunting shows cost to make, I’ve never bothered to ask anyone. We’ve looked at this show as something that could go on Netflix, could go on HBO, could go on YouTube, meaning that we wanted to shoot in 4K in case we could distribute on 4k. And that takes a whole different type of dedication. We have two cameramen, one photographer, basically with us at all times, and no GoPros, no kind of simple fast videography, it’s really not just – we’re investing time and story and resources into every episode and bringing the Louisiana culture to light. But we’re also investing in a way that feels unique and fresh and beautiful when you’re watching it on video. And I think season three, which we’re on now, really does a great job at that. Where we go from 6 episodes, 5 different camps around the state of Louisiana, everywhere from the northeast section down in Tensas area, all the way to Shreveport, which will be in episode 5, to the corners, like the southwest corner, southeast corner, and a little bit down in the middle in the Atchafalaya basin. So we’re really trying to tell this now in season three, a more holistic story of Louisiana, not just south Louisiana, which so many people love for many different reasons. But what we’re noticing is that just like in this country and this world, there are duck camps, goose camps, deer camps, turkey camps, crappie camps, who have a group of friends that come during a certain season, go after their pursuit together, and have all this camaraderie that happens at the camp. And I think that’s what you and I were kind of talking off air about, is that there’s really a magic in that and that everybody has a dream hunt. I have a dream hunt, I have a couple dream hunts that you’ve probably already done. And I think a lot of people look at you and say, man, that’s one of my dream hunts, that’s one of my bucket list birds, that’s one of my countries that I want to go to and so on. Our idea with this show is to make you nostalgic and reminisce about the camps you grew up in, the friends you grew up with, hunting with. Maybe the camps you still go to one or two times a year, maybe you go to it every weekend. And we believe, I believe that, I know I don’t believe, I know. There are just so many more people like us doing what we’re doing that have a great group of friends that love to cook, that love to be out in nature and shooting ducks or shooting whatever. And this is just one step to telling those stories. This is our story and other people’s stories, of course. But I think as we go down the road, if we can make a season four and beyond, it’ll be Louisiana. And you ask, where does it stop? Well, in Louisiana, there’ll always be some episodes to vote Louisiana, because there is always something to dig into there. But there’s also great stories in the Chesapeake Bay, obviously, in California and Texas and the Illinois river and in Canada and so on. And so we think there’s a lot of places that we could film Duck Camp Dinners that have similar ethos, if you will, and a lot of great stores that really nobody is tapping into and diving into.

Ramsey Russell: How did you go from your idea, I want to go down to my duck camp, I want to film this, I want to do this to, I mean, around Louisiana and then scaling throughout the duck hunting culture throughout the United States. But at what point was it from the beginning or somewhere along the way, that it wasn’t even really about the duck hunt as the duck camp, that atmosphere that ethos, as you called it, or that camaraderie, that spirit, because think about it, so there’s so much hunting video and footage, and out there in social media and YouTube and TV, but all of a sudden, here comes a fresh take on it, it ain’t really about the trigger pull, it’s about everything else. It’s about how I feel with my people that were brought together in the pursuit of ducks. You see what I’m saying? That’s what’s so wild about it. That’s what keeps, Jean Paul, that’s what keeps pulling me down the trails. Ducks or no ducks, 2, 5 or limit, don’t matter, it’s about where I’m at and who I’m with. That’s what compels me. People say all the time, what’s your favorite hunt? The next hunt. It could be at the same camp I’ve been with, the same folk, or it could be something fresh, it’s just the newness of it all, but that camaraderie and that people and that spirit, that ethos that is what I love so much about my life.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah. And you got a great one going on.

Ramsey Russell: But where did it start with you? I mean, did you all start initially thinking, well, we’re going to shoot ducks and then cook them, and then it transitioned more into everything else or -?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, there’s a number of things that happen. So right in the beginning, yes, I want to memorialize this camp and these friendships and so on. I knew any hurricane could just blow this camp away and we’d have to start over and we wouldn’t have – that was really the genesis of what I wanted to do. And then there was this other layer. This other layer was I wanted to shine a light on what we do in the duck camp. Yes, that duck hunting was a part of it, but there was also all these different layers within it that people could really attach to and find themselves in. And I’m talking about the amount of non-hunters. I’m not even talking like I don’t duck hunt, I’m talking like I don’t hunt, I’ve never held a gun, I don’t even know how to load a gun. The amount of people that watch this show because of the cultural aspect, the food aspect, the environmental aspect is tremendous. That’s all in on purpose. That’s all on purpose to get into the homes of people who don’t understand hunters with a subject matter that they can relate to.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. A lifestyle that they want.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah. The show also always has a food element, it always has hunting element, always has a music element, and it typically has some sort of conservation or environmental element. There’s obviously funny moments and so on. And so there’s something that even if you’re a non-hunter, you can really see yourself or enjoy the message of it. So that was very intentional in the sense that it was kind of like a Trojan horse to get these non-hunting communities to understand a way of life that I felt was desperately misunderstood because of a lot of mass media that we see, that we have seen in the past about Louisiana and in currently see about Louisianians. The goal is to make something very authentic to Louisiana that really touched in a number of different messages and buckets. Now, like, seriously, I get stopped at the airport by folks all the time, sometimes they’re gate agents, sometimes they’re security people, and they recognize me, sometimes they hear my voice and they recognize my voice from my voiceover. And then they say, are you Jean Paul? And most of the time, more times than not, they say, I’ve never duck hunted in my life, I remember my grandpa used to go, but I never got into it. And I just love your shows because it reminds me of what he used to do in Iowa or whatever. I promise you I’m going somewhere with this.

Ramsey Russell: I know you are.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: You start to hear these things from different people all over the world, like men, women, people who hunters, non-hunters. And then you start to read comments and you read feedback, and you get all the emails that come through my website, you get the direct messages, and you’re starting to see a pattern of people’s response and how they connect with the show, and it inspires you, but also says that, wait, there’s something clicking here with people that hasn’t clicked in or outdoor messaging and or hunting and or in Louisiana culture, messaging with folks beyond, again, some of the caricatures that have been made of Louisianians over the years. And that is inspiring to me. It gives me a lot of fuel in the tank, so to speak, to go out into the world again and try to tell these stories for people that probably haven’t had a real authentic kind of story told about them. And it’s really stories of, all of my friends, they all have day jobs, like, they work. I’m the only one that gets to kind of do what I do. And that’s the kind of people we’re talking to. Like, they’re not really making their money off of anything commercial, except for oil and gas and in terms of Louisiana or somewhere else. So, again, my old boss, Danny Meyer, who’s a genius in a lot of ways and probably one of the best, one of the most successful restaurateurs and I in America, he told me something very simple one day, made a lot of sense to me, and it’s a good advice for anyone. If people start telling you something, listen to it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: When people start telling you that thing over and over again, like, you better start acting on it because somebody will act on it if you don’t. And that’s what I’m seeing. I’m just seeing this message from viewers from all around the world tell me these things, and that’s we’re building the shows upon and finding our inspiration through a lot of ways, especially in season three. And if we can make season four, we’ll obviously dive into that as well.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about this right here. Everybody’s got this preconceived notion of Louisiana versus the rest of the world. And you’re jumping around and you’re going to Tensas, you’re going to Gueydan, you’re going to Shreveport, you’re going south of New Orleans, what are the similarities and differences in those cultural experiences just within the state boundaries of Louisiana? The similarities and the differences. Because I know there are some.

Coastal Cuisine: Crabs, Shrimp, Crawfish, and Ducks.

