Family recipe becomes family business

They started with a trip to Texas that Ricky Armand’s father took in the 1970s. On that trip, he sampled some tamales that really tickled his palate—and he returned with a single-minded determination to recreate that recipe. A year of experimentation later, and he’d nailed it. Though his day job was working in a chemical plant, he and his wife began making and selling the tasty tamales on the side. Unfortunately, although the treats proved popular, they were also incredibly time-intensive, so the tasty tamale recipe was retired except for Christmas day, when the whole family would pitch in to make them.

Years passed. Armand’s father passed on, and with him the tamale tradition. However, the love never quite faded, and a few years ago, the family resurrected the Christmas tamale dinner tradition. But they were just as time-intensive as before, so Armand—a machinist by trade—poked around online to see if he could find a tamale maker that would make the yearly tradition a little less tedious.

“The intention was just to make them for the family,” Armand says, “but once we saw how fast the machines worked, we realized we could start making them to sell like our parents used to.” The family banded together and started a business—Steve’s Tamales in Prairieville.

With the family’s blessing, Armand later took the recipe and an old-fashioned fire truck and opened the Oh Golly Tamale food truck with his wife and son, selling the piping-hot traditional treats in the parking lot near the former site of the Caterie on Perkins Road and Acadian Thruway on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. They also sell pressed ham and cheese sandwiches and muffulettas, although the tamales—half ground beef and half turkey breast, wrapped in masa and corn shuck—are far and away their best sellers, says Armand. However, creations like the tamale pies are also proving extremely popular. “We’ve had a lot of repeat customers," says Armand.

"They just taste so good.” Click here to follow Oh Golly Tamale on Facebook, and here to follow them on Twitter.—Rachael Upton