Seafood Sensation Culinary Trail

The southwest corner of Louisiana, sometimes called the Outback, beckons sportsmen. There’s great fishing, oystering, shrimping, and crabbing, and the bounty from the waters finds its way onto the menus of local restaurants.

But the region is also strongly connected to rice farming, and dishes like gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée, and dirty rice incorporate the crop. When area farmers realized their flooded rice fields attracted a supply of crawfish, they began rotating the two Louisiana icons. During your trip, take time to tour one of the crawfish farms (the season runs from around December through June), then try to wrangle an invitation to a backyard crawfish boil where you’ll undoubtedly get a sense of the trail’s true flavor.

Lake Charles makes the ideal launching spot for this culinary trail. As you travel eastward, take a respite from taste testing for a little sightseeing along the Creole Nature Trail, a 180-mile scenic All-American Road through Louisiana’s picturesque wetlands.