Like, I was raised in coastal Louisiana, coastal Cajun Louisiana, so we ate a lot of crabs and shrimp and crawfish. We shot ducks because we could get to a duck blind in 15-20 minutes from a house and so on.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Definitely super diverse, more than most people think. I mean, you got to understand for those who are listening for the first time or haven’t spent a lot of time in Louisiana, there’s coastal Louisiana, which is essentially I10 and south. Then there’s the prairies of Louisiana, which is out towards Lafayette, Scott, Lake Charles, even and then going up into Opelousas, Kraut Springs and so on. And then you have the top of the boot where Shreveport kind of lies in the most northwestern section where the Red River flows right through it and all the tributaries are there feed a habitat. So one, there’s different habitats, there’s your swamp, there’s your freshwater swamps, there’s your saltwater marshes, there’s your prairie rice fields. And then there’s all your kind of habitat coming from the Red river. Of course, you have the area kind of north of Louisiana, north of the river, like Mandeville and such. But that’s more big pines usually associated with deer hunting. Then you got the food section of it. Like, I was raised in coastal Louisiana, coastal Cajun Louisiana, so we ate a lot of crabs and shrimp and crawfish. We shot ducks because we could get to a duck blind in 15-20 minutes from a house and so on. But the prairie folks, yes, they have a seafood kind of, definitely a seafood culture. But you see more of the meat markets, the boudin, the head cheese and all the stuffed chicken, stuffed pork chop kind of shops that you can go to that, and it’s a lot, and it’s rice agriculture where I’m from is sugarcane agriculture. It kind of changes into this kind of rustic ag pork heavy culture. And then you go north up to Shreveport and it starts to become a little more like, yes, they still do gumbos, but they have trouble getting fresh seafood the way we get it in Louisiana, right? Like, I mean, we go to docks or we go inside the road with somebody with a cooler and scoop them up and weigh them. And that’s pretty unheard of for most of the country. But even in Shreveport, they’re like, oh, we don’t get as fresh a seafood as you all do. Well, you only like 4 hours, 5 hours north.

Ramsey Russell: Right, it ain’t like being in North Dakota.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, exactly. They start to take more of a southern food identity from Arkansas, from Mississippi, from east Texas. And you start seeing thing like hot water cornbread. So I never had hot water cornbread in my life, I never seen anybody make it. And in episode five, we’re in Shreveport, didn’t ask for it, but they’re making it. They’re making hot water cornbread with turnip greens and turnips. Like, that’s a very southern dish. That’s not something that we would eat in Cajun Louisiana. We ate skillet cornbread, likely it was sweet, which is, I know, blasphemy to a lot of southerners, but –

Ramsey Russell: Sweet cornbread is called cupcakes most part of the world.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Exactly. Yeah. I knew for a guy from Mississippi would tell me otherwise, right?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Just the truth. I mean, like, and so definitely there’s some diversity there. And then there’s the habitat, you down in Venice, and then you get the mouth, the delta of the Mississippi river. And like I said, in the northeast west section, you have Shreveport, where the red river does its thing. And eventually red river turns into the Atchafalaya river. The Atchafalaya river eventually has a delta that goes into the Gulf of Mexico at St. Mary’s parish. And that’s feeding land down into that part of the delta, into that part of Louisiana, which we desperately need. So ton of diversity in food. And then the music, the music changes, too. The music changes from the swampy blues of Tab Benoit to the kind of the French Cajun music of Jordan Thibodeaux. And then you start getting into, like, the Jordan Davis country music in Shreveport. Like, people like Laney Wilson is from Monroe and Jordan Davis from Shreveport. Like, they have much more of a country vibe than what you see in the south. So that’s what I would say. But again, like, that’s what gives, when you say, how deep does it go, man? Like, we’re just scraping, really, the surface of the mud.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: You take a push pull or a paddle and you’re in a foot of water in the marsh in Louisiana, you take that paddle and you shove it all the way down. You go down to your shoulder and keep going in mud. I mean, it just gets stickier and stickier. And what you notice as you dive into the stories of Louisiana, it gets stickier and stickier.

Ramsey Russell: You talked about some of the differences, and you mentioned gumbo. I mean, that’s what I think of in the diversity of Louisiana is just the color of the roux or the ingredients where it’s seafood or it’s something heavier. Whether you put gumbo or not, whether you put sweet potatoes on the side or in the bowl or put southern potato salad on the side or in the bowl or if you have it at all. And it’s so nuanced and different among all these local communities or what boudin, how boudin changes in the state of Louisiana is mind blowing. It’s just mind blowing.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: You’ve been hunting with Dale, haven’t you?

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: He taught me about sweet potatoes with gumbo for that –

Ramsey Russell: That’s his neck of the woods. But I can remember being in Arkansas with some boys from Louisiana that cooked gumbo one night, it was a chicken gumbo, a chicken and shrimp, I should say. But that was the first time I had ever seen potato salad. And I mean, good old southern basic potato salad like mama made with gumbo, let alone inside the bowl. And now I can’t hardly eat it without having potato salad, I like it so much. And sweet potatoes are just as good. Now, Dale comes from that part of the world in Louisiana. I don’t think there’s a finer sweet potato on God’s earth than a vols perish, I’m going to tell you right now, it’s like eating candy, those things are so good. So I can see why it’s a staple with their gumbo.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah. Look, it’s funny you say that. I do. I’m the editor at large for Louisiana Cooking magazine. I do a lot of stuff for them on YouTube as well. And that’s been a really highlight of my year, has been a work with them in write form and so on. But one time we’re talking about this idea, and we go through editorial pieces every week and so on. And I one time said, well, we can’t have a gumbo recipe in every issue. And then I started thinking to myself, yes, we could have a gumbo recipe in every issue, everybody’s different. And to your point, it’s a great lens to see Louisiana through, the gumbo. And it’s one of those dishes that we don’t make a lot on the show because we’re like, everybody knows about it. The last gumbo we made was a coot or pouledeau gumbo. And in season two, we haven’t really messed with it much because we’re like, everybody knows it. But to your point, there is a large group of people out there making gumbos different ways, for sure. I mean, in New Orleans, they use tomato in their gumbo. Now, in every other part of Louisiana, if you see tomato in your gumbo, you’re like, you’re from New Orleans. You’re from that New Orleans area. You can kind of –

Ramsey Russell: You ain’t from around here, are you?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, exactly.

Ramsey Russell: I heard about that one time, I don’t remember who told me, but I sometimes put tomatoes in mine, dump a can of rotel, something, just for something change up. And I’m not a great gumbo cooker, I make one gumbo with or without tomatoes, and that’s about it. But I never will forget one time being in, where was I? New Zealand. South Island. And the boy that managed that little hotel we were staying in, it’s kind of interesting because he brings a group of New Zealanders to the United States every other year, and one year they’ll go down, all the way down highway 61 and do a tour. They go rent a car, they rent mustangs and fancy old cars and they tour, or they go route 66, one or the other. That’s how they see the United States. He heard my accent in hotel, and he said, you’re from the south? I go, yeah. He said, well, I make gumbo. Can I make a gumbo for you all tomorrow night? And will you try it? I said, yeah, I’d love to. And it was amazing. It had all kinds of stuff in it, and it was good. But he come up and said, well, what’d you think? I said, well, honestly? He goes, yeah, honestly. I said, that ain’t gumbo. I don’t know what it was, it was delicious, but it ain’t gumbo. Because he didn’t know how to make a roux. So the next day, we got in the kitchen and we made a roux. This how I make a roux. Now, you make a roux different ways. But let alone when you get into people that make gumbo, as a culture, it’s different. It can be fighting words. Here’s where I’m getting with this, you’ve been to some of these other parts of the world outside Louisiana, California, you mentioned Chesapeake Bay. How do you see, what similarities and differences do you see as a Louisiana duck hunter going to other parts of the world? What similarities and difference did you see among the food and the culture and the camaraderie and just the people themselves?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, I think the first thing that always pops off to me, and I’m not going to get political here, but I think a lot of people would agree that we have more in common than we have not in common.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: And I think you can say that from a political landscape, you can also say that from a food, from a hunting, especially when it comes to waterfowl landscape and kind of point of view. I spent some time, I spent two years of my life in California, professional life in California, spent 10 years on the east coast in New York City, north of the Chesapeake Bay. And quite a bit of time since then in Maryland, Delaware, not Delaware, but Maryland and Virginia, and when it comes to Vietnam, where I just came back from 5 weeks from, like, one being from coastal Louisiana, you see a lot of seafood. For those who have followed along with me, you might notice I’m always living coastal. I like being near water, and that probably has a lot to do with where I’m from. So those are the places I like to travel to as well. And everybody, most cultures, if not all of them in some ways were based off of very simple, cheap food that has been developed into something really grand. You can take Spanish paella, for example, and you can talk about jambalaya, you can talk about boudin, those rice culture eating countries have a whole heck of a lot in common. They make things of rice. They use different things from the ocean or from game to develop into it. And so I think just for the most part, it’s like most people are cooking with what they have around them, with what grows around them, whether that’s corn to make tortillas or flour in wheat country or crabs in the Chesapeake or crabs in Louisiana. You’re making things that’s around you, and that’s what we all have in common. No matter what food culture we’re from, no matter if you’ve ever been to Korea or not, you can bet that they’re going to, as much as possible, use what’s around them. And I often say that with folks from, and this is if your guy from New Zealand is listening, yes, he needs to make a – he doesn’t need to make a roux, but 90% of the gumbo’s made do have a roux. But what I would tell him even more is people a lot of times ask me, like, how can I get ducks and whatever to make gumbo? Or how can I get Gulf shrimp to make gumbo when I live in X place? Or how do I get this certain sausage that you go to and instead, like, if you’re in Seattle or the west coast, use the techniques that I’m kind of showing you on Duck Camp Dinners or the Louisiana cooking YouTube channel to make your gumbo, but use the ingredients that you have around you to actually incorporate into it. That’s what’s going to make the best gumbo. It’s not going to be the gulf shrimp from Louisiana. It might be the langoustines from the Pacific Northwest.

