On a Friday, we drove down to Lafayette, which is only about 10 miles away from Breaux Bridge, to spend the night. Saturday morning we drove into Breaux Bridge with the hope that we could attend the Zydeco Breakfast at Cafe Des Amis. The restaurant is known for yummy food but also for their live zydeco music and dancing on Saturday mornings. It's a popular spot, and I knew it would be packed!
I called in advance to see if they take reservations for breakfast. Nope. "What time do people start lining up?" I asked. The guy on the phone told me there's a line before 7 a.m. Matthew wasn't going for that, so we just showed up around 9 a.m. and took our chances. The line was down the street. We paid a $5 cover charge just to get in the door! We put our name on the list to eat and were told to come back in an hour and a half and they'd have a buzzer for us. Who knew how long we'd have to wait after that! But I was determined, so we put our name on the list, and then headed out to check some of the antiques/junk shops nearby.
Many of the shops and even some of the houses in Breaux Bridge had these banners proudly displaying their connection to local crawfish royalty. Every Louisiana festival—all 400 plus of them—has a pageant it seems, and in Breaux Bridge they crown, obviously, a crawfish king and queen, but they also have the ecrévettes (I believe that's the French term for shrimp, but in this instance the ecrévettes serve as ambassadors for the festival), junior crawfish queen, little miss and master pincher, and baby pincher.
We stopped for a pre-breakfast breakfast, which worked out fine, because it was probably about 11:30 before we ever got to eat anyway.
It was elbow to elbow inside Cafe Des Amis, and people of all ages, races, and walks of life were out there shaking it on the dance floor. We just stood and watched and laughed for the longest time. It looked like so much fun.
(This is where I would insert a video of the dancing if Blogger would cooperate, but I'm tired of fighting with it.)
We finally got a seat by agreeing to share a table with a retired couple from Knoxville, Tennessee. Yes, they were Vols fans, but we kept it civil. Actually, they were really nice and told us about what to expect at the Crawfish Festival. Thankfully, they told us to go buy some chairs—which I intended to bring but them forgot in the rush out the door Friday afternoon.
For breakfast/brunch we had the Orielle de Cochon, which is kind of like a beignet stuffed with boudin. Plus, I had an egg croissant with andouille cheese grits, and Matthew had the eggs and biscuit with bacon.
After a quick trip to Walmart for chairs, we headed to the festival where we watched a crawfish eating contest.
I actually don't know how many pounds of crawfish the winner ate, because I made us leave before it was over. I absolutely had to go watch the crawfish races!
There were several heats, with the champs of each heat squaring off in the final race. Entrants into the race can provide their own crawfish or rescue one before it hits the boiling pot over at the concessions area! The crawfish that crosses the outer circle first wins.
Numbers are painted on the crawfish in whiteout or nail polish. Some people even bedazzled their crawfish. Can you see the jewels on this one below? Nice touch, I thought. I can appreciate a little flair.
The kids who enter the crawfish into the race are called jockeys. We had to all make room for the jockeys around the table so they could cheer on their crawfish.
Later we watched the écrevettes (festival hostesses) put on a little dance routine. Yes, they are wearing crawfish-patterned outfits and one actually has on a crawfish costume. I'm not sure if that's because she was the lucky one that was chosen or if she was the unlucky one!
After Matthew and I did our best to learn the Cajun two-step and waltz (no photos of that, unfortunately), we headed over to the main concert stages to eat a little étouffée and hear Chubby Carrier. Carrier actually won a Grammy this year in the zydeco category.
No comments:
Post a Comment