A Guide To Gorging Oneself At The Louisiana Seafood Fest, September 4-6

The Louisiana Seafood Festival takes over City Park's festival grounds this Labor Day weekend, September 4-6, for three days of 55,000 of your closest friends feasting exclusively on Gulf seafood. Plus, live music (Starship, yes, Starship plays on Saturday evening), an art village, kids tent, a beer garden with $6 craft brews, cooking demos, and more fun from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Admission is FREE and proceeds from the event help out the Louisiana Hospitality Foundation, a non profit that supports local hospitality industry.

That's all good, but let's talk food. This year there will be 50+ seafood dishes from 25 or so vendors. The entire list is this way, but here now, a look at what's trending at this year's seafood fest. Most dishes are between $4-$10, according to a rep for the fest, with a few booths doing combos for a bit more.

Crawfish nachos at last year's seafood fest [Photo: Facebook]

NACHOS

Ernst Cafe will do crawfish nachos, Mr. Mudbug Catering will do something called Sake-2-Me Nachos, and Seither's will offer ice cream nachos.

PO' BOYS

Acme will throw down with fried shrimp and oyster po' boys.  Bourbon house turns out a killer barbecue shrimp stuffed po' boy, while Red Fish Grille offers a barbecue oyster po' boy. Galatoire's does a fried shrimp BLT po' boy. Katie's brings The Legend (cochon du lait and barbecue shrimp), Superior Seafood brings the vegetarian fried green tomato po' boy and Jacques-Imo's does its fest-fave duck po' boy.

DEEP FRIED WONDERS

Luke will do blue crab and corn fritters. Goodfellas turns out crawfish eggrolls. LeDelyo's does fried crawfish etouffee balls, and Royal House does redfish beignets.

PASTA

Food drunk brings crab and crawfish mac and cheese. Miss Linda does a shrimp and crawfish curry pasta. The Blue Crab has shrimp Alfredo and LaDelyo's has creamy shrimp pasta salad.

SALADS

Jacques-Imo's does a citrus, crab, and artichoke salad. There's a truffled seafood salad from Bourbon House, a shrimp and pesto Caprese from Cafe Giovanni, and even though it's not really salad, Boomtown Casino is doing a seafood ceviche bowl, which at least is on the healthier side of things.

KID-FRIENDLY EATS

Ernst Cafe has chicken tenders and Cafe Reconcile is serving watermelon lemonade.

Oysters on the grill [Photo: Facebook]

BEST BETS

Oysters: Drago's plans to cook up over 50,000 charbroiled oysters this weekend.

Shrimp: Galatoire's will serve their spicy shrimp remoulade and Luke will sling shrimp and cheese grits. Update: Seither's is doing a SHRIMP BOIL, not a crawfish boil, sorry y'all.

Fish: Woody's will make their trusty blackened redfish tacos, and Jacques-Imo's brings the crawfish and alligator cheesecake.

Crab: The Blue Crab is doing mini crab cakes and crab dip.

Crawfish: Various crawfish pies will be on hand, including a curry version from Mr. Mudbug. Crawfish bread will be available from TJ Gourmet.

Gator: Woody's does an alligator sausage burrito and Boomtown does blackened alligator tacos, or just go with Saltwater's classic grilled gator sausage.

Non-Seafood Dishes: Miss Linda does her famous beef ya-ka-mein, and there are lots of desserts out there, including Cafe Reconcile's bread pudding.