Does Anyone Know Of Any Restaurants In Sacramento Where You Can Get Food Like You Get In Louisiana?

mgonvele on Wed, 17th Feb 2010 3:51 am 



The only time that I can find the “real deal” in crawfish/crawdads (and it comes from LA too) is the Crawdad Festival in Isleton. Here’s the link. It’s an annual festival that they have, and it’s in a small little town located near Sacramento. The annual event is hosted by The Isleton Chamber of Commerce. It’ll be coming up in June, 2009:
http://www.crawdadfestival.org
Hope this helps.
Lucille’s is a chain restaurant, they have cajun, but I would consider the Isleton Crawdad Festival as a little more authentic (especially because they bring the crawdads in from Louisiana for the occasion)

cyndee on Wed, 17th Feb 2010 10:00 am 



This is the only place in town that I know of:
Cafe New Orleans
(916) 443-5051
117 J St, Sacramento, CA
“… in town to get genuine Louisiana-style Cajun cooking. Authentic meals include choices …”
As the saying goes, ” Try it, you’ll like it ”
also:
In Roseville there is a restaurant called Lucille’s that has a Louisiana steamboat atmosphere feeling.. not the foods you are asking about, but smoked ribs that kind of thing. It is great.

treeppe3 on Wed, 17th Feb 2010 3:09 pm 



No, there really isn’t. Louisiana’s food is the best in the world, and all of you Yankees just really don’t know what you’re doing when you attempt to create Cajun food.

Pichouet on Wed, 17th Feb 2010 7:43 pm 



I think that’s impossible. I’ve traveled out of state a couple of times and ate at little places claiming to have “Authentic Cajun” food and it was terrible. I once asked the chef where he got his recipe, he said “Emeril”. Omg, I cannot stress it enough, don’t listen to Emeril! He cooks things that are lightly lightly influenced by Cajun ideas, but no where near the real thing.
I think a big misconception about Cajun food is that we just use a lot of cayenne and salt and that’s why our food is so great. When I cook I use yellow, red, orange, and green bell peppers, garlic, onion, green onion, celery, cayenne pepper, black pepper, little salt, and depending on what I’m cooking, an aray of dried or fresh herbs. Of course Tony Chachere’s is an all purpose seasoning that I use. I think as well as the eclectic use of veggie seasoning, its also what we are cooking, i.e. Jambalaya, Gumbo, Red Beans & Rice w/ fried chicken or White Beans and Rice w/ fried catish, Chicken Stew, Meatball Stew, Etouffee, Crawfish, Seafood (of all sorts) etc. that makes our food seem so different The ingredients and the meal as a whole are so drastically different and indigenous to South Louisiana that when someone not familiar with these types of food, eats them, they have such a new and different experience in comparison to what they typically eat, they process it as an entirely different “type” of food. Also meals that your average American household has seen on its kitchen table are modified by us Cajun cookers. Everyone’s eaten pot roast, but we eat it over rice instead of potatoes. Everyone’s eaten spaghetti, but (as gross it sounds to everyone else) we had smoked sausage and weenies along with our ground meat! Everyone has eaten hamburger steak but we also eat that with the gravy over rice. We also have variations of french toast (more commonly called lost bread to us), as well as variations on chicken pot pies, chicken fried steak, meat loaf, etc. Also somethings that are considered side items make a meal for us! (Buscuits and Gravy being the first that comes to mind.)
Also if you’ve eaten in a restaurant in New Orleans you’ve not really had real cajun food. Those restaurants’ patrons are primarily tourist and the chefs know that, so they bland the food to suit the tourists’ taste buds.(This happens a lot with Mexican restaurants too.) A good idea for visiting Louisiana is to get a liaison, try to find someone that lives in little known areas, places where people live a lifestyle, not to sell it, but because it is the fiber of their being. Eat at the local restaurants (most won’t claim to be “authentic cajun” food, because, hello! what else would they serve when they’re located in the middle of the bayou!?). The buildings may look dilapidated, but generally those are the best ones. Also the small town restaurants usually work directly with fisherman, shrimpers, line runners (crawfish, blue crabs), that live in that same small town, to get the freshest seafood! Pretty awesome.
Ok, so, I’ve never been to Sacramento, and have no clue where a good Cajun kitchen would be. I have recipes of my own and of family members (ok so not actually written down, and not with measurements; but mentally stored!) that I can try and give you if you are interested.
I do realize that I didn’t answer your question, but some how accomplished to write four paragraphs, I do appologize, I get carried away! Hope I helped some how!

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