Ramsey Russell: Big difference, yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Or Oyester from northwest or whatever. And just because it has mussels in it doesn’t not make it a gumbo, I mean, gumbo means okra in African dialects. And there’s a lot of gumbos and canyon that don’t even have okra. Like, that comes from the African culture, and it evolved in Louisiana and elsewhere. So what’s to say it can’t evolve in your home in South Dakota or in California or in Maine and just use the ingredients that you have around you to make it? We mostly can all get flour, we can all get onion, we can all get celery, we can all get bell pepper, and we can all get some sort of oil. If you got those 5 ingredients or so, you can make any gumbo that you want with a roux and trinity. And I love a roux less gumbo, but I use a ton of okra in it. So I use okra as my thickening agent and not a roux. And that can be pretty common as well, especially with seafood gumbo purists. A lot of times, seafood gumbo cooks who really love a good seafood gumbo won’t use any roux or they’ll use, like, just a smidgen of roux just to give it like that browning flavor. But really, it’s the okra that’s really making that whole dish come together. In fact, I do a shrimp and okra gumbo on Louisiana cooking YouTube channel. And it’s the gumbo that kind of I grew – when it came to seafood gumbo that I grew up eating, and it was typically all with okra. Now, when we had gang gumbos or chicken and sausage gumbos, that always had your deep, dark Cajun roux. But really it’s just what do you have around you, make sure you’re using that first, and then we can talk about, how to really spice it up or make it taste like Louisiana.

Ramsey Russell: You were a chef, you told me. How long were you a chef before you were Duck Camp Dinners and this chef Jean Paul on YouTube hunting? How long were you a legitimate chef? And what was that background like?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, I was a freshman in college in 2002. That was my first commercial restaurant job. I had boiled a bunch of seafood before that in high school and summer jobs and so on. In 2002, 2003, I had my first cooking job in my hometown, where I went to culinary school. And it wasn’t until 2019 that I actually left that commercial kitchen space to pursue what I’m doing right now. So let’s see, that was 2003, 16, 15 years or something like, no, more than that. No, 17 years, 18 years or so that I was in commercial kitchens. And then, like I said, it was 2 or 3 years in high school where I was cooking boiling seafood. And so essentially a good, solid 15 years of my professional career, I walked into kitchens, walked into back of the house prepping and working stations and so on. And then my last job was in New York City at a restaurant called Blue Smoke with Union Square Hospitality Group. And it was about 6 months before COVID hit. Obviously, none of us knew COVID was going to do what it did, but 6 months before COVID hit, I was doing a lot of different things in the media space and on Instagram, and I was kind of straddling these two worlds. And I knew, what I knew is that I would always have kitchens, I could always walk into one and get a job if I needed to. So I said, why not take this chance while I was still a young man and just recently married and no kids to really pursue this other side of my career. And that’s only been since 2019, since I left that job. So relatively short amount of time in what I’m doing right now compared to my time that I’ve had for my all adult life, spending in kitchens.

Waterfowl as a Lifeline in Rural Africa.

So I go start wringing necks, and they freak out, and they’re like, no. They indicate they don’t want the neck wrung. And I don’t understand what are they going to do, try to make a pet out of him? And I said something to my host, and he’s like, no, they don’t have refrigeration. So the longer they keep that animal alive, the longer it won’t spoil.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. What do you think it is about a lot of humanity around the world that elevates food to art form? And where does food become cultural that makes sense? And I’ll tell you where I’m coming from with this. I’ve been to parts of the world, one that just jumped to mine is Africa. And you get off in some of the big cities and lodges and stuff like that. Boy, if you get down just to nitty gritty the everyday folks, the folks, we drop ducks and geese off to dump croaker sacks for you all see them, Jean Paul, they come out of these little communities pushing wheel barrels and bringing croaker sacks, and we give them all these geese. And I just got to wondering one time how they cooked them. And break, one time we were past shooting ducks and geese coming in right before dark, and the staff was grabbing them up, putting them in piles. And as I went over there to look through them and take a picture, whatnot after it got dark, shooting time was over, there was a lot of cripples, I say a lot, there were 3 or 4 cripples, big old spur winged geese, most notably, that’s what they like. Most of the folks over there don’t like the spur wings. The farmers hate them because they eat the crops. They’re big, they’re gnarly, they’re not particularly palatable, but that’s what the locals want because it’s a lot of meat. And I noticed that those cripples they had, they had their feet tied together with a piece of string, or they had a piece of lumber on them where they couldn’t walk off. So I go start wringing necks, and they freak out, and they’re like, no. They indicate they don’t want the neck wrung. And I don’t understand what are they going to do, try to make a pet out of him? And I said something to my host, and he’s like, no, they don’t have refrigeration. So the longer they keep that animal alive, the longer it won’t spoil. And what I come to find out is they’ll take all those ducks and geese, Jean Paul, because to them, that waterfowl is not a part of their cultural identity. It’s not a, whatever it is them living to see the next day, it’s protein. And they put this thing in a great big old cast iron pot and they just cook it down. They put a fire under it, and it starts to cook down and melt and bubble and cook down and cook down into just this big old thick gravy. And they make these little pot balls, little grits, little balls of grits and the whole community comes out and dips it into the gravy and eats it. And that’s how they live. And as the pot goes down, they throw more meat into it. That’s a very primitive form of survival in terms of food. And then you talk about the nuances of how we cook food and what we do. I went to France this year for a 30 year anniversary vacation and fell in love with the food, because they eat ducks, they eat geese, foie gras, man, I could eat my weight in foie gras. And I always wonder, at what point when does humanity shift from, I’ve got to survive to this is cultural identity, and this is an art form. What would be your perspective on a thought like that as a formal chef?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I love that you share that story with me. Thank you for that. It reminds me of something I’ve spoken a lot about over the years, and that’s Louisiana’s consumption of pouledeau. When the rest of the country doesn’t pursue them, doesn’t eat them, really turns their nose up to them and looks down on them. And I often tell this story, and I say, imagine you are in the turn of the century, in the 1900s, 1920s, and you are from Cajun, Louisiana, you only speak French. In fact, you were thought of as ignorant, uneducated, and your language is outlawed from speaking in public and taught in schools. Now imagine you got a little trenos on your little piece of land that leads out into a swamp, and you got a prough, you got an old shotgun, and you only have enough money to spend, like, you only have maybe enough money to buy a box of shells a year, and you take three shells with you to go paddle out that prough. Now imagine, like you’re living off the land like a lot of Cajuns did during those times. What are you spending those 3 shells on? Are you paddling into within 10, 20 yards to a group of pouledeau that have now clustered so tight that you could wring off 3 shells and get 20 dead birds down on the ground to feed your family? Or are you going to pass shoot some teal or wood duck with those three shells. And every Cajun ever known to man has paddled on those pouledeau and shot into that group. Because that’s what they needed out of necessity to feed their family. Now, for some reason, I got to imagine those things happen throughout the course of American history, waterfowl history, with different species, maybe even pouledeau or coop, where you live. I’ve never heard those stories, but I know they happened in Louisiana. And for some reason, that tradition has been passed on, even today when we don’t need to do that with pouledeau, but we still do. Because it’s a cultural identity piece or history to paddle up on a group and even though you have your limits of ducks to go shoot into a group of pouledeau, do that are really clustered there and bring them back, skin them and make a gumbo or whatever you’re going to make. In fact, we have a lot of old timers that still come up to us and say, hey, you all going out to the camp? You’re going to shoot some ducks? We’re going to give them hell. Bring me back some podoo if you can. And so that’s what they even rather over ducks. And so going back to your story is that, of course there’s a cultural element to that, and there’s a necessity. Like food, one of the reasons why I consider – I’m not sure if there’s a line, of course, there’s the fact of eating food and cooking food for the pure nature of sustaining oneself and one’s family, it keeps us like we need food to stay alive. That’s also, I think, one of the things that makes it the coolest art form. It’s fleeting, but it also a form of nutrition. From foie gras to pouledeau, it’s a form of nutrition. And do we need pouledeau to be alive? No, we just need food. Do we need foie gras to stay alive? No, we just need food. But it’s an art form, that one we consume, it gives us life, it gives us nutrition and it’s fleeting. So it’s one of the reasons why I think that our senses, when you go and you certainly have these stories, I have these stories, everyone who’s ever eaten anything has these stories of these smells that you come in and out of certain random times in your life. And you’re like, God, it reminds me of this, could be Christmas when you were 12. Could be your grandma’s apple pie, like a smell of a roux cooking reminds me of Sunday mornings at my house. Like, they reminds me of Sundays growing up, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I could smell flour toasting. And it reminds me of waking up in my bed as a little boy and just shows simple things. And the simplistic side of me says that food is always an art form. It’s always art, no matter if it’s the geese being cooked down this big cauldron. When you tell that story, I was like, God, that reminds me of pouledeau and how you just cook it down with onions or whatever, make a gravy, eat it with some French bread or rice, and that’s your meal.

