⚜️One Week Out: The Final Countdown to Mardi Gras!

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One week out from Fat Tuesday. February 17 is marked on every calendar across Louisiana, and the parades are rolling in full force now.

This is the final stretch of Carnival season—the week where everything picks up speed. Krewe after krewe, parade after parade, from New Orleans to Lafayette to Lake Charles. The streets are packed, the throws are flying, and king cake is showing up at every gathering whether you asked for it or not.

If you haven't made it out yet, this is your last chance. Once the clock strikes midnight on Tuesday, it's all over until next year.

Here's what's happening across Louisiana this week—February 10 through 16—as we head into the final countdown to Mardi Gras.

Metro Soileau Mardi Gras Chicken Run and Zydeco Fest — Oberlin
All-day Mardi Gras celebration with live zydeco music, food, and a chicken run that's exactly what it sounds like.

Lundi Gras
February 16
Over 25 years of tradition. The Meeting of the Courts brings Argus and Zulu royalty together in Kenner for a parade and celebration the day before Fat Tuesday.

When Bacchus Broke Every Rule

🎭 1968

One krewe decided bigger was better and changed Mardi Gras forever!

In early 1968, the Krewe of Bacchus broke with 113 years of Carnival tradition by doing three things no old-line krewe would ever consider:
They paraded on Sunday night instead of during the traditional schedule.
They built floats bigger and more extravagant than anything New Orleans had ever seen.

They crowned a national celebrity named Danny Kaye. as king, instead of a wealthy local businessman whose identity stayed secret.

The old krewes were horrified. Bacchus didn't care.

Their first parade drew hundreds of thousands of people. The floats were massive, illuminated, theatrical which set a new standard. And the celebrity king tradition stuck. Over the years, Bacchus has crowned Bob Hope, Kirk Douglas, William Shatner, and dozens of others.

Other krewes followed Bacchus's lead. Endymion went even bigger. Orpheus, founded by Harry Connick Jr. in 1993, became another celebrity-driven super krewe. The whole scale of Mardi Gras shifted.

Bacchus proved that tradition doesn't have to mean small. It can mean spectacle.

Sometimes breaking the rules makes better rules.

This one's named for a color.

Not just any color: a deep, ruddy red that caught the attention of French settlers when they first saw the water running through this part of south Louisiana.

The name comes from an old French word meaning red, and it was used to describe both the river and the bay that defined this area. When the parish was carved out of Lafayette Parish in 1844, the name stuck.

Today, it's part of the Cajun Heartland: home to Abbeville, Erath, Kaplan, and Delcambre. Shrimp boats, rice fields, and bayous that still run the same color that gave this place its name over 180 years ago.

If you know south Louisiana, you know this one.

The name: Vermilion Parish

McKenzie's Bakery wasn't just a bakery: it was where New Orleans got its king cakes for generations. Started in 1936 when Donald Entringer bought a failing bakery on Prytania Street for $83, McKenzie's grew to over 50 locations across the city and became the standard for what a king cake should taste like. They were the first to put plastic babies in king cakes instead of beans or porcelain dolls: a tradition born in the late 1930s when a supplier couldn't move his inventory and Entringer found a creative solution that's still going strong today.

But king cakes were just the beginning. McKenzie's buttermilk drops were legendary soft, sweet, and covered in powdered sugar, the kind of thing you grabbed by the dozen and they were gone before you got home. The chocolate turtles, loaded with pecans and caramel, are still something people try to recreate in their own kitchens. The blackout cakes, jelly rolls, and doberge cakes lined the cases every day, and if you walked in during Carnival season, the smell of cinnamon and icing hit you before you even got to the counter.

For over 60 years, McKenzie's was part of growing up in New Orleans. Birthday cakes came from McKenzie's. King cakes came from McKenzie's. If you needed something sweet, you knew where to go. The bakery closed in 2001 after health code violations and financial troubles, but the recipes didn't disappear. Tastee Donuts bought some of them and still makes "real McKenzie's king cakes" every Mardi Gras.

The doors are closed, but the memories and the recipes people saved are still here.

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