Hawk’s Crawfish

I remember the first time I ate crawfish. It was a rainy Louisiana day, and my dad was boiling a stockpot full of them under our carport. When he was done, he handed me this crazy-looking bug and told me to eat it. Since then, I've probably consumed somewhere around ten thousand pounds of crawfish. I never thought that one could be much better than another—until about five years ago, when I first went to Hawk's, a seafood shack in Rayne, Louisiana. In addition to using only the largest specimens of crawfish from the surrounding fields, the cooks at Hawk's employ a 24-hour freshwater purging system that results in a flavor that is clean and pure, not a bit muddy (there's a reason crawfish are also called "mud bugs"). In the spring and summer, when crawfish are in season and Hawk's is open for business, I get there as often as I can. —Donald Link, Link Restaurant Group, New Orleans