Local restaurants team up for Oktoberfest fundraising event

Hoist your mug and put on your lederhosen—the Greater Baton Rouge Chapter of the Louisiana Restaurant Association kicks off its first-ever Oktoberfest on October 13 at 6:00 p.m. in Pointe Marie. The ticketed event, a fundraiser for the LRA’s ProStart program, features Oktoberfest beers and German-inspired cuisine prepared by several local restaurants and LRA members.

“We thought it would be good because there aren’t many Oktoberfests here,” says LRA chapter president Jeff Conaway. “It will be our first time doing this, but we hope to hold it every year.”

Indeed, while German celebrations take place in New Orleans and Roberts Cove (a German enclave in Acadia Parish), Baton Rouge has so far not had the opportunity to soak up the ‘an evening of German beer and food, an oversight that needed to be corrected,’ says Conaway, born in Nuremberg, Germany, to military parents.

“Who knows, we might even have a chicken dance competition,” Conaway says, referring to the goofy group activity common at established Oktoberfests.

The LRA’s Baton Rouge event will be held outdoors on the Pointe Marie grounds and includes a free mug of beer to sample seasonal Oktoberfest selections from craft breweries, including a Goose Island Light German Lager Brewing, the traditional Marzen from Golden Road Brewing (the original Bavarian Oktoberfest beer), Oktoberfest Ale from Widmer Brothers, German Amber Lager from Breckenridge Brewery and Karbachtoberfest from Karbach Brewing Company, an authentic Bavarian-style Marzen.

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