Recently in Coffee Talk Category
Of course I had to buy it with a streetcar on the front!
6325 Elysian Fields Ave
New Orleans, LA 70122
(504) 284-7878
(Not to be confused with Cafe Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street)
The location has some fond memories for me. In the 1970s, the place was Luigi's Pizza Parlor. In the 1990s, it was a Bud's Broiler. The Bud's closed just before the storm, sign on the door said they lost the lease. Lafitte's opened in this location last year.
This was my second visit to Lafitte's. We went for dinner after one of my kid's band concerts about a month ago. I had one of their combo deli sandwiches with ham, pastrami, and roast beef. It was good, but way overkill in terms of mixing the meats. Kept it simple this trip, with the hot sausage po-boy you see above.
If a place uses Patton's hot sausage patties for their po-boys, I'm all over it. There's just nothing better for a hot sausage po-boy. Next trip, though, I'll tell them to leave off the fries. They were good, and I don't need those calories.
Service was excellent. I bought my computer in, so I could do some writing while I ate. The waiter saw my HP tx1419 boot Ubuntu, and we immediately got into a discussion about Gutsy and Hardy. He had some trouble upgrading to HH, and we compared notes. It's the sort of thing one encounters at a restaurant near a college campus.
Lafittes is open early for breakfast, and closes at 10pm nightly. They have an espresso machine, so they're a coffee house as well as a sandwich place. They also do the breakfast menu all day on Saturday and Sunday, for those who want a weekend brunch. Give 'em a try if you're out near UNO.
Then, when I stopped at Cafe Charlie (9 E. 40th St.) to pick up some sushi, I saw these:
I had already bought the Starbucks cookies, but these look pretty good as well. :-)
I love it when a chain place figures out it's best to play by the local rules.
CC's Community Coffee House on Esplanade Avenue in FSJ
I know, picking on Greta from Kiss My Gumbo is like shooting fish in a barrel. Still, shooting fish in a barrel can be fun on occasion. Greta's currently in Boston, and musing about coffee, discussing the comparative virtues of CC's and Dunkin Donuts:
OK CC's, listen up!!! Time to get real! You need to copy the DD drive-thru model, hence sticking one about every 10 feet in Louisiana. Maybe join with a local pastry shop or better yet, a healthful snack company (can't think of one off the top of my head) and plow forward with the dream of making the world CC's addicts. I am not a Starbuck's fan (Bucky's) as the bitter after-taste is yuck. I think you can do it CC's - come on, worth a team try!!! If nothing else, do it in LA and beat DD to the punch!
OK, a quick check of Teh Google shows there are four CC's Coffee House locations in Mandeville/Covington, and one in Slidell, so even a north shore person like Greta has access to the chain. That's what makes me wonder how she's missed the fact that there's a case full of John Folse pastries in every CC's. They even sell king cake by the slice during Carnival season. When the kiddo got home from his trip to see The Mouse on Monday morning, I took him to PJ's to get a cinnamon roll (and so I could caffeinate), and he announced that he prefers CC's cinnamon rolls. They also do a brisk bagel business, which is the stock-in-trade of most DD shops in Greater Boston. Up there, they really should change the name of the chain to "Dunkin Bagels." There was one time when the DD right across the street from Park Street Station by Boston Common was actually out of glazed donuts at 9am, but still had trays full of bagels.
But I digress from the business at hand. Back to this quote. I guess Greta doesn't get to Metairie much, so she's never seen the drive-thru line at the CC's on Vets before. Other than that location, though, I'm OK with CC's not having drive-up windows. After all, where the heck would you put one at the Esplanade location? Or on Rue Royale, for that matter?
Then there's the coffee itself. One of the reasons that New Orleanians often don't like to travel is because of the coffee. CC's "New Orleans Blend" is red-bag Community Coffee with chicory. I should be able to stop there, since Greta considers herself a "southern transplant" while she's up in Boston, but it looks like she doesn't understand the distinction. Coffee-with-chicory blends like CDM, French Market, and Community, while common in New Orleans, are all but non-existent in other parts of the country. Yankee coffee tastes funny to a Yat because we grew up on chicory. Even Anne Rice gets that in her writing.
Not that DD coffee is bad, mind you, for what it is. I've bought many an extra-large French Vanilla at the DD right off exit #13 on the pike in Natick, MA.
I like baristas and bartenders who realize that a little bit extra in some situations goes a long way...
