3 Best Seafood Restaurants in Natchitoches

Louisiana harvests some of the freshest seafood in the country out of the Gulf of Mexico. If you are in Natchitoches, check out one of these restaurants for lunch or dinner and feast on fresh seafood. You’ll enjoy this after a day of car shopping at Hebert Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram.

Merci Beaucoup Restaurant

Merci Beaucoup Restaurant is located at 127 Church Street in Natchitoches and is known for their famous Cajun and Creole seafood lunches. The most famous sandwich in Louisiana is the po’ boy, which consists of seafood or meat on a baguette. At Merci Beaucoup, you can get a po’ boy with either fried catfish, grilled or fried shrimp, fried oysters, or fried crawfish.

The restaurant also has their version of another classic, crawfish etouffee, which is crawfish smothered in a roux and served over rice. Merci Beaucoup created a version of this dish called the Catfish Beaucoup, which puts a golden-brown fried catfish fillet over rice and then covers it with crawfish etouffee. You can also feast on a seafood platter which has a little bit of everything on the menu.

Mama’s Oyster House and Papa’s Bar and Grill

Mama’s Oyster House and Papa’s Bar and Grill is located at 608 Front Street in Natchitoches. Mama’s side of the restaurant features mouth-watering seafood, while Papa’s side will grill you up a variety of steaks and burgers. When you are at Mama’s, you can have seafood for every course of the meal. Start with an appetizer such as seafood gumbo, fried alligator, crawfish tails, or even shrimp cocktail.

Mama’s serves most of her meals by the platter, all of which come with either fries, boiled potatoes, or hush puppies. If you can’t decide on a single dish, don’t miss out on Mama’s colossal seafood platter, which will give you a taste of catfish, shrimp, oysters, frog legs, crawfish tails, stuffed crab, seafood gumbo, fries, and hush puppies.

For the oyster lover, you can slurp raw ones by the dozen or choose from a half dozen of either grilled oysters, oysters Rockefeller, or oysters Bienville.

The Landing Restaurant

The Landing is located right down the street from Mama’s at 530 Front Street. The Landing focuses on providing high-quality local seafood to the area. Try the Cane River Sampler to taste crab, alligator, and shrimp that were harvested from the Cane River. The Oysters Vieux Carre puts oysters harvested every morning in the broiler, drenches them in herb butter, and covers them with smoked gouda cheese. You won’t be able to resist shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico that are wrapped in applewood-smoked bacon and stuffed with slivers of jalapenos.

Once you finish one of these delicious appetizers, try devouring some of The Landing’s famous fried seafood for dinner. They serve fried gulf shrimp, local farm-raised catfish, Louisiana oysters, or a platter with each of the three.

Make sure you check out one of these fine establishments while you are in Natchitoches, especially if you love seafood. You can even have a celebratory dinner after your day of car shopping at Hebert Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram.