A holiday crawfish tradition lives on in New Orleans

This Good Friday, Bevi Seafood Co expects to go through about 6,000 pounds of crawfish, a New Orleans Holy Week staple, even as the state faces the threat of the coronavirus.

Freddie Joyner has more.

One of the foods synonymous with the city of New Orleans is crawfish, which just happens to be a Holy Week staple as well.

Owner Justin LeBlanc of Bevi Seafood Company expects to go through about 6,000 pounds of these small succulent seafood delights -- even during a lockdown.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) BEVI SEAFOOD CO OWNER, JUSTIN LEBLANC, SAYING: "Well, it's usually our biggest day of the year.

It's a tradition for everybody to have Good Friday boils at their house.

Whether it's Good Friday or Easter, Holy Week is by far the busiest crawfish week of the year.

This year's a little unique, obviously, because of everything going on.

But we've adapted to it.

We made it drive-through.” (SOUNDBITE) (English) (REPORTER ASKING OFF CAMERA 'And how much are you looking forward to this?') (SOUNDBITE) (English) NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT, ANDREW KELLY, SAYING: "Oh, every year we have crawfish on Good Friday.

Never changes." Due to the state of Louisiana's stay-at-home policy which currently limits gatherings to 10 or fewer people, the normal tradition of friends and family sitting elbow-to-elbow to feast on heaps of the crustaceans has been stalled this year.

And local restaurants are suffering.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) BEVI SEAFOOD CO OWNER, JUSTIN LEBLANC, SAYING: "This is wildly difficult.

We're keeping afloat because the demand for crawfish is still there and it's allowed me to keep all my staff and keep everybody moving.

But even as much volume as we're doing today, it's still just a fraction of what we would normally do this time of year.” This year, long lines of masked people come in cars and on foot waiting for bags of steaming seafood, spicy boiled corn and potatoes, or sacks of live crawfish to bring home and boil themselves.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) NEW ORLEANS RESIDENT, T.J.

LIBUTTI, SAYING: "I mean, so many things are changing, and have changed, that anything that can be similar to how things used to be or we know eventually will return to is pretty great."