Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005 - (Page 55)

THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CONSUMES ABOUT two or three cups of coffee a day, while the iced-tea drinking South consumes even less. New Orleans, always removed from the rest of the South, consumes an average of more than four cups of coffee every day. Although one of the most coffee-conscious places in the country, New Orleans has always been too small to absorb the gargantuan quantities of coffee handled by its port and most coffee coming here is sent to other areas for roasting and were Lawler’s on Camp Street in the 1830s, Ruby’s on Common Street in the 1850s and the Empire on Jackson at the levee in the 1860s. One of the most famous was the Gem at 127 (modern address) Royal Street. It opened in an old Spanish mansion soon after the Louisiana Purchase. Its success was immediate and was a popular meeting place. Louisiana’s first American governor, William C.C. Claiborne, frequented it. In later years, when it was a restaurant and cof fee saloon, the first parade of the Mystic Krewe of Comus in 1857 Shreveport’s Cuban was planned there. A legendary coffee venue in Coffee Mills, left, New Orleans has long been the undoubtedly French Market which had numerwished to entice ous coffee stalls during the 19th women buyers with its Suffragette century. Some were little more Coffee and Chicory than a pot on a charcoal brazier, while others served pastries or back in 1916. grinding. The French Market Beginning about the 1960s, Coffee and Chicory coffee consumption began label from the declining in the United States, as early 20th century young people drank more soft at the right uses a drinks and teas. In spite of this, drawing of the in 1966 coffee still made up more French Market, than one-third of all imports to which is still New Orleans when 523 million instantly recognizpounds of coffee entered the able to contempoport. Most of it came from Brazil, rary shoppers. although additional amounts came from 20 other Latin American countries and a growing number of African ones. In 1987 (when New Orleans had surpassed New York as the country’s top coffee destination) more than 25 percent of all American coffee imports came to New Orleans, and in 1995 the figure reached 27.8 percent — well up from 17.3 percent three decades earlier in 1966. By the 1980s exotic and gourmet coffees were being developed to compete in the marketplace. New Orleans has continued to see its own roasting and wholesaling of coffee expand with the establishment of the microroaster Coffee Roasters of New Orleans in 1983 and the New Orleans Coffee Company with its CoolBrew Concentrates based on an old cold filtration process. As gourmet coffees have expanded in popularity, New Orleans has also seen a proliferation of coffeehouses such as PJ’s, Community Coffee’s CC’s, Rue de la Course, and others. This has helped make coffee drinking chic alongside the worldwide expansion of Starbuck’s. Coffeehouses are not new to New Orleans since they have long been a part of the city scene. Among many even a meal along with a cup of coffee from urns atop tin heaters with sugar dispensed from pewter-lidded bowls. Probably the best known establishment today is Café du Monde which dates to 1862, while another famous old timer, Morning Call, moved to Metairie in the 1970s. The coffee stalls were a must-do for tourists, but they were beloved by locals — market men kept themselves fortified all day long with coffee breaks, and opera goers dressed in their finery usually made a trip to the market for late night coffee. In 1916 Catherine Cole in The Story of the Old French Market, a promotional piece for the New Orleans Coffee Company’s French Market Coffee, wrote that at the market entrance there was a coffee stall which, “instantly gives one the impression that the keynote of the whole French Market is coffee. Coffee is in the very air ” The brewing of fine coffee has long been an important part of life in the Crescent City where coffee has been both an art and a thriving industry long before anyone can remember. LCV ———————————————— ———————————————— John T. Magill is curator and head of Research Services with The Historic New Orleans Collection. Fall 2005/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 55

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005 Contents Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina and Rita Tabasco: Edmund McIlhenny and the Birth of a Louisiana Pepper Sauce Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums New Orleans’ Coffee Connection No Man’s Land Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by Roy Blount, Jr. )

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Fall 2005

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