We started with one of the MUST HAVES, Pork Buns. These are sweet and savory and I have it on good authority they are laced with crack.

Pork Buns

Sun got her MUST HAVE dish, stir-fried noodles with vegetables. These are wonderful, and they fully and completely satisfied Sun.

Noodles

Then we ate some shrimp in tofu that was not as warm as it should have been and totally disappointed. For even more adventure, we opted for the pigs’ feet. My friend LOVED these. Had her boyfriend not been present, I secretly think she’d have married these feet. I did not share her love. So I leave it to you to try it yourself and settle the tie. I found the flavor not well pleasing and worse was the gelatinous texture. Not a good combo in my mouth.

Pigs' Feet

CS got the scallop dish. And DID NOT SHARE IT. So I’ll take that as a Yes, Please, More.

Scallops

Then, to counter the all-too-bad-taste left in my mouth from the pigs’ feet, I went with my other friend’s recommendation, the custard bun. This oddly reminded me of a stuffed king cake, a really, really GOOD stuffed king cake. Added to my always-growing MUST HAVE list. *Sigh*

Custard Buns

Then we had more mainstream dishes, pork puff pastries, sesame buns (yum!), snails (I admit I wasn’t up for these today but the two that ate them enjoyed them), and my favorite: steamed rice wrapped in a lotus leaf.

Pork Puff Pastry

Sesame Buns

Snails

Rice wrapped in Lotus Leaf

And as we were sitting in our respective food comas, enjoying the afterglow of a nice meal spent with good company, the sound of a distant drum was heard. It grew louder and louder and lo! a Dragon Dance had begun to celebrate the Chinese New Year!

They spilled out into the parking area and a crowd formed. Then streamers were pulled. It. Was. AWESOME. We topped it all of with a trip to the Hong Kong Food Market.

Though this requires a trip across the river (and for us, sadly, it also meant the need to use Garmin), it is well worth it.

Haydel’s Bakery adds a ceramic doll to its king cakes. Each year, it’s a different set of dolls. When the Saints won the Superbowl, they had three Saints-themed dolls, including a flying pig. Post Katrina, a Captain Blue Tarp doll and a FEMA trailer float. The dolls are as uniquely New Orleans as the artist who creates them, Alberta Meitin-Graf. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at last year’s Jefferson Parish Library king cake party. (Damn, I love this town!) She’s simply fascinating.

This year’s theme does not disappoint in its nod to Louis Armstrong’s famous expression when he ended his letters: “Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours.” I give you the Red Bean Lady and her Rice-ly Escort carrying a trumpet.

New Orleanians took the most mundane day of the week, Monday, wash day, and of course turned their attention to food. A pot of red beans slowly, cheaply, simmering on the stove as the laundry was done. Even today, with mothers working and not doing wash all day on Mondays, we STILL eat red beans on Monday. It’s like going home again.

Why would you live elsewhere than where Mondays are Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours?

Enjoy Carnival! And king cakes! And if you find a king cake offers you too much sugar, do what I do: tap it into your coffee.

Historically, turtle soup gained popularity with the European explorations of the West Indies, where turtles became an important food resource for sailors and pirates and a luxury item on English tables.

~ New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories, edited by Susan Tucker.

Turtle soup has been a New Orleans dish since, well, New Orleans has been peopled. New Orleans’ turtle soup is different from other regions’ soups by the inclusion of another Louisiana food staple: tomatoes. Elsewhere, turtle soup is a thin brothy soup; in New Orleans, it’s a thick, rich stew-like soup.

Pete learned that although there are as many recipes for Creole Turtle Soup as their are Creole kitchens, all of the recipes had these things in common: turtle meat,veal or beef stock, onions, celery, tomatoes, parsley, thyme, chopped hard boiled eggs, lemon, and sherry.

Pete:

For the soup, I looked at several of the recipes available online. On his website Gumbo Pages, Chuck Taggert had two recipes, from Commander’s Palace and Arnaud’s. I also looked at Galatoire’s cookbook recipe and decided that I liked elements of all three.

