It’s Fat Tuesday! Pick up a tray …

​Today is Fat Tuesday, the last day of the pre-Lenten Carnival season and practically a national holiday in Louisiana, where New Orleans is the epicenter of Mardi Gras festivities. Because of the culinary link between Mardi Gras and Louisiana, today is a good day for Cajun cuisine, although that style of cooking has had a rocky history in Kansas City.

True, Jazz A Louisiana Kitchen on 39th Street has had a long run, but there’s a longer list of Cajun-Creole restaurants that have come and gone over the decades, including Kiki’s Bonton Maison, The Mango Room, Copeland’s, The Red Vine and Danny’s Big Easy.

I asked Chris Jones, the young chef at The Prime Rib Grill by Hereford House and a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, where he goes for the spicy fare of his youth. He said that he doesn’t get the chance to go out to eat that often, but the last place he had a great Cajun meal was at the original Boudreaux restaurant in St. Joseph, Missouri (not be confused with the short-lived version that came and went in Leawood). When I asked for the name of a restaurant closer to Kansas City, he just laughed.

There are a couple of other Louisiana-based restaurants in the area, though. One is the Popeye’s Chicken franchise (owned by the Eddy family, which attempted a sit-down Creole-style restaurant in Overland Park about a decade ago). The other is the Piccadilly Cafeteria.