Savor the cuisine, music, and history of Louisiana’s Cajun Country

It’s 8:30 on a Saturday morning at Buck & Johnny’s in Breaux Bridge, just outside of Lafayette, Louisiana, and the weekly “World Famous Zydeco Breakfast” is about to get under way. Excitement fills the air because today’s entertainer—Grammy winner Chubby Carrier, a third-generation Zydeco musician and a local favorite—will soon take the stage. In fact, the effervescent Chubby and his accompanying Bayou Swamp Band can barely contain their own energy. After what can only be described as a musical explosion when they start to play, dozens of couples, old and young, Black and white, pour onto the dance floor, dancing the two-step with gusto.

Forget breakfast. It’s time to dance.

They do so sporting cowboy hats, glittery fedoras, and cardboard tiaras on their heads. The men are adorned in tie-dye T-shirts or Western wear, the women in paisley or leopard-print blouses, some of them with knee-length skirts that billow outward when they twirl. There’s even a woman in multihued green, gold, and purple bib overalls—Mardi Gras colors—and a man in an electric wheelchair spinning in circles. The dancers cut a rug for upwards of 2 hours, with Chubby and his band delivering favorites like the “Zydeco Shuffle” and “Don’t Mess with My Toot Toot.” The music is so infectious, even people seated at the tables, myself included, are tapping their feet and bouncing to the beat.

Music, both Zydeco and Cajun, is one of the principal draws to this area of south Louisiana known as Acadiana. You can find music nearly every night of the week in Lafayette and surrounding towns. Visit enough venues and you’ll start to see the same couples dancing in different locations, sometimes on the same day, making you wonder, Don’t Cajun folks’ feet ever get tired?

As you put your own feet to the ambitious test, start them in Lafayette. Use the metropolis as a home base, savoring the city’s delights while also launching out on day trips to enjoy the charming small towns surrounding it. In short order, you’ll discover why Lafayette has been called the “Happiest City in America.” Residents exhibit a joie de vivre, French for “buoyant enjoyment of life,” and you’ll likely come away feeling the same after sampling the music, food, history, and memorable landscapes.

Culture

As you begin exploring the area, you’ll find French flavor everywhere, including on signs in both French and English. You’ll even occasionally hear French spoken among locals, many of whom have French last names—Breaux, Berthelot, LeBlanc, and hundreds of others. Many are descendants of the French-speaking settlers who arrived in the late 1700s from Acadie, now known as Nova Scotia. Expelled by the British for their refusal to swear an oath of allegiance to the crown, exiled Acadians were lured to southern Louisiana by reports of fertile farmland and lazy bayous filled with wildlife.

Over the decades, Acadian got transformed to Cajun and nowadays embodies a distinctive culture that adapted to thrive in its new surroundings. Stop in at the Acadian Cultural Center, which is part of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, to get an overview of that storied history. Exhibits, ranger-led programs, an interesting film, and even occasional front-porch concerts focus on Cajun traditions passed down through the centuries.

Then step back in time at the Vermilionville Living History Museum and Folklife Park, a re-created village of historic homes and public structures that includes a school, homes, and a chapel showing what life was like for Cajuns, as well as Native Americans, Creoles, and people of African descent from 1765 to 1890.

Chat with costumed living historians who demonstrate crafts such as blacksmithing, spinning, weaving, woodworking, and basketmaking. Musicians and storytellers also offer a glimpse of Cajun heritage on the 23-acre site that hugs the banks of Bayou Vermilion.

Cuisine

Born out of that culture, a robust cuisine combines French, Spanish, West African, and Southern cooking techniques and ingredients. Flavorful Cajun favorites like jambalaya, étouffée, and endless variations of gumbo grace the menus of the region’s restaurants, and crawfish reigns as culinary king. Resembling tiny lobsters, these freshwater crustaceans have meat just as sweet and sumptuous as their larger cousins.

And you simply can’t go home without sampling boudin (pronounced boo-DAN), a highly seasoned sausage made with ground meat—often pork but sometimes shrimp or even alligator—mixed with rice and stuffed in sausage casing. A regional staple, it’s practically Cajun fast food.

For an excellent overview of the area’s zesty menu options, don’t miss Cajun Food Tours, operated by the spirited and personable Marie Ducote-Comeaux, whose passion for local culture is contagious. Her never-dull tours last from 3 hours to all day and showcase a host of eating establishments. On my tour, we sampled gumbo, crawfish, boudin, and even alligator bites. You’ll even learn a bit of French—Ducote’s rallying cry at each stop is “Allons manger!” (Let’s go eat!), signaling that it’s time to move somewhere else to continue noshing.

Spices

Cajun cooks often reach for hot sauce to add zing to their recipes, and you can see where one of the world’s most popular sauces is made on nearby Avery Island, about 30 miles south of Lafayette. Take the Tabasco Brand Factory Tour to watch the fiery pepper sauce being manufactured in the same place that the McIlhenny family has produced it for more than 150 years.

Swamps

Afterward, drive through the adjacent Jungle Gardens, a beautifully landscaped 170-acre oasis where live oaks extend their lengthy branches over a series of lagoons, and stands of azaleas and camellias offer colorful splashes here and there. Stop along the way to take a short walk to the garden’s Bird City, a rookery where thousands of snowy egrets raise their young on man-made platforms above a lake.

Discover more of the region’s beauty on swamp tours of the gigantic Atchafalaya Basin, just east of Lafayette. At 25 miles wide and 150 miles long, it’s the largest continuous river swamp in the United States (larger than the Florida Everglades) and a major source of crawfish.

Among several concessionaires, I opted for a leisurely 90-minute boat ride with McGee’s Swamp Tours, which offers a host of adventures. Slowly cruising past flooded cypress trees, I watched ospreys dive for fish, bald eagles preparing a nest, and a far-off flock of ibises making circular flights, resembling a tornado made of birds.

And of course, we saw dozens of alligators basking on the banks of small islands or floating in the water with only their eyes and the tips of their snouts breaking the surface. Our guide recognized a few of them, including one he’d named Leroy—identifiable because a small portion of his tail was missing.

Festivals

Consider timing your visit during one of the many festivals Lafayette and its surrounding communities hold each year. This fall, the Acadiana Po-Boy & Plate Lunch Festival on September 10 will combine 2 of Lafayette’s favorite culinary offerings in Parc Sans Souci.

And enjoy 3 days of nonstop music, dancing, food, and crafts during the Festivals Acadiens et Creoles. Held from October 14 through 16 in Girard Park, the event began nearly 50 years ago and celebrates the best of Acadiana’s Cajun and Creole culture.

If you visit in the spring, the Festival International de Louisiane fills multiple downtown stages with 5 days of world music.

Food festivals also abound then, including the Scott Boudin Festival and the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival.

And of course, there’s Mardi Gras. Lafayette’s version is family friendly, offering at least half a dozen parades of costumed revelers and Mardi Gras royalty passing on elaborate floats.

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