Ramsey Russell: Speaking of coot, we hunt over in a country called Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea, just out of bobbing the 40 thieves type, Sinbad, the sailor type country. And not too far from Iran, east of Turkey, up in that neck of the woods south of Russia. Very unique country, very unique species at times, but a lot of common species also. And it’s always been amazing that it reminds me so much of Louisiana because we get to where we’re going and we step off into a prough and caulked with mud, it works. And off we go, the boy at the back stand and push, pulling us into the marsh. And it was always so amazing. We might get there at 03:00 or 04:00 in the morning, depending on how far we got to go into the marsh. And just 24/7 you just lie to hear a shot go off because they still market hunt. That’s interesting. And the last time I was there, we always hunt, go off early in the morning, and we’re back by noon at 01:00, eat some dinner and take a nap, get up and skin birds, whatever we got to do that evening, but not hunt. But last time I was there, they grabbed us up around 03:00 or 04:00, sun was already starting to get low and we go out to a wetland and we’re hustling and going. I’m thinking, man, it’s going to get dark in 30, 45 minutes. And my eyesight ain’t what it was back in the day, I don’t like shooting in the dark. And they were just slow and deliberate, getting ready to get us out on a big hunt they had lined up for us and as I’m getting in the boat, my host goes, Ramsey, be sure that everybody understands, they want you to shoot the blackbirds. And I’m looking around for red winged blackbirds or something. And I’m like, what blackbird? He started pointing across the water, and there was a raft of pouledeau, a coot swimming across. That’s what we were there for. The guys had flashlights. They got little flashlights, looked like a shot cam on the bottom of the barrel and a string comes back. And when they’re sitting there quietly in the blind and they sense the birds swimming up into the decoys, they pull their index finger, click it on, boom, shoot the pouledeau, turn it off and wait on another one. And we shot coots that evening. And I’m like, I come to find out that their 3 favorite waterfowl species, the locals, I’m talking about the market hunters, the guides, the people are coots, mallards, and green wings, in that order. They want the coots. And well, we shot some coots and came back after dark, and I’m like, seriously, you all ain’t going to eat? I mean, what are you going to do with these birds? And that night they took a couple of them, gave them to the cook at the place we were staying, and he made the most amazing pilaf. We loved it so well, he started every night incorporating coot into the meal. And I’m like, how am I this old? And it’s a very good eating bird. It’s a rail. I’ve eaten clapper rail, I’ve eaten different rails, it’s a great eating bird. I wonder why we don’t eat it? Why isn’t it widely accepted? Because every duck hunter has seen them. We’re out there hunting, they’re out there swimming through the decoys, they’re rafted up. Now, one big difference in Azerbaijan, where they’re hunted and they are hunted, is you don’t just push around and see a raft of them sitting out there kind of getting out of your way. Hell, no. If they so much as hear the knock of a paddle on a boat, they look like they’ve been shot from a cannon, flying for their lives. Because they are hunted, they are pressured, because that’s what the locals want. But isn’t that interesting that most people, most duck hunters don’t eat them at all, don’t even regard them as table fair, let alone good type of fair?

A Louisiana Tradition: Hunting and Eating Pouledeau.

I thought if you had a bad duck hunt, you go shoot some pouledeau and that’s what you like. So I don’t know. Some people say, they taste like mud or you get the same reaction about mergansers.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah. I’m not sure. Yeah, I’ve asked this question. Until I started hunting outside of Louisiana, like after college, I thought everybody shot them. I thought everybody ate them. I thought if you had a bad duck hunt, you go shoot some pouledeau and that’s what you like. So I don’t know. Some people say, they taste like mud or you get the same reaction about mergansers, and now, I’ve never eaten mergansers either, but we don’t shoot a lot of them, we don’t see a lot of them, so we don’t eat them, like, that’s why we don’t eat them. And I know for a fact that people have eaten those – Okay, one thing I will say, though, there is something about diet here. Like, as a chef, we all know, it can be bear between your spring bears and fall bears and the differences in that and it could be ducks, it could be so on, it could be saltwater freshwater. So we know that diet matters. I know that when I shoot gray ducks they’re eating snails. And for me, that gadwall is like just something different, weird. I don’t even like the flavor of them. They’re eating those saltwater snails on the bank. And these pouledeau, where we hunt in Louisiana are all eating native grass and invertebrates, the same native grass and invertebrates that every teal, every wigeon, every canvasback, every ring neck are eating. Now, maybe in Oklahoma when you’re in some flooded tank or pond in the cow pasture or whatever, maybe those birds are eating something new, maybe there’s something about that. Or Arkansas rice fields, I don’t know, I don’t think it would make that much of a difference for most part it’s like, I don’t know, maybe there’s not that culture of people that have been handed down like this is a game bird that is good to eat. We say the same about gallinule. Like, we love going hunt gallinule as well. I think they’re even tastier than pouledeau. And I love they kind of have, like a little special season to them as well. So, those rail species, I’m not really sure where that all comes down to, it’s just bad misinformation. Okay, you remember when, I remember this growing up, when the old timers would go shoot a deer, they’d put it in a cooler, they’d fill it with ice, and they let a hose pipe run through it, and they just let all the blood, and they would run water through that sucker until the water ran clear. Like we know now, that’s a very bad way of preserving, harvesting, treating your meat in hunting. And it’s one, but was one of those things that was passed down to them. And I think a lot of ways, some of these kind of folklore about ducks, what tastes good, what doesn’t, what they eat is just bad information that’s been passed down, and we haven’t been, some people just haven’t broke down that barrier. You were, but you broke down that barrier yourself. You just telling that story, but somebody had to do it for you. Somebody had to put you in the position to do it. And so until there’s somebody like me, right, and I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people message me and say, I’m shooting my first coot this season, shooting our first coots this season, just to make your gumbo, I’m like, go at it, bro. Go do it. I mean, if you have ducks, you can make a gumbo out of ducks, too. But if you don’t, if your hunt’s a little slow, go bang out some pouledeau or coots where you’re at, 6 of them, make a good gumbo for you and your buddies.

