Where two bayous meet
Arnaudville sits at the junction of Bayou Teche and Bayou Fuselier, and for that reason it was first called La Jonction. It took its current name in 1856 from the Arnaud family. Most of the town is in St. Landry Parish, with a small corner in St. Martin.
It is one of the places where Louisiana French is still in daily use. St. Landry tourism says about four in ten residents speak French every day. The NUNU Arts and Culture Collective, started in 2005 by Arnaudville artist George Marks, hosts French and Kreyol language tables, and Bayou Teche Brewing, opened by the Knott brothers in 2009, brews beers meant to go with Cajun and Creole food, many of them with French names.
The town's food weekend is the Étouffée Festival, run by St. Francis Regis Catholic Church to support the church and Little Flower School. The cook-off is the heart of it, and it does not stop at crawfish: teams cook crawfish, seafood, vegetable and wild game étouffées, and there is a Mayor's Cook-off too.
Étouffée is a method, not just a dish
Étouffée means smothered. The method stays the same whatever goes in the pot: cook onion and pepper down slowly in fat, add the main ingredient and just enough liquid to make a gravy, and let it simmer gently, covered, until everything tastes of everything else.
Crawfish is the famous version, and Breaux Bridge, down the Teche, tells the story of how it started. But duck, shrimp, venison, okra and other vegetables all get the same treatment at the Arnaudville cook-off. Tougher meat just needs a longer simmer.
