Is your group ready to eat? Sulphur, a thoroughly Cajun Country town, features several of the 31 authentic mom-and-pop stops along the Southwest Louisiana Boudin Trail. Each boudin master makes a variety of this local sausage (which starts with varying amounts of pork meat, liver, rice, onions, parsley, and dry seasonings) with specialties like seafood, alligator, and fried boudin balls. The area is also home to several award-winning golf courses, Brimstone Museum Complex, Lake Charles, unusual Sulphur event venues, and more than 75 annual festivals.
Sulphur is 18 miles from the Lake Charles Regional Airport, which is served by United Airlines and American Eagle. United provides service to its Houston hub and American provides service to its Dallas/Fort Worth hub.
Prime conference venues in Sulphur begin with the West-Cal Arena & Events Center, which includes a 14,000-square-foot ballroom, divisible into three spaces, and four smaller meeting rooms. The Holiday Inn Sulphur has the most hotel meeting space. The 97-room property has three meeting rooms, two of which can seat 90 people for a meeting and the third one able to accommodate 140 people theater-style.
Special event venues in Sulphur and nearby include a variety of parks, which are often used as off-site venues, as well as historic locations built in the early 1900s. The Chateau de Bon Reve, a Sulphur treasure referred to by locals as “The Castle,” is a 2,240-square-foot, two-story Great Hall with adjoining commercial kitchen that can accommodate up to 225 people. The Henning Cultural Center, an art gallery with rotating exhibits, has 1,201 square feet of meeting space and can handle a party for up to 50 people.
In Cajun Country, eating is an adventure for meeting delegates, with restaurants using ingredients like mayhaw berries, crawfish, oysters, cabbage, pecans, and Southwest Louisiana’s favorite finger food, boudin. Three authentic local spots that work well for meeting groups are LeBleu’s Landing and Sausage Link Specialty Meats, which opened in October 2012 and has quickly become a local favorite; Hollier’s Cajun Kitchen, known for Cajun delicacies like seafood gumbo, boudin, and crawfish etouffe and a friendly atmosphere with rockers on the front porch; and The Boiling Point, known for having some of the best seafood and succulent crawfish around.
Sulphur is the gateway to southwest Louisiana’s “outback,” and the 180-mile Creole Nature Trail All-American Road, where alligators outnumber visitors 10 to 1! The area’s wild and rugged terrain is home to more than 400 species of birds and known for its top-notch fishing, hunting, crabbing, boating, and photographic subjects.