Ramsey Russell: We’re talking about coots, and I know you live kind of in an echo chamber, like me. You run around with a lot of waterfowlers. But then again, your Duck Camp Dinners is being streamed into a lot of households where people don’t hunt, they don’t duck hunt, whatever, they’re tapping into the lifestyle and culture. What are your observations with regard to people liking duck and goose? I mean, I know a lot of duck hunters that don’t particularly care for it. Do a poll, go on social media and say, what’s your favorite way to cook duck? Or how do you normally cook it? Duck poppers. It’s almost becoming a lost art and lost palate. Just the ducks and geese themselves, or am I dreaming?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: No, you’re certainly spot on right now. The same would go to big honkers or snow geese and pouledeau and so on. The easy answer of what you just said or my easy comment is that you’re just not cooking it correctly. My little rule of thumb is duck can be cooked two ways, even mid rare medium are falling off the bone. Anywhere in between mid rare medium and falling off the bone, it’s not going to be palatable. And that’s where I think most people find their distaste for ducks is because they’ve had like a roasted duck where it’s fully cooked, but it’s not falling off the bone, it’s just like dry livery something.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: And I didn’t grow up eating mid rare medium ducks because we didn’t shoot mallards that had a fat cat that you would do that to or we just didn’t shoot ducks in that way. And it was always incorporated into these Cajun dishes, these long gravies that where these meats falling off the bone. But then there’s obviously like tundra swan, right? So one of my highlights of my year cooking last year was my success in cooking tundra swan. It was two years ago, me and my buddy had got pulled two tags in North Carolina, both shot swans, I took the breast meat, we plucked it, I took the breast meat home, I took the legs home, and I made pastrami from the breast meat. And I tell you what, man, who was with me? Oh, this is Jeff Stanfield from Big Honker podcast.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yes.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I brought some when I was going on that podcast and passing through Texas at that time and he hates duck. He’s one of those guys that actually hates duck and geese. And I sliced him some of this cold with some saltines with a little like Creole mustard, little grain mustard. And he fell in love with, he wanted more goose pastrami. He was like, when we shoot these speckled bellies, I’m making goose pastrami, I need that recipe. And so I sent it to him. And so it’s just a matter of knowing what you’re eating and what that bird is going to be naturally like – there’s some legitimacy to saying about snow geese and how they don’t taste good.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I disagree. I think snow geese up north, snow geese in Canada are my absolute favorite waterfowl. I love them.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: See, I’ve never had that opportunity to eat those, but I would say, snow geese get old, and any old animal like it’s going to be different from a juvenile, right? Like, whether you’re talking about a yearling or a buck or a juvenile or an old 20 year old snow goose that’s been making the track from Antarctica where they nest.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, way up in the Arctic.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, way up in the Artic to down. And those things matter in all, everything that we eat, it’s an animal’s life cycle. So it’s just getting to understand how to use those things and trying to be creative and not just saying, like, well, if I can’t make duck poppers out of it, I’m just not going to use it. I’m just going to give it away. Well, I know plenty of people that say something like, oh, those greasy honkers, those greasy greater Canada geese. Like, well, I mean, you can deal with that differently, whether or not it really is greasy or what it tastes like, I don’t like, you can figure out a way to do it, and there’s certainly ways to do that.

Ramsey Russell: I think it’s a lost art, Chef. I think it’s a lost art. Like, I just remember seeing this, I’m a huge Andy Griffith fan. There’s an episode where Aunt B is putting on airs and the rich kid comes over and Andy comes home and she’s cooking goose for their guest, the rich kid putting on airs, you know? Because goose, back in that era, in the 50s and 60s was a big freaking deal, people didn’t buy as much turkey for Thanksgiving as they bought duck and goose for the holidays. And still you go to parts of Europe, I’m thinking of Holland right now, buddy, let me tell you what, coming into Christmas, duck and goose sales are through the roof. That’s what they choose to eat for dinner. And I have eaten and I have certainly cooked some really bad duck and goose, but I’ve cooked some good and eaten a lot of it, too. And it all goes back to the fat. Going to France, kicking around Paris, man, I’ve always heard about sitting on the street cafes, eating baguettes, but it’s real. You could just about jump into any French cafe and eat a baguette and look at the menu and eat something good and have some good wine with it. That’s my favorite part of the whole thing. But just about all the cafes you would go to had foie gras and or duck, and it was always utterly amazing. Always amazing.

Gumbo and Stews: Turning Game Meat into Delicious Meals.

Whether it’s alligator or ducks or whether it’s deer or whatever, if there’s a cut or a species that is like, I just can’t get into it, I just can’t get the flavor out, I can’t get this recipe right, make a gumbo, make a stew, a Cajun stew, and it’ll likely be the great equalizer and turn that corner for you in that game meat.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I love France for that reason. My wife was asking me the other days, like, what do you think is the world’s greatest food cultures and food cities or food countries, I think what she said. France is definitely one of them. And I think that’s part of the reason why – France is part of the reason why Cajun food and the food in Louisiana is so good and has such a history because of their direct influence into the culture. In fact, I often say that Cajun food, if you don’t like – so there’s two things for you all listeners here. The meal, the duck recipe that got me from a little boy not liking duck because it was just too livery or whatever for me, the duck recipe that turned my palate to love duck is a dish that I call dad’s duck dinner. You can go on YouTube and put dad’s duck dinner and find it on Louisiana Cooking. I’ve cooked that for a hundred different duck camps around the country for duck hunters, for people that don’t like duck and so on. And oftentimes is that meal that’s like, I need to make this every time I’m cooking duck. So check out dad’s duck dinner. It may just change your palate into loving duck. But I also say that Cajun food is wild game’s great equalizer, right? Whether it’s alligator or ducks or whether it’s deer or whatever, if there’s a cut or a species that is like, I just can’t get into it, I just can’t get the flavor out, I can’t get this recipe right, make a gumbo, make a stew, a Cajun stew, and it’ll likely be the great equalizer and turn that corner for you in that game meat. And I’ve done this from everything from bear to snow geese to, I mean, you name it, man, I’ve cooked it. If I have a question about it, the first thing I’m doing is just seasoning it with salt and pepper and kind of roasting in the skillet, keeping it simple just so I can understand the flavor. And then if it’s a kind of a gnarly chunk of meat, hindquarters, front legs, different things, rib meat, something like that, that’s going to take a long time to cook, I’m putting it in a Cajun stew, a fricassee, a sauce pecan, and I’m going to cook it like that. Like, I know, and for those not successful in cooking wild game, just pause, go do some research on some solid, authentic Cajun recipes, and then make it into that and tell me how it comes out after that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I agree. I agree entirely. You spent some time in France, it sounds like, and that makes sense because of – I mean, French Acadians, somewhere up north between England and whatever, around Quebec, they got rid of them, man. They put them on a boat and sent them to the end of the world, down south, Louisiana, they got dropped off and thrived. They freaking thrived and took over the world and started a culture unto itself worldwide. But you spent a lot of time, like you were talking about earlier, having spent so much time in Vietnam. What is it about Vietnam? What is it as a chef, as a Cajun personality that takes you to Vietnam for 5 weeks, man?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And you weren’t hunting and fishing, were you?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: No, none of that. Well, there was a number of things. So I think personally, I have a wonderlust for travel, whether it’s for hunting or fishing or just food or just to go to new – me, I legitimately love getting on an airplane and going to a new place.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, me and you both.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah. And I think that Vietnam and Southeast Asia specifically, but Vietnam in this case is still just one of those cultures that it has largely not been westernized to a point where it kind of feels like a lot of other countries. It’s very much independent in its culture and its food and it’s way of life. And there’s not a lot left of that in the world. It’s not an easy place to travel to. It’s a long flight. Not a lot of English spoken. There’s a lot of gnarly things going on in the street and cooking and so on, you got to be open to all that. Anthony Bourdain is one of those people that opened my eyes to Vietnam. But I think from a very elemental point of view, my palate, my wanderlust for food, it evolves around wanting to experience something for the first time, wanting to taste something new for the first time, wanting to smell something new for the first time. It really drives my necessity to want to get out there into the world. And that all plays that. You mean, you could see that in Duck Camp Dinners, and you could see that with me going to places like Vietnam. And so I had been to Vietnam, my wife and I had been to Vietnam on a two week trip, one week to Vietnam, one week to Thailand early in our marriage. Then we came back, we scheduld a 3 month trip to Vietnam before COVID hit. When COVID hit, everything shut down, that trip got canceled. We did it. We scheduled another 3 month trip, a year later, they were still shut down, that trip got canceled. And then we had our little boy, Parrish, who’s now 2.5 years old, and we said, okay, let’s go for five weeks. And my wife is pregnant right now as we speak, and she was pregnant with our second child at the time and said, while we still have one child, let’s make this trip happen. We finally made it happen. And we fell in love with Vietnam on that first week there, on that first trip there. And so we knew we always wanted to go back and see the whole country. And it really is one of those countries that, if you can, you want to try to get all of it in at one breath, just because getting there, it can be difficult. So, but I just love the country. I love its relationship with food, its relationship with community and the community around, like, the people who eat there. You never run into more restaurants. I mean, I say restaurants, they’re not restaurants in the sense that most people understand them, but they’re places where they may only cook one, two, or maybe three things.

