According to Amber Autumn, the locals of Chalmette, Louisiana, are addicted to crawfish—and she would know. She’s a crawfish-craving resident herself, along with the Crawfish Couple and the Crawfish Beauty Queen. She explains this cast of characters in her newest journal.
With her in-the-know-titled insider journal Chalmette, Down in Da Parish, she introduces us to her hometown, just around the river bend from New Orleans. It’s “one of the small towns with Southern charm and hospitality in St. Bernard Parish,” she says, where “the locals are like authors with a story to tell.” This sets the stage for Amber Autumn’s reviews of favorite restaurants; a historic battlefield with a Scarlett O’Hara connection; and, of course, the annual Louisiana Crawfish Festival, held right in Chalmette.
The real star of the celebration is the “bountiful” food selection that includes alligator on a stick, crawfish pies, and Amber’s favorite, Ernie Ro's Crawfish Bread. “You can recognize the booth by the extremely long line, but it's well worth it,” she says. “It's a taste of heaven with crawfish and three cheeses baked in a bread-like shell.” Just don’t think about the cute little clawed guys competing in the crawfish races while you’re tearing into that bread.
The last day of the festival draws the Crawfish Couple, dressed in white, traveling from festival to festival, and wearing “more crawfish than the Louisiana Crawfish Festival Beauty Queen."
A must-see cast of characters, indeed.