Chef Karlos Knott, owner of Bayou Teche Brewing and The Cajun Saucer in Arnaudville, Louisiana, won the 18th annual Louisiana Seafood Cook-Off recently with an entry that fused Creole cuisine with Roman-style pizza and won him the title of King of Louisiana Seafood for 2025.
Knott beat out 11 other chefs for the title in the high-prestige competition presented by the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board on June 27 in Slidell. Along with bragging rights, the win resulted in free media coverage and publicity for The Cajun Saucer, which serves wood-fired Neapolitan pies inside the brewpub.
Knott will also go on to represent the state in the Great American Seafood Cook-Off and will serve as a Louisiana Ambassador for seafood for the next year.
To win the crown, Knott prepared a dish he called “All Roads Lead to Arnaudville,” consisting of a Roman-style pizza with butter-poached Louisiana shrimp and a roasted red pepper coulis.
Knott, a former U.S. Army Cavalry Scout stationed in Mannheim, Germany, developed a passion for well-crafted beer during his nearly six years in Europe with his wife Stephanie and son Cory. That inspired him to start a brewery back home in Louisiana. In 2009, the family founded Bayou Teche Brewing in Arnaudville, crafting beers that harmonize with the cuisines and lifestyles of South Louisiana.
After Louisiana legalized restaurants within breweries in 2018, Knott delved into the art of Neapolitan pizza-making in a wood-fired oven. This culinary journey led to the creation of The Cajun Saucer, a unique blend of Italian-style pizza with Cajun and Creole flavors.
“I grew up in Cajun country, so seafood is automatically special to me,” Knott said. “But it reminds me of growing up because we’d have seafood on all special occasions. You can have meat every other day, but seafood just means special occasions to me.”
“It still hasn’t sunk in that I was able to win this competition with the amazing chefs here this evening,” he added. “I found myself looking around to see who won, and then suddenly I realized it was me! This is amazing!”
In a profile published in The Daily Iberian in 2022, Shanna Dickens wrote a lyrical paean to The Cajun Saucer: “The air hangs heavy with the scents of hops, rum and rising dough. The dining room teems with bikers and solo book readers, families and flight-sampling friends, aficionados in beer-themed T-shirts, and seltzer-sipping novices. It’s like your inner child and your midlife crisis came to a mutual agreement about where to hang out.”
As for the menu, Dickens wrote, “Not only does the culinary mashup of wood-fired pizza and Cajun food work, it is downright divine. Taking a bite from one of the slices of pie creates a cheese pull that would make the Ninja Turtles weep. The smoky Cajun toppings are so authentic that anyone’s Mawmaw would approve, even if begrudgingly. There’s a reason for that. The ingredients are geared to the Acadiana palate—cayenne and confit garlic are always key ingredients.”
“The classics are classic,” Dickens continued. “The C-3 Pepperoni is covered in puddles of mozzarella and freckled with curly pepperonis. Then, there are the far-out selections, like the Spud Trek, starring French raclette cheese, baked potato slices and green onions. This pizza is what would happen if a classically trained French chef got the munchies.”
According to the Louisiana Seafood Cook-Off’s website, the contest can serve as a “culinary catapult,” with past winners going on to host their own culinary shows and gracing magazine covers.
“Every year it gets bigger, and the competition gets tougher,” Billy Nungesser, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, said. “We have more and more chefs that want to participate and wear the crown as the King or Queen of Louisiana Seafood. This year’s competition was no different.”
Nungesser added that he’s “looking forward to a Louisianan reclaiming the title King of American Seafood when we are represented by Chef Karlos Knott in New Orleans in August.”