Ramsey Russell: They cook really good, don’t they? They cook those couple of things real good.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, real good. A lot of times you’re eating on the street, on stools, and things like that. So it’s just one of those countries. And you’ve been a number of countries in your lifetime going around that, which hasn’t been touched by some of the modern amenities that we are accustomed to in America or in Europe and so on. And also there’s this underlying thing that the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, the Malaysians, they have a big presence throughout coastal Louisiana and coastal Texas as well because of fisheries, crab and fish. The crabbing industry, the shrimping industry, they’ve taken over a lot of places in a good way, in my opinion. Although, there’s a lot of Louisiana fishermen that wouldn’t agree with me. But I love seeing more culture coming to our state and sharing that culture with things at the state, which is why you see, like, Viet Cajun crawfish boils and shrimp boils and crab boils pop up in South Louisiana and all through Houston. That’s a direct influence from those Vietnamese that came here during the war and after the war to escape communism and made home in south Louisiana and South Texas, because those are the places in America that it reminded them of home the most. Rice eating culture, seafood culture, affordable and freedom. So, like, they were able to make a living and do things that they did in their homeland right there in Louisiana. And I’ve seen that growing up as well. I remember there was a Vietnamese grocery store under the East Homa bridge that in high school I would go to and I would buy things from there that I didn’t know what they were. I would buy things because I was curious of what these different sauces and the fermented things and different vinegars and different things in the frozen section, like banana leaves and lemongrass, it sounds silly to say, like, fresh lemongrass at this point because you can get that at a lot of grocery stores now. But at the time, I was buying lemongrass, I didn’t know what to do with it. And so I was experimenting with all these different flavors, even in high school, to the point where I know what I’m talking about right now is not sushi. But I started rolling my own sushi in the morning in high school and bringing it for my lunch when I was a sophomore junior, and senior in high school. But all that stuff that I even got from making sushi for all the different ingredients I would buy from Southeast Asia at that little grocery store that was all influenced, because that grocery store was a necessity in the community of Terrebonne parish because of the shrimpers and crabbers that were Vietnamese and Cambodian, they had a reason to make a store. So those people, those communities could buy ingredients that they knew from back home. And so there was white boys like me who would go in and just, like, literally, blindly, look at this shelf full of, they didn’t have Google Translate where you can take a picture and it would translate for you, it was in 2004. So I would go there and just blindly pull things off the shelf and take them home and taste them in a spoon, just taste them and think to myself, all right, like, maybe this can go in this, maybe this can go in that, it’s till this day the reason why I put fermented crab paste in my seafood gumbo. And that’s just a tablespoon or two in an 8 quart, 10 quart kind of big pot will do you. But it just adds an extra layer of crustacean funk in the best way possible. And that’s still the reason to this day, why I know what fermented crab paste is and is that little grocery store. But to my point, that wouldn’t be there without that community needing a store like that for people that were working in that industry. Right off that bayou, the intercoastal canal that the east Terrebonne bridge goes over, that’s where a bunch of those stripping boats were and a lot of Vietnamese, Cambodian stripping boats.

Ramsey Russell: You mentioned chef Anthony Bourdain. How did he influence you, chef Jean Paul? Because he flew up on my radar very recently. I cannot believe that I was oblivious to it. I mean, I was on a flight to Australia and watched a documentary about Anthony Bourdain, fell in love with him and his story and what he did. I’m like, wow, this is very relatable to me. But you obviously were influenced by him much earlier.

The Legacy of Anthony Bourdain: An Unfillable Void in Food and Travel Media.

I call myself a filmmaker because I look at Duck Camp Dinners is just shorter films, but as a filmmaker, as a chef, as a writer, he’s been inspiration, all three of those buckets for me. And as a traveler as well, like, I’ve always wanted to travel like Anthony Bourdain traveled.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, at a very young age. My mama, my grandmother on my mom’s side gave me kitchen confidential when I was in high school, which was his New York Times bestselling cookbook. It was basically a behind the doors, unedited view of what it was like to work in kitchens, specifically kitchens in New York City in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, I would assume, when he was running a lot of different restaurants, specifically the most famous one, Liaos, which is what he was the chef of. So starting from that age, and I always had a thirst, I love Louisiana, but I always had this need to get out and experience the rest of the world. And that was my first kind of view into what my kitchen life or kitchen profession could be. Even though I wasn’t going to culinary school yet, when I got that book, I was like, God, what is this place that he’s just writing so freely about? And that was one thing I wrote that he really influenced me on. I love to write. I love to write poetry. I love to write editorial pieces. I love to write seasonal parts. And he inspired me just to write freely and to be right with a reckless abandonment, if you will. Just get your thoughts on paper, if you can. And so in a lot of ways, it was that. But then as you started creating more video and that started coming to No Reservation and Parts Unknown I can’t remember which one came first. But then you started seeing this kind of renegade of a man, just submerse himself into whatever city he was in and just really eloquently and articulate what it was like to be here through his eyes and why you should appreciate these things in other people’s culture, even though it’s vastly different from yours. And again, it was just a free kind of speech on how he saw the world, which I really appreciated. When we went to Japan for the first time, he was actually on our flight with us. He was waiting in line. And at this time, I fully knew who he was. I’ve watched every episode of parts unknown and no reservation dozens of times, literally. It’s very inspirational. I call myself a filmmaker because I look at Duck Camp Dinners is just shorter films, but as a filmmaker, as a chef, as a writer, he’s been inspiration, all three of those buckets for me. And as a traveler as well, like, I’ve always wanted to travel like Anthony Bourdain traveled. But when I saw him standing in line at the gate, I was faced with a decision. Do I go introduce myself and kind of and say how much of a fan I was, or do I let him have some peace knowing that he has people like me all the time that probably want to go up and say hello? And I’ve watched his shows enough to know how because he always spoke so freely and candidly, how much travel weighed on him. He loved it. He lived for it. It fueled his inquisitiveness around the world and around people, but it drained him of energy and time and resources with his family and so on. And when I saw him for the first time in real life, 5ft away from me, I saw that in his face. I saw the impact, the toll that this travel had taken on him. And at that point, I was like, you know what? I’m not going to say hello, I’m not going to introduce myself because I could just see in his face and he’s just like, oh, another city, another flight. And I go back at that moment of time and there is some regret about not saying hello because obviously none of us knew we would have a short amount of time with him. And I guess I always thought that I’d better meet him one day, and I didn’t get that. Just didn’t feel like the right time for me. So there is an element of regret in that story, but there’s also an element of you did the right thing in terms of giving him a little bit of peace or whatever and just not approaching him like a fanboy, which I would no doubt come off as. And I still am. I think about him a lot, especially when I’m writing voiceover, because I loved his voiceover in those shows and that it’s part of what I like to do in Duck Camp Dinners. And of course, in voiceover, there’s always these transitional pieces you got to knock out. But then there’s this opportunity to take 3 or 4 lines and get into maybe some poetic moments or some moments that get you thinking about the truth a little bit that are a little abrasive to you. And he just did that so well, he’ll continue to be an inspiration to me despite, he started getting a little political for me towards the end of his career, and in some ways, I can see that turning people off, it never did for me, per se, but he had such a platform and a voice, he could change the landscape of a conversation with just a few lines or definitely with a show. And he’s a person in this life that I think – TV, like, can you imagine his show was one of the top rated shows for a decade. Whether it’s Parts Unknown or No Reservations, whether CNN or whatever, I forget the other network he was on, people loved him, and they still haven’t been able to fill the void like Anthony Bourdain left.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Like, you haven’t seen a show like that come up anywhere because who could ever fill those shoes, right? Like, in a way like Duck Camp Dinners tries to be Anthony Bourdain-ish for the hunting world, for the ducks world. But as a travel component, man, nobody’s been able to really do what he’s been able to do.

