The Port of New Orleans makes New Orleans a coffee town.

By Denise Trowbridge, New Orleans Gourmet, Winter 2003


New Orleans is the original American coffee town, at least according to Stephen Hogan, the roastmaster for French Market Coffee, the 113-year-old company best known for its bright red cans of coffee and chicory. "We have the highest consumption of coffee per capita in the United States," he says. "We drink twice as much as Seattle."

Coffee is not taken for granted here, since locals cling white-knuckled to culinary traditions-such as oysters in R months and café au lait with beignets day or night. Dark French roasts flavored with chicory have been a staple at the city's restaurants and kitchen tables for generations. But location, not just habit, has fed the city's voracious appetite for coffee.

New Orleans is the largest coffee port in the United States and has been since the late 19th-century. More than 22,000 tons of green coffee from South America, Asia and Africa pass through the Port of New Orleans every month, with most going to local large-scale roasting plants such as Folger's and Sara Lee. Consequently, the ubiquitous coffee bean has had a significant economic impact, and a culinary and cultural one, too. As the coffee industry evolves, so does New Orleans.

"New Orleans and specialty coffee are a natural fit," says Bill Siemers, owner of Orleans Coffee Exchange. Glenn de Gruy, CEO of New Orleans Coffee Works agrees. "Coffee has been part of the fabric of the community for generations," de Gruy says. "The next logical step for the evolution of New Orleans, just like the market, is into the specialty coffee business."

Grandmother's cup of coffee and chicory, while it will never go out of style, is moving over to make room for new, complex flavors and blends produced locally by a small group of specialty micro-roasters. "Younger people are demanding blends and new flavors," says George Bradbury, the route sales manager for French Market Coffee. "Our grandparents drank the same kind of coffee all of their lives, but this generation is more mobile and they want sophisticated tastes."

New Orleans micro-roasters are meeting that demand. They can literally drive to the Port of New Orleans and purchase high-quality beans, then roast and deliver them to thirsty customers the same day, making it easy to find a good cup of a locally-roasted coffee in nearly every cafe and restaurant in town. The brisk tourist trade is putting them on the national gourmet coffee map, too. "One of the things people enjoy when they visit New Orleans is the coffee. It plays such an important role in our cuisine," Siemers says "When they go home, they want to bring the New Orleans taste with them, so they buy local coffee. It's a natural fit."

But, despite the demand for new blends and varieties of roasts, New Orleanians still cling to gastronomic tradition. "We're true to our roots. We like full-bodied, complex tastes," says de Gruy. "New Orleans is simply a dark-roasted city."