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Food in Louisiana

Louisiana produces seafood, cattle, soybeans, sugarcane, poultry and eggs, dairy products and rice. Local seafood, such as oysters, crawfish, and shrimp are abundant in Louisiana and influence all styles of cooking. Other important products include seasonal game, red peppers, and garlic.

Food processing is an important industry. Tabasco sauce is a product known on a global scale.  This sauce made with hot peppers was developed on Avery Island. The sauce is named after the river and town in southern Mexico from which the peppers originally came.

Lousiana foods

Beef, catfish, barbecued pork and crawfish are four of the most popular foods in the state outside the Acadiana region. Pralines are the favorite sweets.

Beer is a favorite drink. Daiquiri shops, in which you drive up in your car and order a daiquiri, alcohol included, are found throughout the state.

Northern Louisiana cuisine has more in common with Mississippi and Alabama than it has with Southern Louisiana.

Southern Louisiana is home to descendants of the original French and Spanish settlers, called Creoles, as well as descendants of French settlers from the Acadia region of eastern Canada, called Cajuns. Both the Creoles and Cajuns have their own styles of cooking. Typical Creole dishes include spicy stews served with rice, such as gumbo and jambalaya. Typical Cajun dishes include red beans and rice, and boudin, which is a spicy sausage.

New Orleans loves a good party. The city is home to the Mardi Gras and many other parties. Most of them are music and art related, although there are French and Greek festivals, but where there is a good party, there is food and drink, and there is always a chance to try something new.

New Orleans hates bad food. No worries, as there are plenty of good things to eat. Try the muffuleta, with piles of olive salad and meat on a big sesame bun, and the po'boy, a baguette sandwich, are the two most popular sandwiches in New Orleans. You can also have lucky dogs, very good hot dogs to fill a hungry tummy.

A dressed po'boy has mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato.

Other favorite New Orleans dishes include andouille, bananas foster, barbecued shrimp, beignets, boudin, bouillabaisse, café au lait, crawfish, debris, étouffeée, filé, gumbo, jambalaya, mirliton, pain perdu, plantain, and tasso, which is smoked pork.

There are no restricted hours to buy alcohol. You can buy a drink all day, any day, any time, as long as there are no glasses in the street. The City´s signature drinks include the hurricane, made with rum and fruit juices, the Sazerac, made with rye and bitters in an artificially glazed absinthe glass.

…and food events

French Food Festival, Larose, October, with delicious Cajun cuisine.

The town of Breaux Bridge has a crawfish festival, which includes a crawfish-eating contest and a crawfish race, apart from music and other events. The design of the crawfish racetrack takes into account that crawfish do not crawl in straight lines.

Louisiana
The Pelican State
Capital: Baton Rouge
State animal: Catahoula leopard
State bird: Eastern brown pelican
State insect: Honeybee
State tree: Bald cypress
State Flower: Magnolia

Recipes from Louisiana

New Orleans pain perdu.

Things to do, places to see

If you like to catch your own food, there are fishing ponds and some good fishing rivers. Guedyan, the slow moving river, has abundance of water fowl. It is a dream come true for bird watchers and duck hunters.

Café DuMonde, in the New Orleans French Quarter, opened in 1862 and it is still serving coffee, beignets and other treats.

Louisiana sites

Louisiana state site.

Tourist information