Not yet named food entry: Laissez le café rouler

Nothing brings back great memories like the smell of something good and I would have to say that most people I know love the smell of coffee. The bright, earthy and nutty smell immediately hits the olfactory nerve and tells the body that caffeine is near, even if you don’t like the drink.  For some, it brings back the mornings when someone brewed coffee for them while still in bed, waking up after a restful sleep.  For others, it’s the memories of coming over for Sunday brunch already to eat and rehash the fun of the weekend.  Still others have other happy occasions, like Christmas or Easter morning, come to mind when they smell coffee.

For me, though, there is a particular coffee blend that stimulates great memories, the mix of coffee with chicory that is the hallmark of coffee in New Orleans.  The brew has, in addition to the bright, earthy and nutty scents, notes of chocolate and wood from the chicory, the root of the familiar the Belgian endive and radicchio.  This very strong brew brings me back to my only trip to New Orleans.

The Gold Standard of New Orleans Coffee

During a pre-Katrina trek to Louisiana during a road trip from Philadelphia, I traveled with a group to the Crescent City for Spring Break.  In our five days, we packed a lot of sites into our trip. We went to the Jackson Square and the Audubon Zoo, visited the campuses of Tulane and Loyola, crossed the Mississippi, road St. Charles streetcar, heard jazz at Preservation Hall and looked for Anne Rice’s house. (We think we found it.)

We bar-hopped throughout Bourbon Street, taking our to-go cups with us.  We hit Pat O’Brien’s, the Tropical Isle, Krazy Korner and more.  We drank drinks like Hurricane, Zombie and Cyclone.  We found Ryan's Irish Pub on the corner of Decatur and Bienville, where I made them card me on my 21st birthday (That was back when LA still had 18 as the drinking age, but the bartender realized the significance and we got a round for free.)

Bourbon Street at night

We ate, too. We ate oysters at the Oyster Bar named Desire. We dined on muffulettas (a huge, round, flattened sandwich stuffed with an olive relish and layers of spicy cured Italian meats,  provolone and Swiss cheese) and po’boys (like our Philadelphia hoagies but more often with fried seafood than deli meats.) Unfortunately it was Lent when we visited so we missed Mardi Gras, therefore we missed the King Cake. Even stopping in supermarkets or corner stores, we found many New Orleans, Creole and Southern treats that weren’t e available to us anywhere else to try.

It was the late night runs to Café du Monde that cemented the correlation of scent of coffee with great memories. We made our nights in the city relatively early ones; we usually were finished with the bars by 1:00 am. Before the trek back to our hotel, we would head to the French Market for the Café du Monde coffee stand.  We would order beignets and café au lait, made from the New Orleans blend of coffee and chicory.  I usually take my coffee black, but the adage of “When in Rome...” was my guide. 

Café du Monde at the French Market

The coffee’s scent lingers in the air around the French Market as a magical detectable perfume  over the sweet, fried smell of the beignets.  This lured us in for our post-Midnight snack. As I devoured my hot, sweet, puffy beignets, I mused over the hot café au lait.  A good brew is thicker than tea or even premium coffees and then the milk adds a sweetness and an additionally richer texture to the coffee.  The divergent flavors - bright, earthy and nutty of the coffee, the chocolaty and woodsy of the chicory – marries with the milk’s contribution of sweet, creamy and rich to make a wonderful hot beverage.

The origins of my beloved coffee start in the mid-1700 when the Dutch started to roast chicory and grind it to use as a coffee substitute. By 1806, Napoleon attempted to make France self-sufficient which included eliminating any dependence on imports, including coffee.  In lieu of coffee, chicory was used as a complete substitute during this time.  However, the economic system did not last more than a few years and coffee was imported again.  Yet the French continued to use chicory to blend with their coffee and this practice traveled to the French-influenced city of New Orleans, where thankfully today, this blend is the normal style of coffee.

Café du Monde's flagship is located at 800 Decatur Street, New Orleans, LA. Coffee can be purchased from the on-line site and in select supermarkets.

Images, except Gold Standard of New Orleans Coffee, courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.