Since 1862, Café Du Monde's open-air coffee stand has been serving beignets and café au lait from this very spot, and it may be the most beloved food destination in New Orleans. The menu has barely changed in 160 years: hot beignets dusted so heavily with powdered sugar that clouds of white drift across the table with every movement, paired with strong chicory coffee cut with hot milk. The chicory tradition began during the Civil War blockade, when New Orleanians mixed roasted chicory root with coffee to stretch their supplies, and discovered they preferred the darker, slightly bitter result.
Café Du Monde is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, closing only for Christmas and the occasional hurricane. The green-and-white striped awning shelters tables that face the river and the square; at three in the morning the crowd here can be as lively as at noon. The beignets themselves are French in origin — fried dough is hardly a New World invention — but the particular version served here, square, pillowy, and architecturally unstable with powdered sugar, has become the defining taste of the city.
Before New Orleans, beignets were a French pastry; after New Orleans, they became an American institution. The powdered sugar on your shirt is mandatory.