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Last Modified: September 12, 2008Restaurants

Shreveport’s diverse cultural heritage is exemplified in the cuisines found in its many excellent restaurants. From home style Creole and Cajun cooking to big Texas steaks, Tex-Mex barbecues, fried catfish and southern fried chicken, Shreveport’s restaurants feature a wide variety of fresh local seafood, poultry, beef, and game meats such as venison and wild duck during hunting season. There are also many other intriguing styles of cooking to be savored in Shreveport including Mexican, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Greek, Polynesian and Indian cuisines. For desert, Shreveport specialties include delicious fresh strawberry pie and fresh peach pie.

Creole Cuisine

Creoles are a mixture of French, Spanish, German, Italian, Irish, African-American and Native American cultures and their cooking represents a blend of French, Spanish, French Caribbean and African influences. Classic Creole dishes include appetizers such as oysters Bienville, oysters en Brochet, crabmeat Ravigote, shrimp Remoulade and fried plantains, entrees such as shrimp Alfredeaux, Pompano en Papillote and Trout Meunière Amandine, and deserts like bread pudding, bananas Foster, praline cookies and sweet pecan pie.

Cajun Cuisine

Cajuns are descended from French-speaking Acadians who emigrated to the South from Nova Scotia. Gumbo is a famous Cajun soup made with seafood and/or chicken, okra, and a Cajun sausage called andouille. Jambalaya is another famous Cajun dish containing a medley of rice, hot chili peppers, chicken, pork sausage, crawfish and other local seafood. Cajun specialties also include crawfish étouffée, crawfish bread, and lightly fried catfish served with pecan cream sauce. Cajun cooks often boil potatoes, onions, corn and crawfish in large pots with small bags containing cayenne pepper, mustard seeds and bay leaves. When the pots boil over, they serve the hot, spicy meal to their friends and neighbors on large, newspaper-draped tables. This meal is popularly known as a seafood boil.

Shreveport’s Famous Food Festivals

During four days over each Memorial Day weekend for the last 25 years, the Mudbug Madness Festival has been celebrated in Shreveport’s Festival Plaza. Featuring both Creole and Cajun foods, Mudbug Madness includes a huge public seafood boil that residents call the granddaddy of them all. A more recent culinary tradition called the Annual Gentlemen's Cooking Classic is sponsored by the Southern University at Shreveport Foundation. The Gentlemen's Cooking Classic is a friendly competition between local professional chefs and amateur cooks and it is believed to be the largest food event held in Shreveport. Tourists are amiably invited to create their own personal food festival on any day of the week at any of the wonderful restaurants in the Shreveport-Bossier Metropolitan Area.

See also:  Sushi in Shreveport