New Orleans sets the bar high for the taste and quality of local seafood. Louisiana is known around the world for having the best seafood, so we celebrate that accomplishment by throwing a three-day festival. The Louisiana Seafood Festival is a family friendly festival that celebrates the delicious gift of seafood.

Let’s talk about food. This year, the festival had over 30 different restaurants including ACME Oyster House, Andrea’s Restaurant, Café Giovanni, Goodfellas Seafood & Poboys, Dirty Dishes, Drago’s, and Galatoire’s. With over 30 restaurants, the menu options were endless. Some options included crawfish étouffée fries, crispy fried catfish, smothered okra and shrimp, BBQ oyster poboy, crawfish queso, charbroiled oysters, and crabmeat ravioli. Even though it was a seafood festival, they had some non-seafood New Orleans dishes available as well such as red beans and rice and chicken and alligator sausage jambalaya. They even had snowballs, sweet potato pecan pie, and a bananas brûlée sundae. My boyfriend and I went for the dirty mac from Dirty Dishes. It was a smoked gouda mac and cheese with crawfish and tasso.

We also devoured some fried shrimp and cajun fries from Ajun Cajun.

All weekend, the festival puts on cooking demonstrations from celebrity chefs. This year, one of the chefs was Andrea Apuzzo (the owner of Andrea's restaurant) and he taught the crowd how to make seafood lasagna. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn how to make Louisiana dishes from local chefs. Hang around after the demonstration for free samples.

Music is a must at festivals. Here is a list of the bands that attended this year. We went Saturday evening, so we were able to sing "YMCA" and "In The Navy" with the Village People. We also hung around to sing "What I Like About You" with The Romantics while we sipped on some local beer.

The festival is usually held in the beginning of September at the City Park festival grounds and is 10 dollars to enter. All proceeds from the festival benefit the Louisiana Hospitality Foundation. The crowd was wonderful, the food was amazing, and the music was fun. Get your taste buds and your dancing shoes ready for next year's Louisiana Seafood Festival!