It was not until I arrived at Cafe Du Monde that I realized you now have to stand in line to get your beignets and coffee with chicory. The beignet — a puffy, fried doughnut swimming in powdered sugar — has been a New Orleans tradition since the city was French. Cutting Colombian coffee with chicory (a locally available plant) has been a New Orleans practice since the Union blockade during the Civil War made it a necessity.
Another tradition is table service. Although confectioner’s sugar still flew around the open-air seating area like hundred-euro notes in the back room at the Casino de Monte-Carlo, for the first time, I had to carry my coffee and beignets to the table myself. New Orleans dining is as much about hospitality as food and drink, and here was a city culinary landmark behaving like a McDonald’s with a great pastry chef.
I was in town for my high school reunion, and as I swatted sugar off my pants, I considered how the old town is now kind of as it was and kind of not. My family's stone modernist house, across from Lake Ponchartrain, had been torn down by a football player who had bought it; an imperious mansion in miniature now stood in its place.
