Growing up in Abbeville, Louisiana, with sugarcane farmer uncles and the smell of syrup production at the local sugar mill wafting into her kitchen, Michelle Vallot has been inspired by Louisiana flavors since childhood.
“Everyone in my family, we’re all foodies,” Vallot said. “We grew up like that, cooking and having a garden and loving good, clean food.”
Her family values consisted of working hard and eating well, she said.
While traveling from Lafayette to Baton Rouge in the ’90s to study law at Southern University Law Center, she craved a snack that could get her through long study hours, said she.
She said she loved baking Italian fig cookies for her friends and family. The treats, made up of roasted pecans, figs, raisins and chocolates wrapped up in a sweet dough, became a local favorite, and they even made their way to stores in Seaside, Florida.
“One of my first loves is food and understanding what your body wants and understanding nutrition,” Vallot said.
This sweet, healthy dessert sparked her interest in creating a nutrition bar. She chose sweet potatoes, as she considers Louisiana to be “sweet potato country,” for the basis of her recipe because of their slow-burning carbohydrates, vitamins and fiber benefits.
This ingredient is what makes her bar different than on grocery shelves. She added roasted pecans, molasses and other ingredients to complete her recipe.
“A wallop of energy squeezed in a bar” is printed on the Zydeco Bar packaging in warm, bright colors.
She came up with two flavors for the nutrition bars: fruit and pecan and pecan brownie.
Vallot officially set up businesses as Zydeco Foods around 2005, she said. As for the company’s name, she was inspired by what she knows — her state’s culture. She said she thinks Zydeco is about everybody and everything good in Louisiana.
“Louisiana really is, and has been, a melting pot,” Vallot said. “So I have to tell you, when I thought of the name for this, I just thought that Zydeco was an attribute. It was about everybody. It was about the mixed culture that we are.”
After working in the legislature and then practicing criminal defense law for a federal defender’s office for more than 16 years, she left her career to focus on her food business.
It wasn’t law that challenged her but her food entrepreneurship.
“[Running Zydeco Foods is the] hardest thing I’ve probably ever done because it’s competition on the shelf,” Vallot said.
Keeping with her healthy, Louisiana-style snack offerings, she eventually expanded to salsas. She said unlike other salsas, hers have no vinegar in them, which means no heartburn. They are also gluten free and non-GMO, according to the Zydeco Foods website.
“Everything I do has some emphasis that I try not to use anything that has chemicals or preservatives in it,” she said. “I try to do pure, clean food.”
Her salsas come in three flavors — Zydeco Red Bean, Zydeco Creole Trinity and Zydeco Sweet Potato.
When she’s not busy with Zydeco Foods, she’s taking care of her four rescue dogs and two cats or gardening on her five acres of land in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.
Her compassion for animals and love of food collided this past Sunday, when she donated her nutrition bars for an annual race that raises money for animals. Beaucoup des Chiens et Beaucoup des Vins is a 5k run and a one mile walk with dogs, where Vallot also demonstrated how to cook with her products.
“The reward at the end of the day is that I have produced something clean, no chemicals,” she said. “I have brought something into the marketplace that is clean, natural and delicious, and it’s all about Louisiana. It makes me proud to be here.”

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Mary Roland

Zydeco Foods is a Louisiana company that offers all natural food products with a traditional Cajun and Creole flavor.