When I started at the original This Land Press in the early 2010s, then-editor-in-chief Michael Mason asked if I was from Tulsa. I sheepishly answered, “Yes, I mean … I’m from Coweta, but I’ve been here for a few years.” He laughed and said, “Chill out, dude. It counts.”
The sad truth is I used to be embarrassed to be from a small town. Like most punk rock teenagers, I couldn’t wait to leave my hometown in search of more cultured pastures. But the farther I get from those school years, the more I admire the friends who stayed and built beautiful lives there, and the more I appreciate the town itself, which somehow now feels like Oklahoma’s unofficial capital of Louisiana.
That’s admittedly my small town pride talking. Oklahoma has other crawfish festivals, but T Johnny’s Seafood and Cajun Market and its Bayou Bash have turned Coweta into a genuine Okie oddity. Our state has its share of peculiar small town gatherings, like El Reno Fried Onion Burger Day and the now defunct Hanobia Bigfoot Festival, but walking through downtown Coweta a few weekends ago, navigating the mountainous mounds of mud bugs while New Orleans jazz players blared through the streets, still felt surreal.
Before Louisiana culinary icon T Johnny’s chose Coweta for its Oklahoma site, the only crawfish in town were the tiny crawdads my buddies and I caught outside the sports complex during my sister’s softball games. Our food scene was what you’d expect from a three-stoplight town, with the most exotic fare being Bill and Ruth’s baklava. When a KFC opened in the mid aughts, the town’s excitement ran them out of chicken on their first night.
And don’t get me wrong: Señor Salsa has always been excellent, and Roy’s Chicken is sacred, but T Johnny’s is a destination restaurant worth the 30-minute drive from Tulsa. Chris West, co-owner of Lassalle’s, says if he’s not presiding over a crawfish boil, he’s getting T Johnny's “just because he’s legit on what he’s doing.” Brian Horton of Horton Records hits up T Johnny’s at least a couple times a month, by his recollection. Apart from the obvious crawfish, TJ’s brings that legit Louisiana culture to town through their house-made sausages, boudin balls, meatpies, and myriad Cajun staples in their market.
“We do lunch specials every day, and they’re always changing,” Coweta location owner Mitch Decker told me. Red beans and rice, gumbo, po-boys, and etouffée are all likely to pop up from one day to another. And the food is damn good, with a depth of flavor and complexity that puts T Johnny’s up top for me, whether we’re talking crawfish boils or bisque.
Keeping the crawfish running and the market stocked means constant trips between Oklahoma and T Johnny’s original location in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Decker handles most of the Oklahoma hauling. He’s a fellow Coweta boy who met business partner, namesake, and Louisiana location owner Johnny Ledet when they were rivals in college fishing tournaments. Ledet started with crawfish boils in church parking lots before expanding into specialty Cajun meats, then a storefront. Decker brought Louisiana back to our hometown in 2022.
“I drive three times a week,” Decker said of the six-and-a-half-hour one-way trips. “I knew Cajun food would be a hit up here. There was already support for it, but I also knew it wouldn’t just be a town thing. We get people from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas.”
That regional draw is especially visible during Bayou Bash, the annual crawfish festival they organize with the help of friends, employees, and family. “I think community is kind of a dying thing,” Decker said. “The world gets busier every year, and community can get lost really quick. So when you can bring thousands of people together like this, enjoying the same thing, that's what matters.”
I mentioned the mounds of mud bugs earlier, and I wasn’t joking. In their first year they boiled 8,000 pounds of crawfish, and this year they upped it to 9,500. When (not if) you go next year, you’ll wanna grab a bucket and pull up for the crawfish eating contest while you leisurely work through your own catering pan. I’ve had some bad crawfish boils that could’ve turned me off from the critters indefinitely, but T Johnny’s is nothing short of divine.
For those that haven’t dug their claws into a boil before, you can expect a florid arabesque of antennae, and pincers lavished in spicy Cajun seasoning, accompanied by a couple potatoes and some corn on the cob. You gotta know how to clean crawfish, and there’s an art to doing so that heightens the experience of consumption.
But the art of cleaning has no place in the crawfish contest, where all thoughts of deveining and culinary care are cannon fodder in the jaws of competition. This year’s contestants tore into their plates, sending carapaces into the air like spent howitzer shells. Right after he taught me how to thoroughly clean a crawfish, my friend Brent looked on in horror and disgustedly whispered: “Nasty motherfuckers.”
It’s wild returning to the town I left in 2006. Back then, Coweta felt far more conservative, though in a Hank Hill way rather than a MAGA one, and the idea of a bar on Main Street seemed impossible. Now the town not only has 1843 On Main Street Bar and Grill, with dishes like pork belly mac and cheese, but during Bayou Bash you can carry drinks down Main Street and wander between beer tents.
1843 also occupies a building sacred to my personal mythology. It used to be Video Network, where, after getting my driver’s license, I spent less time chasing typical teenage thrills and more time staring at horror VHS covers for hours before taking home some Dario Argento, John Carpenter, or Lucio Fulci tape. There’s a strange feeling that comes with getting lit in the same building where you first rented Cannibal Holocaust.
The Coweta Theater where I first saw Air Bud and played some of my first concerts is now a gun store. And considering how buttoned up the town once felt, it’s downright phantasmagoric seeing cartoon crawfish plastered across Main Street merch beside the phrase “it ain’t gonna suck itself.” I’ve changed, and so has Coweta. Bayou Bash gave us a chance to meet in the middle over a mud bug feast.
