Cajun Cooking And Jazz Will Collide At Jazz Fest
What's the first thing that springs to mind when you think of New Orleans? Jazz? Food? If you plan on making it to this year's Jazz Fest — the city's biggest cultural event not called Mardi Gras — you'll be able to feast on both, probably at the same time. Here's some of the best jambalaya, crawfish, and other Cajun classics you can expect if you plan on heading to The Big Easy to feast on some of the area's best grub. Festivities will be taking place from April 25 to May 4.
Food
Smitty's Seafood of Kenner, La. will be serving up nearly every version of crawfish imaginable including: boiled crawfish, Louisiana crawfish etouffeé, and Cajun crawfish rice.
Lil Dizzy's Café out of New Orleans will bring their top Cajun gumbo and soup game, with crawfish bisque, creole filé gumbo, and trout baquet.
Down Home Creole Cookin' catering services out of Baton Rouge will be hocking their brand of Creole barbeque, including BBQ pork ribs, BBQ turkey wings, and meaty white beans.
Drink
Café Reconcile, a restaurant and nonprofit out of New Orleans' Central City area that trains at-risk youth with cooking skills will provide strawberry lemonade.
Café du Monde, out of New Orleans' French Quarter district, will bring French-style coffee drinks, including hot, iced, and frozen café au lait.
Desserts
La Divina Gelateria will bring a variety of home-made gelatos, including crème brulée and chocolate Azteca.
AJ's Sno-Balls will provide their take on a New Orleans shaved ice and sugar cane syrup classic with sno-balls, sugar-free sno-balls, and ice cream-stuffed sno-balls.
You can check out the full food list for Jazz Fest on the official website. In addition to the all the great local vendors, Jazz Fest will celebrate Cajun culinary traditions with live demonstrations of Louisiana culinary traditions at the Food Heritage Stage. Oh yeah. There will also be a whole lot of music. But you probably knew that already.
Adam D'Arpino is the Restaurants Editor at The Daily Meal. Follow him on Twitter @AdamDArpino.