Coffee and Beignets

New Orleans-the City that Care Forgot. Restaurants opened late, the cuisine was European and the hours of eating were too. Often one did not begin to eat out until 8, 9 or 10 in the evening.

Later, after you eaten and gone to listen to New Orleans jazz, you went for coffee and beignets.

The beignets were hot and you would shake powdered sugar on them. If you were in a suit or a dark dress, the white powdered sugar on them would have marked you as a visitor to one of these two great and venerable coffee houses in New Orleans.

HarleyDad's favorite coffee house was the Morning Call . For a picture of the inside of the Morning Call, click here. (The picture is entitled "Old Establishment" and you will need to scroll down to find it.) But the Cafe Du Monde was great too. On a summer evening you could sit outside. But when the weather was cold the Morning Call was the place to be.

The Morning Call in those days was open 24 hours per day and there were many times that Harley Dad was there drinking coffee and eating beignets at 2 or 3 a.m.

The Coffee was coffee au lait. The coffee and hot steaming milk were poured into your large coffee cup at the same time.

There were large sterling silver containers of sugar where were were chained together so that they would not be stolen by the sailors (or at least that is what they said).

Coffee and Beignets were one of the really wonderful things about New Orleans and they all smelled and tasted better late, late at night.

Above are a few pictures.

I can still smell them now.

HarleyDad