Undercover seafood testers find most Houma-area restaurants serving local shrimp | New Orleans CityBusiness

Genetic seafood testing at restaurants in the Houma area last week found one-third of the sampled businesses serving foreign shrimp, though most were upfront about it with their customers.

SeaD Consulting, a food testing company that has made headlines for uncovering foreign-sourced shrimp sold fraudulently as local catch at restaurants and festivals across the Gulf Coast, announced Wednesday that eight out of 24 restaurants sampled in Terrebonne Parish, or 33%, were serving foreign shrimp. Three of those restaurants misled their customers about it, failing to disclose the shrimp’s country of origin either on the menu or on a sign inside the establishment as required under state law, according to SeaD’s news release.

The Houma area’s 13% fraud rate over the July 13-15 period is one of the lowest in the state, tying New Orleans. It’s also much lower than markets that don’t have mislabeling laws, such as Tampa, Florida, where SeaD uncovered a 96% shrimp fraud rate from a sample of 44 restaurants in January.

Despite the relative honesty among Terrebonne Parish eateries, SeaD Consulting’s undercover testing, which it began last year, has discovered shrimp fraud in every city and batch of restaurants sampled.

“This is about integrity,” Al Mahler, owner of Big Al’s Seafood Restaurant in Houma, said in the news release. “My kitchen serves wild-caught Louisiana shrimp because that’s what we believe in. People don’t come here for shortcuts — they come for tradition, flavor, and trust.”

In December, the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force, an advisory panel for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, asked SeaD Consulting to analyze shrimp from restaurants across the state in an effort to eliminate consumer seafood fraud. Its analysis includes sampling 24 randomly selected restaurants in different metropolitan areas across the state.

It is illegal under federal and state law to mislabel imported seafood as local and can result in fines or other penalties.

Local seafood was once easy to find in Louisiana, but an influx of cheap foreign catch — particularly shrimp and crawfish — has flooded the market over the past two decades.

For more than a decade, Louisiana law has specifically required restaurants and other food establishments to state on their menus the country of origin of any shrimp and crawfish being served. The same requirement applies to food vendors at fairs and festivals.

A 2023 review of state enforcement records revealed many restaurants had not complied with the law. State health inspectors issued thousands of citations to restaurants but levied no fines against them, drawing criticism from state lawmakers and local fishermen.

SeaD Consulting launched its testing efforts last year using undercover inspectors to purchase shrimp dishes from restaurants and festival vendors. The inspectors run the shrimp through a rapid field testing kit that examines seafood tissue genetics.

The company does not publicly disclose the names of the restaurants that fraudulently serve imported shrimp, opting instead to highlight businesses that are following the law and serve domestic shrimp.

The Terrebonne Parish restaurants tested that offer locally caught seafood are:

• 1921 Seafood, Houma
• 531 Liberty Café, Houma
• Abear’s Café, Houma
• Alumni Grill, Thibodaux
• Atchafalaya Café, Morgan City
• Big Al’s Seafood Restaurant, Houma
• Boudreau & Thibodeau’s Cajun Cookin’, Houma
• Cajun Critters, Houma
• C’est Bon Cafe, Houma
• Copelands, Houma
• Po-Boy East Side, Houma
• Off the Hook, Thibodaux
• Rita Mae’s Kitchen, Morgan City
• Rouses #17, Thibodaux
• Spahr’s Seafood Restaurant, Thibodaux
• The Ground Pat’i, Houma