I also wanted to make a lot of it to freeze for later and kept that in mind. Most recipes call for one and a half to two pounds of turtle meat, which, I learned, is carried in two-pound packages, frozen, at a few local seafood markets and groceries. It ain’t cheap; the two-pound pack I got in Covington at Pat’s Seafood ran about $30. I’ve heard a lot of people say that most restaurant turtle soup is not made with turtle meat but with veal and after spending that much on meat that isn’t filet mignon I can see why.

Turtle meat package.

Arnaud’s recipe called for both turtle and veal, and since I wanted to make a lot of soup, I also bought two packages of ground veal, which, at $6.00 a pound, seemed quite reasonable.

As far as seasonings go, the recipes were basically the same, although in addition to the onions, celery and garlic Arnaud’s and Commander’s called for, Galatoire’s also called for a lot of bell pepper and paprika — three peppers and a quarter cup of paprika.

Commander’s calls for beef stock, Arnaud’s and Galatoire’s, veal stock. I took the expensive route. Rather than buy a couple quarts of Swanson’s beef broth, we went with frozen veal demi glace from Langenstein’s, at $14.99 per 2-cup package. I figured 4 cups demi cut with 12 cups water would make for a gallon or so of veal stock. I cooked that down a bit for about 30 minutes with bay leaves, thyme, garlic and two tablespoons–not a quarter cup–of paprika, before adding everything else and it worked out perfectly.

The “everything else” consisted of the turtle meat, veal, vegetables, tomato puree, salt, pepper, hot sauce, lemons and sherry.

I’ve never dealt with turtle before and if any of this required cleaning a dead one, we wouldn’t be here today. Not that getting what was labeled “boneless turtle meat” was a piece of cake. Boneless though it was, there was an awful lot of silverskin and connective tissue that needed trimming, which, with my unskilled knife work, cost about about a half-pound of lost meat.

Here’s the method.

1) Have someone else (Nolanotes) prep all the veggies for you. It ended up being a lot more than needed, but I was thinking big when telling her what quantities to buy and chop.

Nolanotes-chopped veggies.

2) Brown the turtle meat. A little salt and pepper on the meat, a little vegetable oil in a hot pot, and brown the turtle meat on each side, just like if you were making grillades or whatever. After cooling a bit, I chopped the meat up in about 1/4-inch pieces.

Turtle meat browned and chopped.

3) Brown the veal. Same thing, it was ground already and I just browned it and put it in the bowl with the turtle until the stock and veggies were ready. I taste-tested some of  the browned turtle, which tasted more like beef than anything else. Alligator I find to taste like dry chicken with a fishy aftertaste and don’t care for it too much. Turtle tasted much better.

4) Make the stock. Next time I’ll probably start with some boxed stock. This time, though, it was $30 worth of frozen demi glace which I melted down and cut with water, added some bay leaves, dried thyme and oregano, salt and pepper, garlic, one lemon cut into quarters and the paprika and simmered all that while I…

Demi glace from Langenstein's. Expensive, but worked well and we didn't have to boil veal bones for two days.

5) Made the roux. All the recipes called for making a separate butter roux to add later on to thicken the soup. Two sticks butter, one cup flour, cook until light brown and set aside.

6) Sweat the veggies. I ended up measuring out two cups each of chopped onion, celery, bell pepper and one cup green onion. Sweated with a little butter until clear, then I added 3 cups of canned tomato puree to the veggies and let that simmer for ten minutes.

7) This is some really involved stuff. I’m taking a break now.

And….back.

8 ) Add the tomato and veggie mixture to the stock and 1/2 cup of sherry. Get it back to a boil and simmer 10 minutes.

9) Add the browned turtle and veal meat and all the juices that were in the bottom of the bowl. Bring it back to a boil, let simmer 20 minutes.

10) Chop up the boiled eggs and add the roux. WHAT BOILED EGGS??? Alright, that was another step that Nolanotes had taken care of before I started. Chop up three boiled eggs, add to the pot. The roux was sitting in the pot and the excess butter floated to the top. I just poured it off and put the browned flour paste into the pot. It thickened fairly well, I probably could have used another 1/2 cup. Bring to boil and simmer 10 minutes more.

