First Stop in New Orleans, Cafe Du Monde

Just about everyone who visits New Orleans, Louisiana goes to Café Du Monde.  Café Du Monde is New Orleans breakfast institution that is known for serving two delightful and addictive local favorites–beignets and chicory coffee.  Breakfast can happen anytime in New Orleans because Café Du Monde is open 24 hours!

The first thing to do in New Orleans is to get into the long (but fast moving) line for a table at Café Du Monde where they boast that they are “the original coffee stand.”    This unique establishment is the quintessential New Orleans experience and exudes the funky flair of the Big Easy.

The old coffee stand dominates southwestern corner of New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.   Here, a New Orleans brass band plays for the crowds at Café Dumont. Tuba notes bump high and low as the line chatters and the sound of intoxicated trumpet solos flutter over the heads of the leisurely diners as they sip coffee and tap mounds of powdered sugar off their square-cut beignets.

Once at the front of the line, diners are directed through the frenzied gauntlet of paper-hat servers scurrying in every direction and carrying plastic trays packed with the coffee beignets.

Quickly these servers descend on new diners to take their order, thus beginning an efficient process in which the servers order, pay for, and sell the food at Cafe Du Monde.

The servers at Café Dumont seem to be somewhat self employed. Under this system they wait in the kitchen’s line with many other servers, filling their trays with the beignets, coffee, and juice that their customers order.

After the trays are full the servers slide them cafeteria-style to a register where the servers purchase the food from Cafe Du Monde in cash.  Next, the servers run with their trays to the tables and serve the food to customers who, in turn, pay them in cash. Then, the servers take orders from any new tables, run off, and do it again!

To juxtapose the dizzying pace of the service staff at Café Dumont, all the diners seem relaxed and carefree. The benigets are heavy and delicious with fat and the mounds of powered sugar on top works with thick, bitter chicory coffee to kick start the morning.  This is a hangover cure worthy of a wild night on Bourbon Street.

Historically, chicory root was used as a coffee substitute or additive.  The tradition of adding chicory to coffee began in New Orleans during the Civil War.  Before the Civil War, New Orleans was America’s second largest coffee importer after New York.

Early in the Civil War a Union Naval blockade on New Orleans cut off the coffee supply to the city and residents began stretching what coffee they did have with chicory root.  The people of New Orleans acquired a taste for chicory in their coffee, continuing the tradition long after the war’s end.  Perhaps the chicory reminded them of the bitter taste the war left in their mouth.  For whatever reason, even today much of the coffee served throughout New Orleans is laced with this bitter herb.

When arriving in New Orleans, make sure to take a time-out with the crowds at Café Dumont to sip some chicory coffee, eat some rich and heavily powdered beignets, and get in sync with the pulse of this swinging city.  I’m sure the sugar and caffeine will help!