Jazz Fest food vendor for crawfish bread bows out, ending 35-year run for fest favorite

Editor’s note: This story was first published by Nola.com.

The food at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival remains remarkably consistent, with the same vendors returning with the same dishes year after year, often for decades. Thus they become their own traditions at the annual spring fest.

But now one of the longest-running Jazz Fest food vendors is bowing out. For the first time since its debut in 1987, there will be no crawfish bread at Jazz Fest this year.

The same vendor serves sausage bread and shrimp bread, but it’s the crawfish bread that ranks as one of the most popular perennial items at Jazz Fest.

John Ed Laborde is the creator of crawfish bread and founder of Panorama Foods, a caterer in the central Louisiana town of Marksville. He said the decision to end a 35-year run as a festival food vendor was a daunting one.

“One thing I learned from my daddy, there comes a time in your life when you’re less effective and maybe it’s time to move on,” Laborde said. “It’s just been a good run.”

The decision came to the through a matrix of factors and what Laborde called “stressors.” At 65, Laborde said it was time to reassess the all-consuming effort it takes to participate in Jazz Fest, a two-week stretch of outdoor food sales that takes months of preparation. He takes a hands-on role in that work.

“I make every batch of dough, and I cook every loaf of bread,” he said, describing 16-hour days at the peak of crawfish bread prep time.

Many of his key staff members have been with the company for decades, and they are also getting older. The heavy lift to ramp up for Jazz Fest while keeping up with catering duties for weddings, funerals and other events around their community was becoming more onerous.

Costs have also risen across the board, Laborde said, from raw materials to the New Orleans hotel rooms needed to house his crew coming down from central Louisiana to staff the Jazz Fest booth.

Laborde said when he saw changes in his contract from Jazz Fest this year, that proved to be the final nudge, though he would not elaborate on those changes.

“Jazz Fest has been part of my life since 1987. I love it, I’d never say anything bad about Jazz Fest; they’ve been good to me, I’ve been good to them,” he said.

Crawfish bread will live on in NOLA

With crawfish and cheese baked into crusty bread, Laborde’s signature dish is a little like a calzone, but distinctively of Louisiana. It’s been one of the most portable dishes at Jazz Fest too, wrapped in foil so you could toss it into your bag for a trek back to the stage.

Laborde has been making crawfish bread for a long time. It started with a recipe that a high school teacher shared for a similar creation, sausage bread, after she discovered his love for cooking. Later, after college, it was something he’d cook a lot in his apartment for friends. Eventually it evolved into crawfish bread, with mud bugs swapped in for the sausage.

“I love playing around with things, and this was when the Cajun cooking craze was happening,” in the 1980s, Laborde said.

One year he managed to feed a sample to Jazz Fest producer Quint Davis during a pre-festival meeting. It was a hit, and the following year, when another vendor dropped out, Laborde got his spot.

Panaroma Foods will continue its normal catering business, and crawfish bread lives on too.

John Ed’s son Nicholas Laborde started an online ordering service and shipping in 2017, via nolacrawfishbread.com. This part of the business has soared since the pandemic, when Jazz Fest was called off for two consecutive years and many were searching for a taste of the fest from afar.

Crawfish bread also remains in perpetual production for Panorama Foods, where it’s a popular pick for catered events.

“It’s part of my life, it’s never going to go away as far I’m concerned,” John Ed Laborde said.