There’s a place where the weather’s always sunny, the music’s always playing and the food’s always good. It’s called New Orleans, and it has caught the eye of Lansing residents.

Three restaurants of cajun or New Orleans-based cuisine have transplanted the popular style of cooking much closer than the 18-hour drive south. Mathew Spear, chef for Jumbeaux, a cajun restaurant on the west side of Lansing, said the food is naturally appealing to any sort of resident who just wants delicious food without having to go through formalities.

“All the food we make, it’s easy to make.” Spear, rolling dough with a 28-ounce Rotel can, said, “It’s time-consuming, but it’s easy to make. It’s not gourmet, it’s just good.”

Step into the kitchen of Jumbeaux before the dinner rush, and it’s a shambolic space of thick bouillabaisse-like sauces bubbling on the stove, flour and mixed powders blanketing the tile floor and jazz music blaring to the beat of the commotion. It’s all available for customers to see through a narrow window positioned directly behind the cash register.

“If it isn’t messy, you ain’t doing it right. That’s what my dad taught me,” Spear, a Baton Rouge native, said. “This is what everyone says Lansing wants, just some good homestyle cooking. Hell, if you Google ‘chicken and dumplings,’ only two places come up: [Jumbeaux] and Cracker Barrel.

“See you probably know how to make everything on the menu. It’s either you don’t have the time or the want to.”

Although some of Spear’s recipes have been mid-westernized, the essence remains the same. For all of the clamorous clangs and controlled chaos in the kitchen, the result is one of precise and meticulous adherence to the southern standard of good food with a pinch of individuality and bountiful flavor.

Jumbeaux is the oldest of three New Orleans-style restaurants that opened within a year of each other in Lansing. Nola Bistro, on North Waverly Road, and Creole, on Turner Street, joined the trend in May and November of 2015.

Nola Bistro showcases another side of New Orleans cooking culture with Vietnamese pho and noodles served a page-flip away from poor boys, a southern sub made with french bread and topped with overflowing sauces and meat. Vietnamese cooking is a mainstay in New Orleans currently, after the fall of Saigon forced many refugees to scatter to Louisiana as a common destination. Nola Bistro accurately represents that aspect of the city’s culture.

The final ingredient of the New Orleans food scene in Lansing comes from Creole, consisting of separate fine dining and beignet-and-coffee branches side-by-side in Old Town. The title “Creole” actually came from the art gallery that occupied the plot before the restaurant moved in, and the transition seemed ideally continuous, according to assistant manager Roger Hayes.

However, despite its name, Creole doesn’t serve classic cajun entrees, but rather seeks to emulate the upscale fine dining one might find on a stroll into a Royal Street cocktail and dinner bar.

“I think that’s more of a thing right now, that there’s more of a straight cajun and creole type cooking,” Hayes said. “For exactly what we do, we’re kind of a standout for that. You’ll see pork belly, confit and shanks on other menus, but it’s how its presented.

“We’re a very French-influenced southern Louisiana and New Orleans style restaurant with a cajun and creole touch. But we’re definitely more on the classical French side of New Orleans cooking.”

Even for the decorous Creole, food comes foremost. For them, it’s the primary means of authenticity.

“We’re fine dining, but we’re casual fine dining,” Hayes said. “You can come in here in a t-shirt and a wife-beater, and you’ll still get fine-dining service.”

Other Lansing-area food vendors have popularized a New Orleans brand. Beggar’s Banquet serves a traditional gumbo that is well received, while the Michigan State University cafeterias actually offer king cake, crawfish and jambalaya, all converging on Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.

Adam Davis is an admissions counselor at Michigan State and recruited southerners for many years to the school, although he now occupies an eastern route. According to him, New Orleans culture is simply infectious, as the Lansing renditions of New Orleans food reflect.

“Once you go there, you really like what you see and like what you eat, and you want that to come up here,” Davis, who is vacationing to New Orleans this summer, said. “I think anybody who’s been to New Orleans wants to bring that here, experience that here, the cuisine especially.”