Finally, there's a Southern Food and Beverage museum in New Orleans, honoring the delicious traditions of the exquisite cuisine of the American south, including world favorites like Cajun cooking. The new Southern Food and Beverage museum will not only teach visitors all about the history and secrets of the food of the deep South, but it will also add a yummy twist: visitors can give the exhibits a taste!

A Southern Food and Beverage museum had certainly been a necessity for quite a while now, seeing as it's one of the most popular traditional foods in the United States. The museum finally opened last week, but it was a long time in the making: after the creation of a nonprofit organization all about this traditional cuisine ten years ago, with help of volunteers, organization founder Liz Williams figured out exactly how to create a food museum.

The radio station KUOW interviewed Williams about the Southern Food and Beverage museum project: "There are art museums all over the place," she said, "and you know what an art museum is - art on the walls, basically. But when you set out to make a food museum, you don't know what goes in it, exactly."

Ten years ago, she launched a stand-alone exhibit called "Toast of New Orleans," which was created as a homage to imbibing. Over the years, this exhibit went on to become the Southern Food and Beverage nonprofit, which lobbied for the creation of a museum that would show the delicious food traditions of Louisiana.

Over the years, proud Louisiana citizens have poured their support into the project, making donations as varied as kitchen tools and appliances, chef toques, aprons, pots and pans, flatware, dish sets, soda bottles, menus and advertisings - and that's leaving out a whole bunch of them.

Eventually, the organization even gathered the perfect venue for the Southern Food and Beverage museum: a 16,000-square-foot space, with a past appropriate for the new venture: it used to be a public market.

So, when in Louisiana, do as the New Orleanians ... and don't forget to drop by the Southern Food and Beverage museum and take an actual bite of history!