(FORTUNE Magazine) – Crawfish are hot. So are frogs' legs, alligator, rabbit, pig meat, catfish, sassafras, okra, and corn pone. Hotting them up are fistfuls of hot peppers -- cayenne, bird's eye, jalapeno -- and a blazing revival of interest in American regional cooking, Deep Southern style. . Louisiana Creole and Cajun restaurants are springing up across the U.S. They range from elegant spots with exposed brick and blond wood to local dives in neighborhoods that business travelers usually avoid. Creole is the more sophisticated cuisine of the two, a city-bred mix of French, Spanish, West Indian, and African cooking. Cajun has similar antecedents, plus one more -- country stewpots filled with such fierce flavors as wild Louisiana hot peppers, garlic, smoked pork sausage, bay leaves, parsley, and file (ground sassafras). The original Cajuns, who settled the bayous in the 1750s, were French refugees driven out of Acadia, now Nova Scotia, by the British -- an event romanticized in Longfellow's Evangeline. The heat of most Cajun gumbos and jambalayas is not as intense as that of Thai, Hunan Chinese, or real Mexican cuisine. But the genuine article is still guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes -- even without the help of a jukebox playing ''Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?'' Creole is often accompanied by fine French wines; Cajun goes down best with strong Mexican beer, though the locals mostly drink Dixie beer out of long-necked bottles. The chef who has done more than anyone to promote authentic Cajun cooking is Paul Prudhomme, 44, a bearded, Gargantuan figure who grew up the youngest of 13 children on a sharecropper's farm outside Opelousas, Louisiana. His Louisiana cookbook has become a best-seller, and his New Orleans restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen (416 Chartres Street, in the heart of the French Quarter, 504-524-7394), attracts a line that usually runs halfway down the block. K-Paul's is open only for dinner and doesn't take reservations. But the food is worth the wait, especially Prudhomme's blackened redfish -- a tasty Gulf fish coated in hot spices and then seared quickly on both sides in a blazingly hot cast-iron pan; this process blackens the skin and seals in the flavors while leaving the fish moist and tender. For Creole, elegant French Quarter restaurants abound, like Galatoire's (209 Bourbon Street, 504-525-2021), which offers oysters Rockefeller, turtle soup, and pompano with crawfish sauce as rich as its gilt decor. Historically blacks served as chefs in well-to-do households where Creole was a staple, and today black cafes serve up a tasty cuisine known as soul Creole. Chez Helene (1540 N. Robertson Street, 504-947-9155) is an easy stroll through the old French Market and up tree-lined Esplanade -- Tennessee Williams country -- to a black neighborhood. It features such Louisiana staples as crawfish etouffe (shellfish in a spicy red sauce served over rice) and delectable fried chicken with stuffed peppers -- not to mention huge ''poor boy'' sandwiches made of hollowed-out French bread stuffed with oysters, shrimp, crab, or sausage and peppers. There are great Cajun restaurants out in the bayou country. First among them is probably Patout's in New Iberia, 125 miles west of New Orleans. It's a three-hour drive on winding Highway 90, which runs out through a land of creeks, swamps, and scrub timber, past hand-lettered signs declaring Jesus Is Lord and advertising beagle rabbit dogs. New York City is another world from New Iberia, but it offers some of the best Cajun and Creole cooking outside Louisiana. Top marks go to Bon Temps Rouler (59 Reade Street, 212-513-1334), a ten-minute walk up Broadway from Wall Street. Offering both Cajun and Creole cooking, it's jammed most evenings. Despite its down-home name, Texarkana (64 W. 10th Street, in Greenwich Village, 212-254-5800) goes for elegance, with a gorgeous bar sculptured from a single walnut tree. But there is a fine country hand behind the shellfish smothered in fiery sauce. For a funkier atmosphere, try the Great Jones Street Cafe (54 Great Jones Street, 212-674-9304), a hole in the wall on the edge of the tough East Village. It makes the best jalapeno cornbread going, with hot peppers studded in a sweet honey glaze. In Washington, D.C., the New Orleans Emporium (2477 18th Street, NW, 202-328-3421), a simple cafe that flies in seafood daily from the Gulf, serves good barbecued shrimp, blackened redfish, and alligator stew. Fancier Creole dining can be found at a restaurant called 219 in Alexandria, Virginia (219 King Street, 703-549-1141). Much of the ''Louisiana'' cooking in Atlanta is just plain bad. The best bet is probably Lenox's, which has just moved to 2225 Peachtree Road, a few miles north of downtown (404-351-0921). New Orleans cooking was slow to follow jazz up the river to Chicago. But the Maple Tree Inn (10730 S. Western Avenue, 312-239-3688), a little place on the city's far Southwest Side, 40 minutes' drive from downtown, serves up great alligator soup and jambalaya. You can get Louisiana delicacies in Pittsburgh at Roland's (1904 Penn Avenue, 412-261-3401). Despite a large Cajun population in Houston, the quality of the sprawling - city's Cajun-style restaurants is mixed. The newest, the elegant Magnolia Bar & Grill (6000 Richmond Avenue, 713-781-6207), does great spicy broiled frogs' legs but is otherwise erratic. The Atchafalaya River Cafe (8816 Westheimer Road, 713-975-7873), with its huge red-and-yellow neon sign outside and nonstop recorded New Orleans jazz blaring inside, offers great seafood gumbo and red beans with rice, but overcooks delicate rabbit and fish. Best bet for an elegant haute Creole evening is peach-and-green-decorated Brennan's (3300 Smith Avenue, 713-522-9711). On the West Coast, Bentley's (185 Sutter Street in San Francisco, 415-989-6895), a fancy seafood showcase in the financial district, serves tasty Gulf specialties. Los Angeles has more to offer. For the Perrier-and- lime crowd, there are ''nouvelle California'' hangouts now serving blackened redfish and jambalaya, including the Ritz Cafe (9320 W. Pico Boulevard, 213-550-7737). Its West Los Angeles rival, Orleans (11705 National Boulevard, 213-479-4187), is the ultimate in California ''country'' chic, with soft- colored quilts hanging on the walls. Luckily, the cooking is as good as the decor is trendy. Several simple restaurants have been serving good Creole food in the Los Angeles area since long before the cuisine became famous. Homer & Edy's Bistro (2839 S. Robertson Boulevard, 213-559-5102), three blocks north of the Santa Monica freeway, cooks up great catfish with hot sauce and a fine jambalaya. Its seafood gumbo, however, is so authentically clogged with file that it's strictly for homesick Louisianians.