While this is a common misconception of out of state people, it is of course false. I think Louisiana can be divided up into three distinct regions; Acadiana, where most of the Cajuns live, is one of those regions.

As best I can tell most of the residents of Louisiana who live in the region north of the “Louisiana Mason Dixon Line” that runs through Alexandria are not of French heritage at all. (We used to call them yankees.) A lot of them have the same English/Irish roots which can be found throughout the Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, an the Panhandle of Florida. Heck, it seems to me that folks in Shreveport think that they are Texans.

The third region of the state, the New Orleans metropolitan area, I know well having worked there for three years. I love how New Orleans now presents itself as a Cajun city for the benefit of tourists. Yes, there are Cajuns living in New Orleans, but there are also so many other people who can trace their ancestry back to countries all over the world. If New Orleans has any one culture it is Creole, not Cajun.

When I lived in there in the late 1970s, I was aware of perhaps two or three genuine Cajun restaurants in the area. And the best of the lot was in Metairie. On more recent trips to the area it seemed to me that just about every restaurant in the city now serves multiple Cajun dishes.

Once, more recently, when my wife and I visited a bar on Bourbon Street, I was amazed when, after taking our drink order, the waitress asked if she could also bring us some boiled crawfish. I was shocked, but immediately said yes. Soon after she brought out a large tin beer tray full of boiled crawfish. They were great, but that would’ve never happened when I lived in the city many years before.

New Orleans is not a Cajun city, but the tourists think it is. So businesses catering to the tourist industry pretend to be Cajun because that’s what the tourist expect. I often joke that New Orleans would be pretend to be Polish if that would bring in more tourists.

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)