CITY OF SYRACUSE—The local nonprofit Operation Northern Comfort is once again hosting its flagship fundraiser the Syracuse Crawfish Festival in Clinton Square this Saturday, May 4.
The 17th annual festival will be taking place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with proceeds benefiting that very same organization, which has been putting the event on year after year since the beginning. The mission of Operation Northern Comfort (ONC) is to provide assistance in the form of neighbors helping neighbors within Central New York as well as natural disaster relief in other parts of the United States.
Festival admission is free, but as always, there will be different stands selling food, beverages and crafts to support the cause.
With it being in the name of the fest, a main draw is naturally the Cajun-style crawfish and shrimp straight from the waters of the Gulf Coast that gets flown in fresh the day before. Adding to the authenticity, the shellfish is all cooked in a big batch, with the boilers starting up at 8 the morning of the festival and going all day until it’s time to pack it in.
Operation Northern Comfort CEO Laurel Flanagan said the event arrives toward the tail end of crawfish season but acts as an introduction to Syracuse’s warm-weather outdoor festival season.
“A crawfish boil is a party, so our boilers totally embrace that, and they’ll be right there at the fence letting people sample and showing people how to eat crawfish—it’s not just the boiling pot of water,” said Flanagan, a Cicero resident who is also the operations and facilities manager at the Fayetteville Free Library.
She said that people hailing originally from Louisiana who end up in Central New York have shown up to the festival, not thinking the Cajun cuisine would stack up with what they’d find in their home state. However, because several of the chefs serving up dishes at the Syracuse Crawfish Festival were Louisiana-trained or born and bred there, those attendees change their tune quickly.
“At first they’re skeptical, and then they taste the food and they say, ‘This is just like my grandma made,’ and they’re like blown away,” Flanagan said.
Every year, not only do those cooks come up from the Deep South, but Northern Comfort volunteers go down to their Louisiana Crawfish Festival held in Chalmette in March.
“We call it our sister festival, and that bond is just so strong and so enduring after all these years,” Flanagan said.
This Saturday, there will also be a clam shack onsite and a tent with crawfish-infused mac and cheese, the latter of which is being run by Brady Market to support its own mission similarly about helping one’s neighbors, in its case through its wholesale grocery on Gifford Street and social healing services.
If someone isn’t in the mood for seafood, or if they’re just not inclined to try the crawfish, there will also be hot dogs, sausage sandwiches, salt potatoes, jambalaya, walking tacos and pulled pork sandwiches for lunch or dinner meals along with the top-selling caramel bread pudding or beignets for dessert.
For entertainment, the musical lineup will include C’est Bon Cajun Dance Band, The Barndogs, The Ripcords and Brass Inc., and there will also be dancing troupes doing their thing. On the acoustic stage on the other end, local up-and-coming artists will be setting up and playing too, and there will also be a family fun zone with inflatables.
This year’s festival will be treated as a tribute to two men who made sure to leave their mark on Operation Northern Comfort: Norm Andrzejewski, the founder of the organization who passed away last October from cancer, and former co-chair Warren Machell, a close friend of Norm’s who died the following month, also from cancer.
On the main stage for the duration of the festival, there will be a large cutout of Andrzejewski and Machell together, and at 1:15 p.m. their wives will be joined onstage by members of the organization to talk about their lasting legacies. Additionally, every tip jar will go toward a scholarship fund in the men’s names.
While the front will have the logo with the cowboy-hat-wearing crawfish sporting antennae made to look like a handlebar mustache, the back of the festival T-shirt replicates one designed by Andrzejewski’s daughter that he wore over the years which said his trademark phrase “It’s a beautiful thing” and showed a hammer and nail graphic to represent Operation Northern Comfort’s many construction projects.
Since one of Machell’s primary jobs leading up to the festival was to contact the crafters and coordinate their setups, there will be street signs in the alleys of the crafting section at this year’s fest that say “Warren’s Way.” That vendor area includes cutlery, woodworking, eyewear, jewelry and candles for sale.
The Syracuse Crawfish Festival was created at first to raise funds for the rebuilding of a home in St. Bernard Parish, where local volunteers from what was then Operation Southern Comfort did the majority of their relief work after Hurricane Katrina hit that area of the country. The Marcellus High School girls soccer team and their coach came down with the organization to complete that project, and afterward, the festival inspired by Louisiana cuisine kept going, and it kept growing.
It was the devastation of Hurricane Katrina that spurred Andrzejewski on to start the nonprofit instead of just writing a one-time check. A graduate of Tulane University in New Orleans, he went through his personal rolodex and gathered a dozen friends to take a trip to Louisiana, stay in FEMA trailers, and lend a hand in clearing up the wreckage.
Since then, that nonprofit operation has taken its recovery efforts to North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi and Florida as well as Oneida after record flooding in 2013 and for its 67th service trip the city of Buffalo to reverse the impact of the emergency blizzard that touched down right around Christmas 2022. The localized “Northern” side of the organization and the country-crossing “Southern” side have also melded, and in 2014 the entire organization was incorporated as Operation Northern Comfort.
“People ask me where we’re going next, and we don’t have a plan, but we know that something’s coming unfortunately as much as I always hope there is no next thing,” Flanagan said. “Whatever it is, we’re gonna put together a team and mobilize to go to help if we can do that.”
She said a familial bond forms and an exchange of gratitude happens among the volunteers and disaster victims they assist, adding, “We just take so much for granted when we haven’t gone through a loss like that, so to be able to help them and have that humbling experience is just so incredible and valuable.”
Around these parts, specifically within about an hour radius of the Syracuse city center, Operation Northern Comfort has used knowledge passed down by the social services organization ARISE to also put in metal ramps and other household features for accessibility purposes, such as railings, widened doorways, lifts and grab bars. The volunteers abide by codes for municipalities, and they don’t go on roofs or handle electrical or plumbing jobs because of license requirements and insurance regulations.
“We’re not people who fill in as contractors for somebody who just can’t find a contractor,” Flanagan said. “We’re looking to help people with disabilities, senior citizens, veterans and people without the means to get this done themselves.”
The nonprofit has also built over 1,500 desks and close to 500 bookshelves for kids. “That came out of the pandemic where kids were studying remotely and they needed dedicated learning spaces,” Flanagan said. “They were doing it at a kitchen table with three siblings around and it just wasn’t conducive to learning.”
At this year’s Crawfish Festival in Clinton Square, there will also be framed Ted Williams and Carlton Fisk photos signed by the Boston Red Sox legends themselves that will be auctioned off under the merchandise tent.
For more information, visit www.operationnc.org or the Operation Northern Comfort Facebook page.
