Café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans 

 

Café du Monde is a coffee shop on Decatur Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is best known for its café au lait and its French-style beignets. In the New Orleans style, the coffee is blended with chicory.

 

The location at the lower end of the French Market was established in 1862. For over a century it was one of two similar coffee and beignets places in the market, the other being Morning Call, which was established in 1870 and moved out of the Old French Market in 1974 to the urban area of Metairie, Louisiana.

 

Starting in the late 1980s, Café du Monde opened up additional locations in shopping malls. While it once expanded as far away as Atlanta, Georgia, in recent years the company has restricted its operation to the greater New Orleans metro area. Its foods are certified kosher.

 

It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for Christmas Day and days when "the occasional hurricane passes too close to New Orleans",and is patronized by both locals and visitors. Due to Hurricane Katrina, the shop closed at midnight on August 27, 2005. Although it suffered only minor damage, it remained closed for nearly two months. Owners took advantage of the low traffic time afterwards to refurbish the eating areas and kitchens. The French Quarter location reopened on October 19, 2005, to national media attention.

 

In popular culture

 

Café du Monde has appeared in multiple fictional depictions of the city including the "Dave Robicheaux" series of novels by James Lee Burke, and novels by John Connolly, Poppy Z. Brite, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Anne Rice, Kresley Cole and Nancy A. Collins. The café as it appeared in 1955 can be seen in an extended sequence in the William Castle film, New Orleans Uncensored; and as it appeared shortly before Hurricane Katrina in two scenes in the 2003 movie Runaway Jury. The business is also immortalized in the Jimmy Buffett song, "The Wino and I Know."In a 2009 episode of Man v. Food centered in New Orleans, the restaurant is visited by Adam Richman.