Even with the drums still beating for Mardi Gras, preparations are underway for a different annual party, one where a community sets the table with a bonanza of Vietnamese cooking and invites others to pull up a seat.
Tet is the Vietnamese celebration of the Lunar New Year, which this year falls on Feb. 17, Mardi Gras Day. But the biggest local celebration around it arrives the weekend after, Feb. 20-22, at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church. It’s too big of a party for just one day.
The church, with its school and festival grounds, is a centerpiece of life in Village de L’Est, the largely Vietnamese neighborhood in New Orleans East. Its free, three-day Tet Festival rolls out a big welcome mat for everyone to take part in Vietnamese culture.
It’s not just about food. There are children’s rides and games, live bands, fashion shows and crafts. People cluster around games of chance, plunking down tokens by the fistful and craning their necks to watch spinning wheels of fortune. Kids gleefully run about, blasting each other with silly string. Fireworks light up the sky as a dragon dance snakes through the crowd (at 6 p.m. each night).
But eating is so central to Tet, it can all feel like a giant food festival…