Café Du Monde

Café Du Monde has been serving beignets and café au lait from the same French Market location since 1862, and it has never closed — not for holidays, not for hurricanes (it reopened after Katrina within weeks), and not for the small matter of the menu having exactly three items: beignets, café au lait, and orange juice. The simplicity is the point. The beignets arrive three to a plate, buried under an avalanche of powdered sugar that immediately transfers to your clothes, your face, and the table, and the chicory coffee is strong enough to justify a 24-hour operation.

The experience is inseparable from the location — an open-air pavilion at the edge of Jackson Square where the Mississippi River is visible through the levee, street musicians play within earshot, and the queue (there is always a queue) moves faster than it looks. The café has no walls, which means the summer heat and the occasional rain are part of the package, but the absence of air conditioning is what keeps the atmosphere authentic rather than sanitised.

The beignets themselves are simple — fried dough, powdered sugar, nothing else — but the execution matters. They arrive hot, the exterior crisp, the interior airy, and the sugar sticks to the residual oil in a coating that's halfway between doughnut and funnel cake. The café au lait, made with chicory (a New Orleans tradition dating to the Civil War, when coffee shortages led to cutting it with roasted chicory root), has a slightly bitter, earthy flavour that cuts through the sweetness of the beignets. It's the best $5 breakfast in America.