Food is king when it comes to the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival. The main attraction is the boiled crawfish, and the festival sells so much that refrigerator trucks are full from top to bottom with sacks of Louisiana’s crustaceans. Aside from the simple bug boil that Louisiana natives know and love, there are booths that sell more adventurous preparations of crawfish. Perhaps most popular are the crawfish pistolettes, where pistolette rolls are deep fried and then stuffed with a cheesy, spicy crawfish mixture. If you’re in the mood for more bread, cheese, and crawfish the crawfish spinach bowls are to die for. A large roll is hollowed out and then filled with a spinach, cheese, and crawfish mixture. Aside from those concoctions, the festival also sells boudin, jambalaya, etouffee, crawfish beignets, crawfish po-boys, and more Cajun food that doesn’t center around crawfish. For people who want to prove how much they love boiled crawfish, you can participate in the boiled crawfish eating contest.
During the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival, the sound of the music drifts to the neighboring areas and fills the town. The festival consists of three separate stages, and more than 30 bands play throughout the three-day event. The major players take the stage on Saturday night, but the days are full of good music whether you’re watching the Festival stage, the Cajun stage, or taking to the Breaux Bridge tent. Featuring Grammy winners like Wayne Toups and Steve Riley and many other regional and world-famous musicians and bands, the festival delights from the time the gates open to the time they close.
