Currents News Staff
David Nunez works at a seafood restaurant in New Orleans.
“Usually we have a line outside the door,” David said. “We stay busy. We pretty much run out [of] crawfish every day.”
Now that the Lenten season is here, he says, they’re getting ready for the rush of people.
“You can’t even park out here sometimes, you got so many feet,” David said. “The flow is coming. We’re gonna be busy in March, March madness, wide open on the weekend.”
Right now, he says the price of crawfish he sells is reasonable at $3.35/lb for live crawfish and $4.35/lb for boiled. But other seafood? Expect higher costs.
“Nobody comes looking for work, we’re short handed,” David said. “[The] price of fuel [is] through the roof, the fishermen paying more for fuel, more for bait, more for gasoline.”
David says due to demand and the cost, they can’t get crab or oysters.
Drago’s Seafood Restaurant owner Tommy Cvitanovich says the rise in prices is causing him to rethink how he runs his business.
“Across the board, oysters are very, very expensive,” Tommy said.
He’s had to temporarily remove certain oyster dishes from his menu.
“I can tell you this week alone, the cost of my charbroiled oyster, the finished oyster to go to the table, has gone up about 25 cents,” Tommy said, “because of the increase in price this week per oyster.”
From Louisiana to New York and everywhere else for that matter, customers will be paying more. That’s because fishermen are fighting inflation and paying more for fuel, labor and sacks. As for crab meat, it doubled in price – going from about $18 to years ago, to about $40 today.
“So now the restaurateur has a couple decisions to make, put less crab meat, [and] obviously raise prices,” Tommy said. “Do I go to an imported crab meat? Do I go to a frozen crab meat?”