La Fay Ette!!

We pulled in to Lafayette, Louisiana at about 2pm on Saturday, after a really scenic drive down from Southeast Texas, where we spent the previous night at The Sam Rayburn Reservoir. From very peaceful and quiet to the heart of Cajun Land in one short drive! If you've never been here, it's hard to decribe. Lafayette is a good size town, you know, one of those that has one of everything...one Best Buy, one Macys, one World Market, instead of a gazillion like in Dallas. In that respect it's pretty normal, that is until you start looking a little closer. Kind of like New Orleans. You start hearing the interesting speech patterns "How you do,Dawlin'"), seeing the spellings of the names (Fontenot, Delatte), turning on the radio and hearing KBON 101.1, blasting Zydeco music into the airwaves 24/7, and the food!! Fawgetaboutit! Crawfish Etouffe, Shrimp Creole, all kinds of Gumbo, Grilled Redfish, and that's just the appetizer assortment!! These people live to eat. THAT is why we decided to stop off for more than a day on our journey. There's too much food here for a quick stopover. We tried that about a year and a half ago and vowed to come back for another helping. Here we are. As we crossed the border between Texas and Louisiana, we had our final organic meal in Harvey and kissed the healthy eating regimen goodbye until further notice. Dinner tonight at POOR BOYS RIVERSIDE, so far the definitive Cajun Restaurant for us, started reasonably enough. Grilled Redfish for me, a huge bowl of seafood gumbo for Mary Ann, homemade melt in your mouth scratch dinner rolls, and all the sides. Then came dessert. Sweet Potato Beignets. Doesn't sound too interesting? Just stick your fork in, and you won't come up for air until you've finished one. It turns out these are the creation of our server, Dee Dee's husband, Cleve Sonnier. It turns out that he won first prize for these at the annual Yamboree in Opelousas, La (they grow tons of Yams down here!). The smooth outer dough is filled with a custard like cream of whipped yams, eggs, and flour. Then it's very lightly deep fried and topped with a sauce made with two liquors. Just look at this picture, and you can almost tell that these little fried confections disapperared about as fast as the speed of the camera shutter! I almost ordered another round since I still hadn't finished the deep, dark Community Coffee they serve (very Louisiana indeed), but came to my senses just in time as Dee Dee asked if she could bring anything else.