This summer, CNN's Defining America project is traveling the country with the CNN Express bus and iReport to explore the stories behind the data and demographics that show how places are changing.
To hear Lakesha Reed describe her cooking talents she's not classically trained as a chef, "I'm just grandma trained."
Reed, a New Orleans native, moved to Houston, Texas, in 2005 as one of the city’s thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. We met her last month when CNN’s Defining America project hit the trail for Texas to find out how the Lone Star State has changed over the past decade.
At her Beaucoup Bar & Grill, Reed brings a little bit of the Big Easy to Oil Town USA. By that we mean traditional New Orleans food, like gumbo, po boy sandwiches - and her grandma's special recipe - crawfish bread.
If you like a little taste of N'awlins, the ingredients of Reed's crawfish bread recipe will sound like poetry. It's an open-faced loaf topped with with sauteed onions, tomatoes, celery and garlic, slow cooked in cream sauce.
Then add the tasty crawfish tails and top 'em with more cheese than a Barry Manilow concert.
Take a bite out of that, and what you have is what Reed calls a "party for no reason" - one of the hallmarks of New Orleans culture.
"The problem I had when I moved here was there was just nothing authentic - nothing true that like you could get at the corner store back home," Reed says. "This is authentic food based on the stuff from my grandmother that I ate growing up in my house."
It's all part of the theme of her restaurant, says Reed: "Food, music and making people feel that everything is all right."
Read New Orleans: The food that got them through and A Secret Supper in the Big Easy
