A&E

An Acadiana adventure airs tonight on Travel Channel

by Christiaan Mader

Crawfish boils, the Blue Moon Saloon, and Church Point's Courir de Mardi Gras star in a Louisiana-themed episode of Travel Channel's Trip Flip airing tonight at 7:30.

Last Mardi Gras, a hurricane hit Acadiana in the form of professional party animal Bert Kreischer and his Travel Channel series Trip Flip. His gale force party winds carried out-of-towners Brian Fabian and Jennifer Hardy-Fabian on a surprise vacation around Louisiana during our statewide party, with a visit to Lafayette for a boiled crawfish eating tutorial care of Blue Moon Saloon owner Mark Falgout, a crawfishing trip in Duson, and a walk in Church Point’s Courir de Mardi Gras parade. The episode “New Orleans: Breakneck Speeds, Boils & Beads,” which airs tonight (Tuesday) at 7:30 local time, will feature plenty of familiar faces and places including musicians Ray Boudreaux, Roddie Romero and Sean Bruce, who can be seen performing at the Blue Moon in the episode.

Ray Boudreaux

According to Falgout, the operation ran as boisterously spontaneous as it appears on camera, living up to Kreischer’s late ’90s anointing as "America’s Top Partier" by Rolling Stone magazine. He and Kreischer hit it off during the shoot, prompting Kreischer to invite Falgout on a whim to serve as crawfish eating guru for the episode.

“I was talking to Bert. ‘Hey you want a beer?’ We hit it off. The crawfish were getting ready to come out, and they [Kreischer and his guests] were sitting down. ‘We need the real deal over here, we need you to teach us how to eat this,’” Falgout recalls Kreischer saying.

“If I can teach my kids, I can teach y’all to eat crawfish,” Falgout told the visitors.

Lafayette Travel’s Jesse Guidry showed up to provide the visiting couple with “official” certification of honorary Cajun-hood, as well as gift baskets containing a bounty of local goodies.

Brian Fabian and Jennifer Hardy-Fabian: Certified Cajuns
Photo courtesy Brandy Cavitt

The show’s format has Kreischer recruiting on-the-spot participants in an all expenses paid, anything goes, trust-me-with-your-life whirl of a vacation. Recent episodes have included Hobbit adventures in New Zealand and base jumping trips in Idaho. Visting Louisiana during Mardi Gras may have been the riskiest excursion yet.

You can see a picture of Falgout demonstrating the arcane art of peeling crawfish via a photo set here.