Why We’re Called Roux
Gumbo is a dish with a hundred different versions. Ask ten Louisiana families how to make it and you’ll get ten answers, each one defended like a family heirloom. Chicken and sausage. Duck. Shrimp and crab. Quail. In my family, it was whatever my cousins brought home from a hunting trip. Hunting and trapping are mostly a thing of the past now, but for generations gumbo was how you cooked fresh game: you used what the land gave you that week and made it into something to feed everyone at the table.
Roux is the key. Flour and fat, stirred low and slow, patiently, never walking away, until it turns the color of a Hershey’s Kiss. Rush it and it burns, and you start over. Once you get the roux just right, really dark and very flavorful, you can start to build the rest of the dish by folding it into the roux: the Southern trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper, plus garlic, and chicken or duck stock.
That’s why our kitchen is called Roux Catering (pronounced “roo”). We start with our base: a commitment to fresh food, cooking on site, seasonal produce and sustainably raised proteins. Then we add lots of love, good humor and a desire to create connection and community.
Every event we do is different, the same way every gumbo is different. A farm-to-table wedding in Marin, a corporate conference in San Francisco, a celebration of life in a garden in Wine Country. The menu follows the season and whatever local farms are bringing in that week, just like it did in my grandmother’s kitchen. What stays the same is the base: food made from scratch and cooked on site, right before guests sit down, and a team that holds the whole day together.
You may never notice the roux. That’s the point. You’ll just know everything tasted the way it should.
Read more about where it all started: my grandmother’s farm.
Planning a wedding, a corporate event or a private dinner? Let’s talk about your event →