Mulate's

Kerry Boutté opened Mulate's in 1980, when calling a restaurant Cajun was still unusual. He grew up in Arnaudville cooking with his French-speaking mother, then worked as a restaurant hand and butcher before going into business for himself. He wanted a casual place that celebrated Cajun music, food and language, a dance party that happened to serve dinner, with live Cajun music every night. The menu was plain and familiar: fried seafood platters, jambalaya, étouffée and gumbo. A second Mulate's in New Orleans is run by his daughter Monique.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cypress Island Preserve at Lake Martin — 5.3 mi
  Nearly 10,000 acres of bottomland hardwood and cypress-tupelo swamp at the south end of Lake Martin, owned by The Nature Conservancy, with a boardwalk and a rookery of egrets, spoonbills and alligators.
• Vermilionville — 6.5 mi
  A living-history village of about 23 acres on Bayou Vermilion in Lafayette, opened in 1990 to interpret the Native peoples, Acadians, Creoles and people of African descent of the Attakapas region.
• Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A bayou-side state site on former Attakapas hunting ground, with a raised Creole cottage of about 1815, a reproduction 1800 farmstead and its slave quarters, and the story behind Longfellow's Evangeline.
• St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church — 12 mi
  The Mother Church of the Acadians, founded in 1765 on St. Martin Square in St. Martinville, with a late 1870s Lourdes grotto and, a block away, the Evangeline Oak on Bayou Teche.

More markers nearby

• Scholastique Picou Breaux — 0.8 mi
• Cajun Warrior — 0.9 mi
• Breaux Bridge / Pont-Breaux — 0.9 mi
• The Bridge of 1852 — 0.9 mi