Cajun Country Ramble

After 10 glorious days of meandering through southwestern Louisiana bayou country, my husband, Paul, and I are having a bad case of Cajun withdrawal. The symptoms are cravings for crab boil, accordion music and the openhearted hospitality of the easygoing Cajun people.

Our addiction began the minute we opened the door to B&C;’s Cajun Restaurant in this town--just 45 minutes west of New Orleans--and walked over a huge floor painting of an alligator to get to our seats at a long wood table.

“What’ll you have?” the waitress asked.

“Blackened redfish,” I answered, with hip assurance.

“Blackened fish?!” a nearby Cajun diner said, laughing. “Paul Prudhomme burned some fish by mistake, thought it wasn’t half bad and began to serve it. Now just order some real Cajun food--crabs and gumbo.”

The gumbo, in a thick roux, was followed by a tray full of huge crabs that had been cooked in a piquant boil. And this was why we had come to Louisiana in September--for authentic Cajun food, music and culture. This place felt apart, somehow, from the world’s cares, and we still found joy, though tempered by the nation’s sorrow. We had planned our trip using a guidebook, but a lot of the best things happened by chance.

The waitress showed us how to crack the crabs, and another patron gave us a quick lesson in Cajun, or Acadian, history.

The original Cajuns set out from France during the 17th century, seeking a better life in eastern Canada. They farmed, fished, trapped and knew halcyon days in an area they called Acadia, now Nova Scotia. They were so successful that the British coveted their fertile land and separating wives from husbands and children from parents, sent the Acadians off on ships into exile in 1755. Almost half died. Some returned to Europe, but another group made its way to the American colonies, ending up in the bayou area, which they named New Acadia. (“Cajun” is a corruption of “Acadian.”) In the coming years, thousands of other exiles joined them. They turned misery into opportunity, worked the land, fished and maintained their culture, which exists to this day among the million or so Cajuns sprinkled throughout the area.

“Do you still speak French?” I asked my impromptu history teacher.

“ Oui, oui, je parle francais ,” he said in the strangest accent I’d ever heard.

Cajun French is actually a mixture of the language brought over by the early immigrants with English, Spanish, German, African American and Native American influences. In an attempt to assimilate Cajuns into mainstream culture in the 1920s, children were forbidden to speak the language in schools and were punished for infractions. Slowly the patois began to die out. French is being reintroduced in school now, but it’s a proper French, not the rich blend that older Cajuns hold dear.

By the time I had finished my creme brulee, several other diners joined in to give us a Cliffs Notes version of the Cajun story. This was true everywhere we went; the Cajuns we met seemed to love visitors who were interested in their culture, and they were garrulous and great raconteurs.

And dancers.

“Do you like Cajun dancing?” a woman asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never tried it.”

Soon I was trotting to Cajun music--stumbling along, really, to a very upbeat rhythm--on a canopied boat called the Alligator Queen as we cruised through the Alligator Bayou, 45 minutes from Vacherie, close to Baton Rouge in the town of Prairieville. The guys who run the wackiest bayou tour in the area (it’s a combination of stand-up comedy, eco-tourism and dance lessons) are actually serious environmentalists.

In 1993, Jim Ragland and Frank Bonifay learned that hundreds of acres of bottomland hardwoods from Spanish Lake (about three miles from Alligator Bayou) were going to end up in a lumber mill and that the bayou would probably be chopped up into suburban backyards. With the money they had earned as roofers (they hit it big after Hurricane Andrew in 1992), they purchased the land and created a wildlife refuge and botanical gardens.

“Come with me,” Jim said, as I stepped off the boat after the 90-minute cruise up the bayou and to the flats. “I want you to meet some of my friends.”

Jim’s alligator “friends” live in a nearby pond. As a 12-footer slithered out of the liquid slime, Jim handed me a chicken leg and told me to drop it in the gator’s maw. Still flush with my success as a dancer, I fed the beast, and only after I heard its jaws snap shut--akin to the slamming of a car trunk--did I realize how brave or stupid I had been.

