The seasoning town
Opelousas was founded by the French around 1720 as a military and trading post with the Opelousas people, and St. Landry tourism calls it the third oldest city in Louisiana. It sits on I-49 about 24 miles north of Lafayette, on the Zydeco Cajun Prairie Scenic Byway. The town's slogan is Perfectly Seasoned, and it has earned it.
In 1972 Tony Chachere, an Opelousas cook and sportsman, self published his Cajun Country Cookbook at 65 and sold the first 10,000 copies from his station wagon. Readers wanted to buy the seasoning in the book, and Tony Chachere's Famous Creole Cuisine grew from there. The company is still family owned and still in Opelousas.
Paul Prudhomme grew up on his family's farm outside town and opened his first restaurant, a hamburger stand, in Opelousas in 1957. He went on to create blackened redfish in 1980 and his Magic Seasoning Blends. And around 1955 Eula Savoie began making smoked sausage and boudin from her mother's recipes at the family grocery on the Little Teche, the start of Savoie's.
We make seasoning too, and our Gulf Coast Blackening would not exist without the method Prudhomme made famous. It is a town worth tipping your hat to.
Zydeco and Creole festival food
The Louisiana Legislature named Opelousas the Zydeco Capital of the World in 2000, and Clifton Chenier, the King of Zydeco, was born here. The Original Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival started in 1982 in a bean field in Plaisance, just outside town, and now runs at the Yambilee Festival Grounds.
The Holy Ghost Creole Festival each November shows what Creole festival cooking looks like: fried catfish on Friday, then barbecue pork steak and barbecue chicken dinners, backbone stew, boudin, cracklins and the festival's well known sweet dough pies.
The festival grounds take their name from the Yambilee, the sweet potato festival the town held for more than five decades starting in 1946, when nearby Sunset was one of the biggest yam shipping points anywhere.
