Coffee and Beignets in New Orleans
Posted on January 14, 2010 - Filed Under Travel
Perhaps the most famous coffee stand in Louisiana lies in New Orleans, the Original Cafe Du Monde Coffee Stand, which has been selling coffee and Beignets doused in sugar since 1862. For any traveler to the French Quarter, it’s a mandatory trip, and chances are good whenever you arrive in town, it’ll be open. The cafe is open twenty-four hours, seven days a week, and closes only on Christmas Day. Its own web site notes that there are also exceptions for hurricanes, but barring such an event, they’re open, ready to provide Coffee and Chicory, dark roasted, and some of the most amazing Beignets (a kind of French version of doughnuts), you’ll taste.
On a vacation to one of the luxury hotels New Orleans is peppered with, I came across the Original Cafe Du Monde, which translates loosely into Cafe of the World; near Jackson Square, at 800 Decatur Street, the cafe is often busy with lines of visitors and locals alike awaiting coffee and Beignets. There are other locations, seven in all, throughout Louisiana, but the one on Decatur Street is the original, and it’s there you can easily tell the tourists from the locals by the way they handle the Beignets. The locals know to first blow or gently shake the Beignets so that the heaped powdered sugar falls away; otherwise, as you begin to eat, you may easily find your clothes coated in a sugary white blizzard.
The menu is simple at the Cafe du Monde: It’s Coffee and Chicory, black or Au Lait; Beignets; milk, white or chocolate, and orange juice. They also have iced coffee and soft drinks, but that’s all. Even if you can’t eat Beignets, it’s definitely worth stopping in just for a cup of coffee to see a coffee shop that’s been around for one hundred and forty-eight years.
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