Cameo Van Buren, left, and Thong La, right, work the live crawfish conveyer belt at Tony’s Seafood, discarding any dead ones, Friday, March 31, 2023.
The conveyor belt is crawling with crawfish in Tony’s Seafood’s workroom the week before Good Friday.
Some could cover the inside of an NBA basketball player’s hand.
Exaggeration? Hardly.
Anyone who has taken out an order of crawfish at Tony’s Seafood, 5215 Plank Road, will back up this statement. The market and deli are all about serving up the best.
A walk through Tony’s Seafood in Baton Rouge, La. Staff video by Robin Miller
Sometimes the best is also the biggest.
“We’re all about quality,” said Darren Pizzolato, store manager and grandson of Tony’s founder, Tony Pizzolato.
Darren Pizzolato is the third generation to operate Tony’s Seafood, which began in 1959 as a roadside operation.
Pizzolato tells the story of how his grandfather moved from Donaldsonville to Baton Rouge and started selling fruit along the roadside from his truck. He added shrimp to this mix and quickly realized that shrimp was his bestseller.
Seafood party platter of fried shrimp and catfish, boudin balls and crab fingers at Tony’s Seafood, Friday, March 31, 2023.
Tony Pizzolato then turned his roadside operation into a couple of fruit stands with one well-known store standing near McDonald’s just past the Airline Highway crossing on Plank Road. The other was opened as Fruit Land next door to Delmont village and eventually morphed into what is now Tony’s Seafood.
Tony Pizzolato had retired by the time the store became a full-time seafood operation, but he did witness its success before his death in 2020.
Darren Pizzoloato, with fresh fish on ice at Tony’s Seafood, Friday, March 31, 2023.
Keeping it in the family
In the meantime, Pizzolato’s sons, Bill, Joey, Mike, Cliff and Tad, worked in the business, as well as his daughter, Ceily. Darren Pizzolato’s dad, Bill, now runs the operation.
“My grandfather’s measure of success was taking care of his family,” Darren Pizzolato said. “If his family was taken care of, then he was successful.”
An image of Tony Pizzolato standing in front of the earliest iteration of his business is painted on the wall above the beverage cooler on the store’s deli side, which offers daily plate lunches.
Amy Irvin builds a seafood party platter of fried shrimp and catfish, boudin balls and crab fingers at Tony’s Seafood, Friday, March 31, 2023.
The fried fish plate is the customer favorite, but seafood isn’t the only choice in the lineup. Here, you can find vegetables, hamburgers, boudin and boudin balls, red beans and rice, steak and gravy, mashed potatoes and cobbler.
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