Jesuit priests brought sugar cane to south Louisiana in 1751. It is now a $2 billion industry. In 1795 Etienne de Bore produced the first successful cane crop to produce raw sugar.

If you love Louisiana history, and eating festival foods like white beans and fried catfish, cracklins, grillades, alligator sauce piquante, jambalaya, boudin balls and beignets then you may want to visit Raceland this weekend for the big La Fete Des Vieux Temps or Festival of Old Times.

We go every year.

Saturday’s the best day as that’s the sauce piquante cookoff as well as the boucherie.

Sometime around 1970, Raceland began holding an annual Sauce Piquante Festival complete with a sauce piquante queen; Louisianans know this rich gravy to be one of the finest foodstuffs that our culture has ever produced.

Saturday morning, a good sized hog will be dispatched, broke down, dressed and cooked as the day goes by. This is the boucherie part of the affair and it’s one of the finest examples of Louisiana cookery ever wrought.

Hope to see y’all out there

Address

4484 Highway 1

Raceland, Louisiana

70394