Popcorn Company Tackling “Unique” Louisiana Flavors – Good Or Bad Idea?

The Cajun culture is intriguing. And the food it features is incredible – when it’s done right!

Because of the popularity of Cajun food flavors, many food-related businesses find unique ways to feature these flavors to their customers, who are both Cajuns and people of other cultures. Sometimes these products work out; sometimes these products fall flat on their face as terrible misrepresentations of our Cajun culture.

Popcorn Bistro certainly specializes in different flavors. They boast over 100 of them! I didn’t even realize you could produce that many different flavors of popcorn! Now that I see these latest “Cajun” flavors, though, I’m not surprised at how they’ve come up with so many different selections.

Popcorn Bistro is advertising three different gift boxes in an effort to “send the gift of a taste of New Orleans” to your friends, family, business associates, etc. The three gift boxes – Cajun Gift Box, New Orleans Gift Box and Who Dat Mix.

Let’s look at these three popcorn packages! We’ll start with (and mainly concentrate on) the Cajun Gift Box.

It features three junior size bags of Cajun flavors – Boiled Crawfish, Cajun, & Gumbo.

Now, Gumbo-flavored popcorn doesn’t exactly sound appetizing to me. When I think of gumbo, I think of roux, chicken, sausage and seafood. Do those flavors sound like they mix with popcorn!?! To me, they don’t. But, I would try them and hope the combination would prove me wrong.

Boiled Crawfish-flavored popcorn. I can see this. I’ve had peppered popcorn before, and when I think of crawfish, I certainly think of spice and and lots of flavor. We have crawfish flavored chips, right? And they taste fine to me. So, I could see this tasting good, as long as they leave the seafood taste out of it.

Cajun-flavored popcorn. This intrigues me, actually. It all depends on what their definition of “Cajun” flavoring is. As long as their definition of Cajun is not burnt popcorn, I would try it. (Don’t you hate, on a TV show, when someone burns their cooking and calls it Cajun? Burns me up! (Pun intended))

Briefly looking at the other two popcorn packages, I definitely see some good possibilities. In the New Orleans Gift Box, Popcorn Bistro features four different flavors – Bananas Foster, King Cake, Beignet and Mardi Gras Mambo. The first three flavors are ones I know and love and think if they are incorporated the right way could add a nice sweet to the popcorn’s salty flavoring. Bananas Foster is the flavor that appeals to me most. Mardi Gras Mambo – can’t help but wonder what that means!

And the Who Dat Mix. It’s simply described as “a fun mix of cheesecake flavored and Caramel Popcorn.” I’ve certainly had caramel popcorn, and enjoy it. Again, the sweet and the salty could go very well here.

Cajun food has certainly become very marketable not only here in Louisiana, but across the region and to certain parts of the country where Cajuns have migrated to. But, I think when companies decide to “make a splash” by announcing these flavors, they do have a responsibility to the Cajun culture not to screw it up. There are enough terrible stereotypes of Cajuns out there. Don't misrepresent our food!

That all being said, I hope these flavors are properly representative of the Cajun culture and I wish the Popcorn Bistro well with their products.