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The drive to Hawk's Crawfish follows gravel roads, past flooded rice fields that double as crawfish ponds. Each winter and spring, farmers pilot flat-bottomed boats across those ponds, harvesting crawfish, bound for places like Hawk's, a tin-roofed roadhouse founded in 1983 by the Arcenaux family. In sight of I-10, Jett's Crawfish Drive-Thru, doing business in a small metal building alongside a gas station, tells a more modern story of how crawfish, once caught and boiled by locals and served at family gatherings, became an everyday indulgence, purchased by the bag or bucket while idling in your car. A conversation with Kurt Venable of Venable Fabrication, one of the region's best crawfish boat builders, brings into focus how both tradition and innovation course through southwestern Louisiana.

Havana Sandwich Shop, the Cuban restaurant opened by Benedit family in 1976, was arguably the first international restaurant on Buford Highway, the now seven-lane stretch of suburban road that runs north out of Atlanta. Other immigrants from across the world followed. By the later years of the 20th century, Buford Highway became the preferred on ramp for immigrants to the South who want to start and grow businesses. Today restaurants like Kamayan, a Filipino spot in Asian Plaza owned by Mia "Amormia" Orino and Carolo Gan, and Gula, a family-owned Indonesia sweet café across the street in Pinetree Plaza, showcase the results of their belief in what American has long promised.

Prairie County, Ark., home to the small towns of Hazen and DeValls Bluff, is one of our nation's duck hunting capitals. Greenbriar Lodge, a storied duck camp there, sets a standard for habitat conversation and hospitality. Hospitality is also the work of Stanley Young and his wife Becky, the first couple of Hazen. Along with their children, they run Murry's Restaurant, famous for fried catfish and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. Down the road, Big K Catfish Barn, set in a big metal shed on a working farm, welcomes hundreds of customers each Saturday night during their December to March season. In DeValls Bluff, the legacy of sliced pork sandwiches and big welcomes endures at Craig's Bar-B-Q, founded in 1947 by brothers Lawrence Craig and Leslie Craig.

Season 9 kicks off in the Shoals, a cluster of towns in north Alabama, defined by their relationship to the Tennessee River: Florence, Tuscumbia, Sheffield and Muscle Shoals. Native people said that river sang. That's one of the stories locals tell about how the Shoals became the music recording capital of the US. Power generated by Wilson Dam, which now spans that river, drove the rise of tee-shirt manufacturing in the Shoals. Trowbridge's Ice Cream and Sandwich Shop, founded in 1918, the same year construction on that dam began, is Florence's flagship. Over in Sheffield, at George's Steak Pit, Elaine Goodlowe has stood tall by that hickory-fueled pit for more than 40 years. In the Shoals, those story threads knit people and places together.