Lafayette is in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun Country — and has the zydeco honky-tonks and the bayou-to-table cuisine to prove it. The city is steeped in the culture of the Acadians, with two villages re-creating what life was like for those onetime exiles from Canada.
Venture out of town to see where Tabasco sauce was born and to hop aboard a boat for a swamp tour (gators included). Challenge your palate to try some of the more adventurous entrées — fried alligator and frog legs, anyone? Allons — that’s local talk (and French) for let’s go!
As always, check for travel restrictions and closures before planning your trip.
Friday: Dive Into Downtown
Your Lafayette adventure starts downtown, the proud heart of this city. As with meals all weekend long, the choices are many — and not easy to make. The Rusted Rooster, an unassuming diner-style spot, wins awards for its “Ragin’ Rooster,” a buttermilk biscuit topped with fried chicken and pepper jelly.
Or try Scratch Farm Kitchen, serving down-home dishes made with locally sourced ingredients. Once a food truck, the women-owned restaurant makes everything from — you guessed it — scratch.
Take a stroll around Parc Sans Souci, a downtown green space with seven-foot-high letters spelling the city’s name without the “y.” It’s not obligatory to stand in for the missing letter, holding your arms up in a “y” (and snapping a pic while posing) — but it’s a thing, so go ahead and do it.
You won’t have trouble spotting the towering, red-brick Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, your next stop.
Like much of the city around it, it has a complicated backstory featuring the French-speaking immigrants who populated the area after their exile from Canada, as well as damage incurred during the Civil War and a couple of nasty tropical storms. Tour the grand interiors and the 19th-century cemetery on the church grounds.
Your next history lesson calls for a visit to one of Lafayette’s oldest restaurants. Dwyer’s Café — now run by a third generation of Dwyers — still dishes up smothered steak, smothered chicken, smothered pork chops (there’s a theme here), as well as catfish, creamed spinach and other classics.
Again, because we’re making tough choices this weekend, also consider downtown’s Pop’s Poboys, a modern (since 2015) shop serving Louisiana’s favorite sandwich, along with excellent fried pickles and hush puppies.
Downtown Lafayette invested in public art when it began its 1980s revitalization project — a smart move that got people strolling its streets and engaging with each other and the local businesses along the way. If you dined at Dwyer’s, you’ve already seen the building-long mural on its façade, painted by artist Robert Dafford.
Check out the Acadiana Center for the Arts, a complex that includes galleries and performance spaces.
And for another piece of Lafayette’s past, follow the plaques around downtown’s Freetown-Port Rico neighborhood, which was developed as a haven for freed slaves after the Civil War.
If historic architecture is what you’re after, head to the nearby River Ranch neighborhood. Take a stroll around this picturesque neighborhood, where the streets are lined in homes and buildings built in Acadian, Spanish, French, Caribbean, American colonial, Creole and neoclassical revival styles.
In the evening, head to the Wurst Biergarten, an outdoor spot for quaffing local craft beers and eating a mashup of German and Cajun cuisines. There’s live music at “the Wurst,” but the area around its patio is packed with some 20 other restaurants and clubs, so your options are bountiful — and close at hand.
Saturday: Meet the Acadians
Today, you’ll learn more about the Acadians — a name given to the descendents of the French that settled in Acadia in Canada, which got further shortened to Cajuns. But first, breakfast at Black Café, famous for its Scotch eggs, but which also serves sweet potato biscuits and beignets, in a historically Black downtown neighborhood called Fightin’ville.
Next up, a visit to LARC’s Acadian Village, a 32-acre park within the Lafayette city limits. Stop first at the General Store (Le Magasin) for a map of the site, then explore the collection of 11 buildings, of which seven are antique homes that were donated by the families whose ancestors once occupied them.
The village paints a picture of the life of these immigrants and the homes they fashioned out of materials at hand — mud walls, hand-hewn cypress timbers and broad front porches.
For a different look at life long ago, opt instead for Vermilionville, a 23-acre site that educates visitors on the confluence of people who have lived on the banks for the Bayou Vermilion — including Creole and Cajun but also Native American and Black.
There are re-created homes, a schoolhouse and a fascinating Healer’s Garden (Le Jardin du Traiteur), planted with the botanicals once used for medicines and salves.
Step back into modern times at one of the city’s most lauded restaurants, Social Southern Table & Bar.
The menu (and name) pay homage to regional cuisine while reinventing its classic dishes. Lunch starters — excellent for sharing — include chicken-fried green tomatoes and sweet potato biscuits with pepper honey. There’s a lovely selection of seasonal “sammies” and flatbreads, as well as 16 beers on tap.
Round out your day at the Hilliard Art Museum, a 33,000-square-foot institution that’s part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The collection comprises 4,000 pieces from Asia, South America, Egypt and Europe, as well as what’s called the Louisiana Collection, a curation of work by artists from all over the state.
For dinner, grab a seat at Bon Temps Grill, a local favorite serving up Cajun and Creole staples such as boudin sausage, fried alligator, fried catfish and shrimp and grits.
The restaurant often has live music but, if not, check out the Blue Moon Saloon, one of the country’s top venues for roots music. It’s a homegrown place and self-described honky-tonk, where you’re guaranteed to hear a whole lot of rollicking zydeco.
Sunday: Get Spicy
Grab breakfast at Another Broken Egg Café, an eatery that was born in nearby Mandeville and has since spread the love all over Louisiana (and beyond). The pancake offerings are legion.
Hop in the car and head south to Avery Island. The name is a slight misnomer — it isn’t an island, but it is the birthplace of the Cajun-inspired Tabasco sauce, made by the same family for five generations. Take a tour of the lush gardens and grounds, then stay for lunch at the on-site restaurant 1868, a spot that serves up chili dogs, gumbo, red beans and rice and, for dessert, a sumptuous pecan pie.
There are two choices for your afternoon activity. Head back north and slightly east to Lake Martin, where a number of operators take visitors onto boats for swamp tours.
The 90-minute rides explore the lake’s inlets and marshes, where alligators, egrets, herons, snakes and other creatures live. The area, experience and boats aren’t fancy, but the sights are riveting, and you’ll be grateful for your expert guide, especially when a 10-foot gator glides by.
If you prefer a more academic approach to the natural world, then head back to town and the Lafayette Science Museum, which has exhibits ranging from paleontology to astronomy.
For your last dinner, pull up a chair at the Cajun Table, an authentic farm-to-table (and bayou-to-table) spot with red-checkered tablecloths, super-friendly servers and Cajun music filling the dining room.
Justifiably proud of its seafood “boil” (and its secret mix of spices), the restaurant is best known for its crawfish boil but also offers an eye-opening selection of apps. There are bragging rights attached to ordering the “Alligator Bites” (fried tail meat) and “Swamp Wings” (fried frog legs) — but they’re also straight-up delicious.
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