New Orleans is not Cajun either but most people think it is absolutely the mecca of Cajun cooking. NO is known for creole cooking, more island influence but they can put some nice spins on Cajun cuisine. Both are insane delicious but they often get mixed together in one pot. NO is also home of Poboys. Only a handful of places in NO still make the real flaky bread that was given to the strike workers many moons ago. That bread was free to them, thrown out but they gave it to them to show support. Funny how stale old bread and food made from immigrant French settlers that everybody hated turns out to be some of the best food in the country.
@beastmode: Very true. Most of the "Cajuns" from Acadia settled along the Mississippi River and others spread west from there. The first settlement along the Mississippi River (upriver from NO) were actually Germans and Swiss. The Acadians came along a little later. Over the years, the blend of foods from French, German, Swiss, Africans, Island Creoles, and some Spanish have merged into what is now generally called Cajun food. You really can't tell which foods are Cajun and which are Creole anymore and it's not worth arguing about.... it's all so good!Edited: Forgot the Native American Indians. They also influenced what is now known as Cajun food.We lived in Laplace (St John the Baptist Parish) for about 15 years (just a few miles from where my father was born and raised). The French bread on our po-boys was not stale. It was baked so that it had a hard crunchy crust and soft, airy insides. If a po-boy bread didn't crunch when you bit down, something was wrong. We used to stop and buy warm French bread at the grocery store. There was one bakery that we loved. They provided French bread to many, many restaurants and grocery stores. They even made several deliveries each day so the bread was fresh and still warm. I'm not sure, but I seem to think it was Reising's. It seems like they got bought out by another company about the time we moved here. CONFIRMED: Reising's was bought out by Leidenheimer in the early 1990s (we moved here in 1993). They still make some bread under the Reising's name. If I weren't so stuffed, I'd be drooling now.
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