Ramsey Russell: If I could ever meet Anthony Bourdain and have a conversation with him at a countertop, like what I see on some of his TV shows, what resonated with me, and you just mentioned it on that documentary he was talking about. He was speaking with a musician, somebody he knew that traveled and toured a lot, and it does, on the one hand, you live so in the moment, you’re putting yourself out there, you’re living in the moment, you’re engaging with people, you’re experiencing the full splendor of the world outside your own backyard, but it does, it drains you. It wears you down. And you finally get home, you can’t wait to get home. And you get home and you pour into your recliner, and then 3, 4, 5 days later, you’re stir crazy. And I’d want to have that conversation with him. What is it? And on the same token, I’ll ask you, you’re starting to travel a lot 5 weeks in Vietnam or going around and doing all of these things, you’re doing. All these shows and being away from home and going to North Carolina and Chesapeake Bay and California and all the stuff you’re doing, has it started to wear on you any yet? Have you started to fray around the edges? Because it’s a whole lot different than that floating camp down in Louisiana you grew up and cut your teeth on with your running buddies, JP.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, sure is. Yeah, I’m starting to feel the effects of it. I think I clocked 150 days last year, and that was a mixture of work and play with my family, so that matters. A lot of times, my family can travel with me in different places that I go now. Like I said, at the time of this taping, we have a 2.5 year old and one due, literally, my wife can go in labor right now, so obviously, that changes things as well. But I think that the things that we wake up every day excited to get out of bed for, we should continue to pursue those things. The people that love us the most understand those are the things that drive us. And if you’re making a living doing it, it only makes it that much more meaningful. There’s certainly that aspect, if I was just going around the country and spending my wife and I’s money hunting around different places with not a tangible contribution to how we make a living in my household, that would be a problem. That’s just the x’s and o’s of traveling for what we do, Ramsey, is we make a living doing what we do in a lot of ways. I mean, whether I’m filming Duck Camp Dinners or I’m doing another project for Shin or I’m doing another project for Boss or I’m doing whatever, and a lot of these help put food on the table in my household here. But then I think the world, I mean, I don’t know how – you have only so much time and you know that the people, and when I’m looking in there, I’m kind of gazing into my house right now, knowing the people that are in it. Like, those are the people I want to spend my time with. Those are the people that I want to make sure that I never neglect. But as a man, as somebody who is the largely the provider for this, like, I’m also thinking about, and I would imagine Anthony Bourdain had part of this come into his existence as well. Like, he had a daughter, he had a wife, like, his work that he loved to do, that he loved to travel, he made that into a business, he was able to provide for his family, probably generational wealth for his family. Would he do it all over again so that his family was set up for success after he’s gone, probably. Despite his own health? Probably so. And I think as providers for our family, we do those things like, it’s hard for me to be away from home because I know what I’m leaving behind. But I also know there’s a line that I walk in terms of, all right, do I provide for my family or do I stay at home? Sometimes I have to do one or the other. Sometimes I can stay at home and provide for my family. And as an entrepreneur that doesn’t walk into a restaurant anymore, that doesn’t have a paycheck coming to him every week and still being relatively young and having being high energy, I look at is like, even though I want to be here, I have to make a sacrifice to better provide for my family, so they have a life even maybe past mine or that surpasses mine that they’re taking care of. So, I think it’s not just the stress of the road, the stress of flying, the stress of being in one place or another or sleeping in hotels or couches or whatever it is. It’s the mental impact that you know that the people that you’re leaving behind are counting on you to do what you’re leaving for.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: And sometimes those things don’t actually run in parallel paths. In fact, they may T-bone and rub in a lot of ways, and it takes a loving household, a loving wife to understand that stuff. And the way I look at is when I’m home. Because you and I are in different parts in our lives, we’re in different seasons of our lives, right?

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I’m in child wearing season, right? So, like, I’m in this place where I’m like, when I am home, I want to be completely home and be completely submersed in what it is that’s going on in my home, from drop offs to pickups to currently potty training and giving birth with my wife. Like, I think we all have those seasons in our lives, I’m happening to be in this really complex season of my life. But I also know the momentum of Duck Camp Dinners and what I’m doing over the last 5 years is actually starting to gain traction where I’m starting to better, maybe possibly build that into a business that can be fruitful, right? And allows me to be a coach at my kids games and not work. I often talk to my wife, like, what if I still worked in restaurants and worked for Christmas Eve and worked nights and worked a week? Like, so what do I rather. What do we rather? Me being able to make my own schedule, but sometimes I’m gone for 2 weeks or whatever. So I think, for a moment, I actually forgot we were being recorded and I’m almost, like, just talking to you as a therapy session.

Ramsey Russell: But see, I get it. I make a living doing what I do, travel, but I love it. I’m going to be in the Brunswick, I’m going to be in Prince Edward Island this year, I’m going to be with some buddies up in Saskatchewan, I am in the moment, and I am loving every freaking minute of it. And fortunately for me, for everybody listening, as long as I’ve got cellular connectivity or Wi-Fi, which I got Wi-Fi in my truck now, buddy, I’m on the clock, but I can pick and choose which hours I’m working. The only time it gets dawning business wise for me, is when you’re 7 to 15 hours ahead of this time and you get a call at 02:30 in the morning, because it’s 09:00 back home or something, that’s when it gets a little something. But otherwise, I love it. I can make it work and I do it. And I feel like, on the one hand, I never go to the office, not a day in my life, not a minute in my life. But I feel like on the other hand, I never get off. I’m on the clock 24/7 with those text messages, when those emails, when those inboxes, when all this stuff comes. But I feel like the travel part of it, getting on the planes, going through TSA, making those long flights, getting off into a different time zone, getting your body clock adjusted and then just becoming completely and utterly immersed in what’s at arms reach, be it the food and the culture and the hunting and the people and everything about it. I guess just spending that energy and becoming so immersed, becoming so involved and balancing all this other stuff, it takes a little energy, you see what I’m saying? And so when I come home, I’m like, God, I can’t wait to get home and just binge watch TV for 8 hours. You know what I’m saying? And just do nothing. Just vegetate. But it’s like shifting – if you have driven in Colorado, up and down mountain passes with a stick shift, it’s just you’re constantly shifting and that’s kind of what it’s like. But on the other hand, I have it no other way. I love what I do. I’m blessed. I’m blessed beyond measure to do what I do for a living. And so I just wonder, here’s a question I’ve got for you. You’ve traveled around, you’ve done all this stuff, you’ve experienced all this stuff and the parallel as you talked about – 25 years ago, I started off chasing, I want to go here, I want to go there, I want to shoot ducks and 25 years later, here we are, you know what I’m saying? And how I thought I was going there to shoot a particular species or to hunt something or do something, but then I just totally rounded this curve to where the ducks and the geese and the trigger pulling is all just a constant. No matter where I’m at, it’s the, everything else, be it, it’s your duck camp with your friends and the food and the camaraderie and just the scenery and the songbirds and just everything that comes with the territory to where it’s almost become all that. And for you, to hear you articulate it with food and ducks, you know what I’m saying? It’s a lot of continuity in that conversation, it’s very relatable to me. But here’s something I’ve got for you. We’ve talked about Vietnam, we’ve talked about Thailand, we’ve talked about Chesapeake Bay, we’ve talked about France and all these different places all around Louisiana, you can take chef Jean Paul out of Louisiana, but you can’t take Louisiana out of Chef Jean Paul. So, what are you bringing to those places? And what are those places bringing to you? How is your life as a chef and a human being transforming with all this travel? It’s a whole lot different. You know and I know that it’s one thing if you vegetate comfortably in your backyard for your entire lifetime versus just becoming exposed to all this kind of stuff, something happens. How has it affected you? How has it changed you?

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Empathy. Growing empathy, for sure. Yeah. I consider myself an expert cook. Am I an expert duck hunter? Definitely not. Do I know a little bit about duck hunting in Louisiana? Yes. You start getting out to other territories, I’m a student. I’m opening my ears, I’m speaking very little, and I’m listening a lot.

