Café du Monde
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Photo courtesy of Jason Perlow
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 upper 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, established in 1870 and for political reasons forced out of the Old French Market in 1974 and moved to the suburb 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 and a single location in Baton Rouge, Lousiana. Café du Monde locations can also be found throughout Japan.
It is open 24 hours, 7 days a week, except for Christmas Day (and days when "the occasional hurricane passes too close to New Orleans," according to the shop's web site), and is patronized by both locals and visitors.
Hurricane Katrina did, indeed, pass too close to New Orleans — the shop closed at midnight on August 27, 2005, due to the city's mandatory evacuation. Although it suffered only minor damage, it remained closed for nearly two months. Owners took advantage of the low traffic time when New Orleans was gradually repopulating to refurbish and upgrade the kitchen. The French Quarter location re-opened on October 19, 2005 to national media attention.
The café features in two prominent scenes in the movie Runaway Jury. In the first scene characters played by Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz meet inside during a busy lunch hour, while in the second scene Gene Hackman and John Cusack's characters meet close by.
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