89573 Sun Jun 18 23:52:07 -0700 2006 4 3 California 0 492602 My partners of eating and I have been attending the Crawdad festival for several years, and had our routine down pretty well, Ernie's restaurant for an early crawdad lunch, then hit the festival. As usual things change; Ernie's restaurant had a terrific bucket of "bugs" with bread lunch meal, but changed ownership and name to "Isleton Joe's". The new owners insisted that the food was even better than it used to be, but, we couldn't eat crawdads in the main restaurant, only outside on a sweltering patio with some obnoxious band playing bad blues. Ok, we order, just hoping that things hadn't changed too much. My boyfriend went to pick up the bucket, which was now being served in a styrofoam container, to see the outdoor cooks cutting open bags of precooked, frozen crawdads from Louisiana, thawing them in boiling water. Just the styrofoam container, a wad of napkins and some very thin paper plates. No bread, no customer service, except for the owner coming by the table every once in a while to tell us that the food must be much better now. Well, the crawdads looked seasoned on the outside, but tasted like fishy library paste on the inside. The guys next to us brought their own seasoning salt, but even they complained to the owner. I want to say that the wait-staff, previously employed by Ernie's, were very sympathetic to returning customers and I could see they were uncomfortable with the changes, taking a lot of heat from both the owners and the customers. I sort of hope the place goes out of business, but don't want to see the staff lose their jobs. Inside the festival, we had better luck with the local crawdad boil and the awesome Willy Bird turkey legs. Image: http://www.isletonjoes.com/index.html Sun Jun 18 23:52:07 -0700 2006 0 Doc 1 492646 FWIW, the Isleton Crawdad Festival has relied on bugs from Louisiana for years. Tue Jun 20 11:16:33 -0700 2006 492602 0 ricepad 2 492649 Really? I thought it was one of the local industry festivals, like the Courtland Pear Fair and Gilroy Garlic. I guess the source has varying qualities; Ernie's, wherever they got their crawdads, was a good alternative to sitting outdoors for those of our family group with asthma and heat sensitivity. Tue Jun 20 12:51:11 -0700 2006 492646 0 Doc 3 492657 In the late 80s to early 90s, there were a couple of guys commercially fishing for crawdads in the Isleton/Rio Vista area. They had a retail shop on Highway 12, next door to Highway 12 Liquors in Rio Vista, I think the building now houses an auto parts store. I haven't seen anyone fishing the area commercially in over 15 years. Bob's Bait Shop (if they are still in business on 2nd Street) in Isleton often sells live crawdads, I don't know who supplies his bugs. Regarding crawdads at the Festival, I was under the impression they did not use local crawdads, but imported (live) ones. In past years, the Festival advertised Louisiana (LA) Crawdads and for a couple of years, a guy from LA would visit the Festival as sort of a guest cook. The town the guy from LA was from, held a crawdad festival, people from Isleton went to the festival in LA, the two cities were sort of unofficial sister cities. It is a Crawdad Festival because the town leaders got together to plan a festival, they met at the Hotel Del Rio during happy hour, crawdads were served for happy hour and a visitor from Louisiana told the town leaders, they have crawdad festivals all the time in LA. Tue Jun 20 16:05:41 -0700 2006 492649 0 Alan408 1 492667 Hi all, Please do not add to this thread. As Solano County touches SF Bay, Isleton is discussed on our SF Bay Area board. Please resume this coversation over there, a link is provided below. Thank you. Link: http://chowhound.com/california/boards/sanfrancisco/sanfrancisco.html Wed Jun 21 00:08:13 -0700 2006 492602 2 The Chowhound Team