Louisiana

Muffins do not inspire loyalty. That is what I thought before I tried this one. The bakery occupies…

By Laura Benton · Aug 24

The gumbo was the first thing I noticed. Then the building it was served in. Then the fact…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 24

Churches in Louisiana have personality. This one has gravity. The shrine sits on a residential street, unassuming from…

By Laura Benton · Aug 24

Nobody expects to walk through a recreation of the Lourdes grotto in the middle of a Louisiana neighborhood,…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 24

I expected casinos. I did not expect a burger made from the same secret recipe since 1936, served…

By Laura Benton · Aug 23

4-H kids leading prize cattle into a barn. A pie competition where the judges take the scoring seriously.…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 23

Spanish moss does not just hang from trees in Louisiana. It drapes them, suffocates them, turns every road…

By Laura Benton · Aug 23

Twenty-plus antique shops in a six-block stretch is either a dream or a problem, depending on your wallet.…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 23

Confession: I book spa hotels and then skip the spa. The treatment sounds nice in theory, but by…

By Laura Benton · Aug 22

Booking one of these restaurants six weeks in advance still did not guarantee a table. The hostess laughed…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 22

Three feet from the boardwalk, an alligator stared back at me. I stopped walking. It stopped moving. We…

By Laura Benton · Aug 22

Small towns in Louisiana do not try to impress you. They sit there, old and unbothered, waiting for…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 22

Small towns in Louisiana hold food secrets that big cities cannot replicate. I drove past this buffet three…

By Laura Benton · Aug 21

Gluten-free baked goods carry a reputation they do not deserve. Dry crumbs, weird aftertastes, textures that crumble before…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 21

Racing karts was not on my itinerary. But someone mentioned a track fifteen minutes from the French Quarter,…

By Laura Benton · Aug 21

Silence inside a church is expected. Color this intense is not. I walked through the front door of…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 21

Gluten-free in Louisiana used to mean watching everyone else eat beignets while I sipped black coffee. Not anymore.…

By Laura Benton · Aug 20

Eating at a Louisiana roadside joint and getting a bill under ten dollars made me assume they forgot…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 20

Nine feet by nine feet, and every single inch of it means something. The chapel sits along River…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 20

Ziplining over a pond of alligators was not on my bucket list because I did not know it…

By Laura Benton · Aug 19

Everyone thinks they know where the best food in Louisiana lives. I disagree. I have eaten my way…

By Laura Benton · Aug 19

Walk in for a flat of pansies. Walk out with a ceramic heron, a Cajun cookbook, and a…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 19

Walk in with thirty-five dollars and you will leave with a bag full of things you did not…

By Laura Benton · Aug 18

Shrimp and petroleum do not seem like they belong at the same party. In this bayou town, they…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 18

Most waterfront restaurants lean on the view and phone in the food. This one does not get that…

By Laura Benton · Aug 18

The line starts before eleven. By noon, it wraps around the building. Nobody seems to mind. The smell…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 18

I did not believe in ghosts until I stayed at a plantation where a mirror holds the impressions…

By Laura Benton · Aug 17

Driving through the pine forests of central Louisiana, the road signs start to shift. A church with a…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 17

Walking through the aisles, the first thing you notice is how normal everything looks. Name brands line the…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 17

August has a reputation as the worst month for a getaway. The heat is relentless. The humidity clings…

By Laura Benton · Aug 16

Nothing tastes like a shrimp pulled from the gulf that morning. I learned this the hard way after…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 16

The city that claims to have invented the cheesesteak has some serious competition waiting in Louisiana. None of…

By Laura Benton · Aug 16

Good luck keeping one craving for an entire Louisiana road trip. Po-boys might win the first stop, then…

By Renata Holcombe · Aug 15

The kitchen is in a caboose. I had to see it to believe it, and even standing there,…

By Laura Benton · Aug 15

The sky does not get this dark in the city. I have driven an hour and a half…

By Laura Benton · Aug 15

Nobody told me you could walk through an offshore oil rig. I found out by accident and drove…

By Laura Benton · Aug 15

The menu is painted on the side of the building. Not on a chalkboard, on the wall itself,…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 15

I had never held a raw emerald before. Not in a jewelry store behind glass. Actually held one,…

By Laura Benton · Aug 14

The first time I ate crawfish étouffée, I was sitting in a town so small that the phone…

By Dane Ashford · Aug 14