After every experience in bayou country, the reward is another great meal. Cajuns, it seemed to us, are obsessed with eating. Before one meal is finished, they’re planning the next. So we began to act like Cajuns.

We drove a half-hour to Donaldsonville, 30 miles south of Baton Rouge, to eat at the Grapevine Cafe, a restaurant opened last March by Dickie and Cynthia Breaux, who also created the Cafe des Amis in nearby Breaux Bridge.

I have only six words to say about the restaurant: turtle soup, barbecued shrimp, baked duck. Trust me. And don’t forget to mop up the sauces with French bread. If you can think about anything but food, check out the photographs and paintings that line the walls and spill over into the courtyard; they’re all good and all for sale. The artworks change every two months. Most prices range from $500 to $1,200, with the colorful “outsider art” sculpture in the courtyard selling for $300.

Well fed and knowing basic Acadian dance steps, we drove 90 minutes to Lafayette, in the heart of Cajun country, about 130 miles from New Orleans. There was a host of charming B&Bs;, and we settled on Bois des Chnes, an affordable restored 1820s plantation home, where we slept in a four-poster bed in the adjacent carriage house. We chose the B&B; because it offered sleep, swamp tours and good Louisiana morning eats. The owners, Coerte and Marjorie Voorhies, whisked us into their world of Louisiana antiques, great stories and wicked humor. Marjorie’s specialty is pain perdu , which translates as “lost bread” but is actually gourmet French toast. Coerte’s specialty is three-hour Atchafalaya swamp tours.

Coerte, a dead ringer for Ernest Hemingway, lowered us into his skiff, passed by what he called the “geriatric boats” and sped us deep into the swamps, where we came face-to-bark with magnificent old cypress groves and face-to-beak with stunning white egrets. Our skipper apologized that we didn’t get a chance to handle baby gators and that we never saw the beaver, otters, nutria, mink, deer or 38 species of bird that call the swamp their home, but the waters had risen to an unusually high level, and the fauna were hidden from view.

After the swamp tour it was--you guessed it--time for dinner. Prejean’s is a legend in Lafayette, and we somehow found room for popcorn crawfish, crawfish enchiladas, smoked duck and andouille gumbo, and cast-iron-baked bread pudding that was laced with bourbon. It all went down nicely to the accompaniment of live, toe-tapping Cajun music: accordion, bass and violin.

The next day we drove 30 minutes southeast to St. Martinville, where we figured out that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first publicist for Cajun country. His 1847 poem “Evangeline,” about two star-crossed Cajun lovers who were separated forever by the exile, put the Cajuns into public consciousness. (“ Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit trees; / Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens / Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest. / They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana! “)

St. Martinville might as well be called Evangelineville. There is the Evangeline oak, Evangeline’s tomb, a statue of Evangeline. On a more serious note, there is also the Cultural Heritage Center, which shows the parallel between the African and Cajun diasporas. Next door to it is an expansive mural of the Acadians landing on our shores, and a monument with a burning flame to recall the courageous and decimated pioneers. There is a wall with the names of the honored ancestors. Like many Cajuns, our guide had just begun learning about her genealogy, and she began to weep as she pointed out her family names.

I was drawn to Cajun country partly because of my interest in traditional healers, and I had heard about the traiteurs of Louisiana. Although the “treaters” aren’t advertised anywhere, many Cajuns have their own favorite. We were regaled with tales of warts that dropped off, sinus problems that were cured, shingles that vanished and people miraculously brought back from the threshold of death. The traiteur ‘s tool bag contains magical “treatments,” usually prayers that are passed down orally from one to another.

