Café du Monde has served nearly the same menu from its open air stand on Decatur Street in the French Quarter since 1862: dark roasted coffee with chicory, black or au lait, and beignets, plus milk, hot chocolate, and orange juice. It sits at the upriver end of the French Market in the old Butcher’s Hall, on ground where the Spanish built in 1791 and the city rebuilt in 1813 after an 1812 hurricane. The chicory came from Civil War blockades that forced Creoles to stretch coffee, and the square, hollow, sugar buried beignet came with Acadian migrants from Nova Scotia.

At midnight on August 27, 2005, the normally round the clock cafe closed ahead of Hurricane Katrina. The building took only minor damage, and it reopened on October 19, 2005, with more than 100 news outlets presenting it as a sign of the city’s recovery. Abroad, the Duskin Company opened Japanese locations in 1990, peaking at 32 before closing the last ones in early 2018. Meanwhile Vietnamese refugees on the Gulf Coast mailed the orange tins to relatives nationwide, making the coffee a staple of Asian grocery stores.

• Chicory root contains inulin, which caramelizes when roasted into a dark, bitter, chocolate like flavor with no caffeine.
• A beignet’s wet yeast dough puffs with steam in hot oil, leaving a hollow center.
• Japanese outlets added seasonal desserts and new toppings, straying from the 1862 menu.
• Rival Morning Call, in the French Market since 1870, moved to the suburbs in 1974.
• The cafe appears in James Lee Burke and Anne Rice novels, the film Chef, Treme, and a 1974 Jimmy Buffett song.