Culinary Trails in Ville Platte Louisiana

The abundance of fantastic food to be found throughout Louisiana can be a little overwhelming for some visitors, particularly if they haven’t sampled our fabulous indigenous cuisine before. How will you decide where to go and what to eat? To help you manage the choices, we suggest using Louisiana's Culinary Trails as guideposts. The Louisiana Office of Tourism and the makers of TABASCO® hot pepper sauce have laid out seven regional “trails” that traverse byways, prairies, marshlands and waterways that are great sources of some of the finest food you’ll ever enjoy. Discover some of the chefs and restaurants who are keeping the tradition of great food alive and thriving in Louisiana.

The thunder of hooves heard in Ville Platte each October would presumably warm the heart of Marcellin Garand, a former cavalry officer in Napoleon's army who is credited with founding this city in the northern reaches of modern day Cajun country. Here, his equestrian legacy is remembered during the Louisiana Tournoi, a one-of-a-kind horseback tournament, where riders wearing capes and costume armor vie to lance the most gold rings while racing along a rustic track. The event is held in conjunction with the Louisiana Cotton Festival, which honors the area's agricultural bounty with a downtown parade, a ball and visits by festival queens. Throughout the year, visitors find Cajun food and swamp pop music galore, a historic district straddling El Camino Real, the Spanish colonial-era trail connecting New Orleans to Natchitoches and easy access to Chicot State Park with its many acres of wooded, rolling hills and meandering, cypress-studded waterways.