Ramsey Russell: Amen.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I’m trying to take in the people who are experts in these areas and just learning from them. Even when it comes to somebody like Dale hunting in a Boyles parish, I’m speaking, even though that’s Louisiana, I’m speaking a lot less, and I’m listening to him because he knows much more than I know about one, that area, but also just that way of life. And then you start getting in places like the Chesapeake Bay or anywhere in the world, it’s really understanding that there’s a lot more commonality here. Again, I’ve said this before, just especially with food, but that wasn’t always apparent to me. I had to get out of my own comfort zone to understand that no matter where we live in this world, we have so much more alike than we do different. And so, that empathy in me for how people live and the way they live, and I just welcome differences. In fact, I’ve kind of lived by this motto over the course of my life or course of my professional career, which is why I’ve moved so many different places, why I intentionally visit and travel different places that are hard is that you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And in that uncomfortable moments, whether it’s trying to speak a different language with someone, trying to order off a menu that you can’t read, sitting down and shutting up, when it comes to putting out a decoy spread in somebody else’s world, your expertise, or your understanding of the world and people that is honed and sharpen through uncomfortable moments. The same could be said with your knife blade when you put it on a whetstone, it’s the abrasiveness, it’s the friction. It’s the conflict of the stone and the blade that sharpens that metal. And so people often look at conflict as a negative thing. In a lot of ways, it is. But also, in a lot of ways, it’s a point where this meets that, and a spark starts, an idea sparks and understanding. And so I believe that conflict, and in a lot of ways, when you travel to places that are uncomfortable, there’s a conflict in, like, oh, God, do I speak this language, or do I try to just speak English? Do I use my phone, or do I need – there’s a conflict there. There’s a conflict when we make ourselves uncomfortable into these places. But oftentimes, in that conflict emerges new ideas, emerges understanding of each other, emerges a spark of friendship, a business idea, a way to feed your – Whatever that is, there are things that come out of conflict that are positive. And so I’m constantly looking at these situations. And also Duck Camp Dinners to kind of bring it back to the show, is that what is the conflict that we are articulating in this episode? What is the conflict that is in front of me as I’m traveling to this and that? Because I know there’s a spark somewhere in here. I know there’s a story, there’s an understanding somewhere in here. But I have to be willing to come head to head, face to face with that conflict, that embrace of that friction. Again, just like that knife on that whetstone sharpens along that stone. And that friction, it gets sharper.

Ramsey Russell: Just being outside of your comfort zone, just being out of sight of what’s familiar, it challenges you. It morphs you, it changes you. I mean, I can think of how just the simple things of how I read the newspaper, how I perceive stories in the newspaper or how I perceive something in social media or the news or a television show or cooking something, it changes. It somehow influenced me, and I feel like it – Boy, I tell you what, with such a divisive world we live in, with all the media, I’m less divisive, I’m more accepting, I’m more tolerant, I’m more understanding, I’m more compassionate, than probably I was 20 years ago. I seek. Because even though they’re talking this different language and they’re eating this strange food approached a different way, I sit down and I break bread with them and I realize, holy cow, they’re just like me, only different. And that’s been a very rewarding thing. You mentioned a cell phone, boy, I tell you what, Google translate is a savior when it comes to reading menus around the world. But I have found one of the greatest benefits of a cell phone, meet a stranger, meet somebody different that has this language barrier and this cultural barrier, and it’s going to bring it, I think, reiterate kind of what you’re saying about the universal truth of people is the greatest benefit of that cell phone is opening up your photos and pointing to pictures of your kids and your home and your dog and what you hunt back home or what you eat or how you live. And man, a picture speaks a thousand words that breaches the language barrier. They get it. You can point to your wife, and they understand immediately, this is your wife or this is your child, or this is your dog, or this is your home, or this is your backyard, and you share that with them, and they open up start showing you their world, and all of a sudden, this bond is connected. I think, of so many parts around the world, there’s this language barrier. It’s one thing going up and pitching decoys with somebody around the United States, it’s something else entirely different going to a second or third world country and being in a skiff while they’re putting out things, their ways. And there’s no language that you can’t talk, you can’t communicate, except for the fact you’re both duck hunters and you kind of understand it. You see what I’m saying? And it’s been extremely rewarding to me. I love it. It’s one of the greatest. One of the things I’m most thankful for ever is just having gained this growing understanding and perspective of the world around me beyond how I grew up.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah, I mean, would completely agree with that. I’ve often said that cooking has brought me around the world like it is the lens I see everything through. It’s the reason why Duck Camp Dinners has, obviously, a huge cooking component to the show. But when I moved to New York, I moved from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where I wore, beside from my chef clothes, I wore a bathing suit and a Mussel shirt. And then I moved to New York during one of the last winter storms of the season in 2009. And I had a pair of jeans and an LSU hoodie. And again, I moved to New York to be uncomfortable. I’d never been to the city before, I didn’t have a job, I knew I’d get one. And then what I realized is that, man, this city, just like all these places that you’ve been and so on, is drastically different, as in my head, I had it, and it is. In terms of being a city and the difference in South Louisiana or where it is here in Florida. But then you start to dive down into the taxi cabs, the people in different parts of Long Island and Staten Island and then the outer boroughs and all the eastern Europeans, and you start sitting at tables with them, eating food with them, and they become your landlords or the people you go to church with and so on and so forth. And it’s food that brought me there and the understanding of these people and this in this city and so on. And that just translates into every part of it. In fact, I was on a podcast the other day with Vogel.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. The Vogels.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Christian Vogel and Tony Vogel, yeah.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: That’s them. Yeah. And they mentioned a quote that you had shared with them, at one point, and I loved it. And you know which I’m going to say, because I’m going to butcher how it goes, but something about you don’t know someone until your feet’s underneath their table, or –

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. You put your feet under their table. I mean, if you want to gain a sense of place anywhere you go and you were talking about Vietnam, you were talking about that little restaurant that specializes in one or two things only, man. Now, you can’t go to Applebee’s down in Mexico, you got to go to some hole in the wall that specializes in burritos, now you understand those people, because it all goes back to that food, man, that food culture that we’ve been talking about the whole episode. And maybe that’s why I like to have guys like yourself on here so much, just to talk about the food stuff. Chef Jean Paul, we got to wrap this up and I’m very excited for your season three of Duck Camp Dinner to continuation. You all have gone to the long format, 44 minutes, it’s going to be in depth and everything else. Thank you very much for coming on here. I appreciate you sharing a lot of your insights. And you talk about bucket list hunts, I’m going to tell you right now, man, one of mine is to come down there without the cameras and spend a weekend with you on that floating camp you all got, I’d love to do that. Love to just fall in with you all and drink cold beer and eat. I can’t serve much, but I can make my chicken fried or make some real cornbread, collard greens.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: I heard you got a hell of appetite is what I’ve heard.

Ramsey Russell: I can eat. Yeah, I can eat.

Jean-Paul Bourgeois: Hey, Ramsey, I will say one thank you first and foremost for having me on and giving me a platform to speak about all this. Duck Camp Dinners is obviously a project that’s very near and dear to me. And so I would say to all those folks listening, thank you for sharing that video with your friends and family, for liking it, for engaging with it. Look, we’re trying to make a season four right now, it’s not guaranteed, I don’t have big money behind me, I have to grind every season for brand partnerships and to find money to make it and it’s not a cheap show. And so I just thank all of you all for watching, for commenting, engaging, sharing it, because it’s making this show is impossible without the folks that are listening right now watching the show and then just sharing it with other people in their community. The season four will not get made without folks like you watching it and platforms like this to better speak about it. And so just thank you for that platform. Thank you for everybody who’s watched it. If you haven’t watched it, it’s on Waypoint TV right now. It’s on YouTube right now. You can follow me @chefJean_Paul. You can follow Duck Camp Dinners. And if you’re really into Louisiana cooking, if you’re really into that want to learn more about that food culture, then go to the Louisiana cooking YouTube page and follow that and watch some of those videos that have some like, classic Cajun recipes, momma recipes, stuff that we grow up cooking at the camp and so on. There’s a lot of information to digest about all that, but we’re truly just always thankful for your time, Ramsey, thanks for everything you do for the Waterfowl community, this podcast, and getting people like me on it to better tell their story, I promise you, like getting these opportunities, man, it’s something that’s humbling, and I’m also just very thankful for. So thank you.

Ramsey Russell: Awesome. Thank you very much. I appreciate the kind words. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast with chef Jean Paul. Duck Camp Dinners, go check it out. See you next time.

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