I dragged my husband to Erath, a half-hour south, where, at the wonderfully eccentric local Acadian Museum (it’s like Grandma’s attic), we met the Simon brothers, Allen and Claude, both traiteurs . They worked on my allergies right there, amid the photos and artifacts. Allen, an articulate, passionate man, used to be a Cajun country guide, and he has spent his life loving and preserving the language and culture. After Allen treated me with prayers, my nonbelieving husband actually agreed to have Claude treat him for his allergies. I almost fainted. He said he felt well and balanced afterward.

Claude has expanded his interest in healing into other realms. He works with a homemade pendulum that he assembled out of an empty film canister and fishing line, which he gave me as a gift. You ask questions that can be answered by “yes” and “no,” and the canister swings back and forth or side to side on its own with answers. I swear on my keyboard that it works.

Everyone we met in Cajun country was a character. We drove from Erath to Meaux (10 minutes west), where we visited with a larger-than-life traiteur named Lousay Aube. He explained that although most treaters have a specialty, he can cure “everything and anything.” Like his brethren, he charges nothing, and he generously offers his services to anyone who shows up. He said two prayers for my allergies; I felt nothing after the first one, but after the second I had to sit down because all my muscles went flaccid. I am not sure if it was Lousay or the Simon brothers or the power of suggestion, but I hardly noticed my allergies after that.

A one-hour drive took us to Rayne, the self-proclaimed “frog capital of the world.” (Almost everything is within easy driving distance, and we were never more than four hours from New Orleans, although we felt as though we were in another country.) The walls of many of the buildings are covered with bold, splashy, humorous frog murals. At one time there was a great frog industry in Rayne, but today the memory persists mainly in a yearly frog festival. We missed it, but we did manage to drive back to Lafayette to attend one of the major events: the annual Festivals Acadiens.

If there is a more upbeat festival, I have never attended it. In sprawling Girard Park and on the grounds of the Natural History Museum, there is nonstop Cajun, swamp pop and zydeco music. The tunes pull you up by the seat of your pants and make your feet tap all by themselves. People everywhere start dancing spontaneously to groups with names like Red Stick Ramblers, La Bande Feufollet and Jambalaya. There are traditional and contemporary Cajun craft booths (with wares from magnificent accordions to wood boats to Mardi Gras masks to jewelry and clothes and art and CDs), storytelling, craft demonstrations and, of course, food. Throughout the year there are other Cajun festivals, other chances to forget your troubles and party.

One of our favorite activities in the land of bayous and boudin (sausage) was getting lost. After one wrong turn, we ended up in tiny Duson. It was lunchtime, and we tried Thibodeaux’s, a local eatery. It’s the kind of authentic place locals love, guidebooks don’t write about and fortunate tourists discover by chance. Within 15 minutes a diner named Larry Thibodeaux (no relation to the restaurant owner) offered to take us around the area. We were curious about those crop cousins, crawfish and rice. Farmers flood their fields and alternate one with the other, so Larry took us to meet the farmers and visit their fields. Then he paraded us into the office of Mayor John Lagneaux, who chatted with us, showed us around and gave us commemorative Duson pins. A local man told us he was a rat farmer. When we laughed and said we weren’t that gullible, he invited us into his garage to see his rows and racks of rats. He sells them to pet stores for snake chow.

When the sun set in Cajun country, I kicked off my tennis shoes and put on my black pumps, and we headed for the dance halls. At Randol’s in Lafayette, we sat with a gaggle of Brits who had fallen in love with Cajun country, bought a vacation house there and visit five or six times a year. One of the men had become an expert Cajun dancer, and he led me around the wood dance floor with such verve that it was a better workout than an elliptical trainer. The manager, who goes by the name “Mama Redell” and is also a chef, has recently started Cajun cooking classes at Randol’s. They are open to the public and are as entertaining as many of the shows on the Food Channel.

At Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge, 15 minutes from Lafayette, we were eating and dancing when a local leaned over to tell us that we had learned the most important lesson in Cajun country: Laissez les bons temps rouler , let the good times roll.