Photo from the www.bayoucoffeehouse.com
Located at 326 N. Jeff Davis Pkwy in Mid-City, Bayou is a neat little house converted into a cafe. It's very unimposing from the front, but don't let that fool you; there's lots of space inside, and an absolutely gorgeous deck in the back. I've stopped at Bayou several times since school has started back, but I decided to actually eat breakfast there last Friday. I ordered the #1 breakfast, two eggs, bacon, grits, toast, and a cup of coffee. When the gal gave me back my change, I had to look twice--all that was four bucks plus tax, for a whopping outlay of $4.36!Yup, it's their Monday-Friday breakfast special. And it was pretty good. The eggs (over easy, please, were cooked just right, and the bacon was nice and crunchy. The grits were a bit thin, but not terribly so, and the wheat toast was just fine. The coffee was your basic coffee-and-chicory, which needs no introduction or accolades. It's simply wonderful. The atmosphere of the place is very community-oriented. Mid-City is working hard to come back after the storm. While it didn't suffer the total devastation of Lakeview and Da Ninth, parts of Mid-City got 4'-5' of water. City services have been sluggish to return, but the people in the area are busting their butts to bring the neighborhood back. You get that sense of community at Bayou, as people recognize each other, stop and chat for a while, then go on about their day. One of the neatest aspects of Bayou is the building itself. It's a house built on pilings rather than a slab foundation, so the floor creaks and vibrates like all raised houses do. It's a total contrast to a slab-foundation place with antiseptic acoustics.
Come out and support Mid-City businesses, Bayou Coffee House would be a great start! (this article is included in my CanalStreetCar (dot com) weekly newsletter.)
maybe it's just me, but there's something a bit unnerving when a place calls out not only your order for pick-up at the window, but what you ordered as well. "Number Fifty-Four, your sausage-egg-cheese biscuit is ready..."
I can see calling out the contents of the order if someone just isn't picking up, but at least give them a chance to get their food before you announce to the world that the guy at the next table ordered grits with mozzerella cheese.
Puccino's is an Italian coffee shop with two locations in Metairie: one on Veterans and Kent (which is just past Transcontinental) and the other on 17th Street, across from Morning Call and near Lakeside Mall. We went to the location on Veterans yesterday for breakfast.
Puccino's bills itself as a coffee shop, but it's got a full-service kitchen, as is evidenced by their extensive breakfast menu. You order food and/or drink at the counter and pick up your food at the kitchen window when your number is called. Wife ordered their French Toast, while I had the "Classic American Breakfast," which is 3 eggs (any style), bacon or sausage, grits or hash browns, and toast. In addition to food from the kitchen, Puccino's offers a good selection of coffee cake, danish, rolls, and bagels.
The place wasn't all that crowded, so service was pretty quick. I had a large dark roast coffee and Mrs. YatPundit had fresh-squeezed orange juice. Puccino's uses one of those machines where you literally toss whole oranges in the top and it produces juice. We hadn't sat down more than a couple of minutes when they called our number.
Wife's French Toast was pretty good, four slices of wheat toast dipped in a thick, eggy batter, fried up, sprinkled with confectioner's sugar, sliced diagonally in halves, and served with two strips of bacon. That's just how she eats it, so no further additions or changes were needed.
I ordered my eggs over easy and they came back over medium. This isn't a deal-breaker for me; I don't mind them a bit overdone, so long as they're not hard. I ordered sausage and grits for a traditional Southern breakfast. The grits were a good consistency, not runny, and the toast was done just right and lightly buttered.
Of course, a nice atmosphere and good company go a long way in marginalizing any gripes one might have with a meal, and this breakfast was no exception. The tab came to just under $20, and I tipped a couple of bucks on top of that.
What separates a place like Puccino's from a full-service restaurant are the little things. Ordering at the counter, picking up at the window, getting your own silverware, butter, syrup, etc., are all reminders that the beverages are their main product. It's a good compromise, however. The atmosphere is most definitely a step above your average diner, and CC's/Starbucks don't cook a hot meal.
The bottom line: If you're looking for a good, tasty breakfast and you don't mind if you're not waited on at the table, Give Puccino's a whirl. If you need to work a bit, both locations have free Wi-Fi Internet access, so bring your laptop.
Puccino's on Veterans:
they're grouting the tile in the kitchen and den this morning, so Kev and I headed for Wi-Fi land. I saw they do a basic breakfast here, and it wasn't bad. That plate costs $6--three eggs any style, bacon or sausage, grits or hash browns. Grits are one of the things I rarely make at home because I don't have the patience to do them right.