On our last night in the bayou, in a celebratory mood, we checked into one of the most elegant and luxurious B&Bs; in the area, the Caldwell in Abbeville, which opened in late August. The restored 1907 mansion is decorated in period antiques (they are all for sale), and the downstairs three-room suite would please even the fussiest traveler. Our regal duvet-covered bed was so high I had to climb a set of steps to reach it. Complimentary wine and cheese were served in the evening, bottled water was delivered to our room on fine silver, and breakfast was a chef-catered orgy of poached eggs on English muffins with hollandaise sauce, creamed spinach, red bell pepper and ancho chile jam, homemade chicken sausage, cheese grits, Canadian bacon and Louisiana Southern coffee.

When we arrived at the New Orleans airport, I swore I would never eat sausage or gumbo again, but that’s what all addicts say, isn’t it?

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Guidebook: Touring Cajun Country

* Getting there: You can fly into New Orleans, as we did, and rent a car. From LAX, nonstop service is offered on United and Southwest. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $178. You can also fly into Lafayette; connecting service from LAX is available on Continental, Delta, American and Northwest. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $218.

* Where to stay: Bois des Chnes B&B;, 338 N. Sterling St., Lafayette, LA 70501; tel./fax (337) 233-7816, https://members.aol.com/boisdchene/bois.htm. Suites are $100-$150. Plantation and carriage house with huge suites; customized swamp tours offered.

The Caldwell B&B;, 105 E. Vermilion St., Abbeville, LA 70510; (337) 892-7090, fax (337) 892-0766, https://www.thecaldwell.com. Rooms are $160-$300. Elegant restored mansion with great service.

* Where to eat: B&C; Cajun Restaurant, 2155 Highway 18, (225) 265-8356, Vacherie. A no-frills authentic Cajun eatery. Entrees $8.50-$19.95. Specialties include alligator and seafood.

The Grapevine Cafe, 211 Railroad Ave., Donaldsonville, (225) 473-8463. Gourmet Cajun food in a restaurant/art gallery setting. Signature dishes are barbecue shrimp and roast duck. Lunch entrees $8.95-$19.95; dinner entrees $11.95-$20.95.

Prejean’s, 3480 I-49 North, Lafayette; (337) 896-3247, https://www.prejeans.com. A casual place. Live Cajun music nightly. Entrees $12.95-$26.95. Bestsellers are eggplant pirogue Louis, seafood, wild game.

Randol’s Restaurant and dance hall, 2320 Kaliste Saloom Road, Lafayette; (337) 981-7080 or (800) YO-CAJUN (962-2586), https://www.randols.com. Entrees $8.95-$18.95. Cooking classes with Mama Redell are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, by appointment; $15 per person or $25 per couple. Specialties: rib eye with crawfish etouffee, crab cakes, seafood.

Mulate’s Cajun Restaurant and dance hall, 325 Mills Ave., Breaux Bridge; (337) 332-4648 or (800) 42CAJUN (422-2586). House specialties are grilled catfish with shrimp etouffee, seafood, duck, frogs’ legs. Entrees $11.50-$16.95.

* For more information: Locals praise “Cajun Country Guide,” by Macon Fry and Julie Posner (Pelican Publishing, 1998).

St. Martinville Tourist Information Center, P.O. Box 379; St. Martinville, LA 70582; (337) 394-2233, fax (337) 394-2244, https://www.louisianatravel.com/st_martinville.

For information on Erath and Abbeville, contact the Vermilion Parish Tourist Commission, P.O. Box 1106, Abbeville, LA 70511; (337) 898-6600, https://www.vermilion.org.

Louisiana Office of Tourism, Attn: Inquiry Department, P.O. Box 94291, Baton Rouge, LA 70804-9291; (800) 99-GUMBO (994-8626) or (225) 342-8119, fax (225) 342-8390, https://www.louisianatravel.com.