11) Taste and adjust for salt, pepper and heat. I added a few shakes of Crystal. I would have added Tabasco instead but couldn’t find it.

That’s it. Pour in bowl, splash on some more sherry and some more chopped eggs if you like.

Bowl of Pontchartrain Pete's Creole Turtle Soup.

A note on the sherry: I used Hartley and Gibson’s Amontillado from Martin Wine Cellar. I had chosen a Manzanilla but consulted with Steve Perret, who suggested a nuttier, more full-bodied, Amontillado for use with turtle soup. That’s why it pays to shop where people know their stuff. It was inexpensive, too–only about $12 for the bottle.

Hartley & Gibson Amontillado Sherry.

And Saints fans far and wide came down like a ton of bricks about the insensitivity of Chicago Bears fans.

Until it was astutely pointed out that this sign is pro-Saints. Note the black and gold fleur de lis around the pathetic frowny-faced depicted Bears fan, and the sign-holder’s Saints shirt.

Apparently the sign was in response to this, a real sign from a real Bears fan in 2006:

What struck me today is how quick New Orleanians were to get our collective panties in a bunch all over again about a sign referencing Katrina.  If there was any doubt of the trauma that Katrina inflicted upon New Orleanians, let this incident erase it.

There’s something fascinatingly psychological going on here. It wasn’t one or two New Orleanians that misread this sign. It was, well, every one of them that initially looked at it. It took someone NOT from the area to point it out. And then for us to look again. And SEE.

My personal reaction was immediate. I read that little Bears fan’s shirt and saw red. That was it. I didn’t look further to see the facial expression of that Bears fan, or the black and gold fleurs. My anger rose in me as quickly as if I’d been slapped on the face. Why? Why didn’t I take in the whole image?

The reason is, I believe, that Katrina is still an open wound. And one that is collectively personal to us on the Gulf Coast. We are defensive about it STILL—the devastation; the bad government response; the judgmental SOBs telling us we were stupid to rebuild.

Bottom line? How DARE anyone EVER tease New Orleanians about such a tragedy. Yes, we can laugh and live and move on. But we will NEVER forget. And we will NEVER allow others to belittle what Katrina means to this region.

So forgive me, and other New Orleanians, for misreading this sign. Proof again that we are all too human.

Leah Chase has single-handedly put Holy Thursday on the New Orleans’ culinary calendar. Each year she makes umpteen gallons of her famous gumbo to serve one day a year.

As stated on Dooky’s menu:

This dish was prepared by the Creoles on Holy Thursday as the last big “meat” meal before Easter Sunday. This gumbo, like all others, was prepared with much labor and love.

Dishes such as Gumbo Z”Herbes were prepared not only to satisfy one’s taste and hunger, but also because there were superstitions attached to them. It is said, that if Gumbo Z’Herbes is eaten on this particular day it will assure the person of as many new friends as there are greens used in the gumbo. The number of greens used must be uneven: 5-7-9 or 11.

Here at Dooky’s, we use nine (9): mustards, collards, red swiss chard, beet tops, cabbage, carrot tops, spinach, kale, and watercress.

In times gone by, women could be seen with their knives and bags all along the neutral grounds digging up pepper grass, which had a lemony tart taste, to add to their gumbo. Now, in place of pepper grass, we use watercress or daikon tops.

I’ve seen Chef Chase on the news on Holy Thursday for years discussing this very gumbo. My expectations going in were great. So great, in fact, I worried they’d not be met. I need not have been concerned; my expectations were blown away. I suppose I expected something more familiar to smothered greens than a gumbo — some sort of a thin broth with lots of long leaves with a full-bodied taste of the greens. This is NOT that dish.

Chef Chase’s green gumbo is, first and foremost, a gumbo. It is rich. The greens are finely chopped, not long and leafy.  The dish pulls out from the greens their natural peppery-ness; you won’t be adding Tabasco. It is also full of meat: tender chicken and various sausages. I don’t know what magical things happen in that kitchen to bring all these green leafys together to in fact taste like a gumbo, and an amazing one at that, and, frankly, part of what makes it so special is not knowing. You taste the many deep flavor profiles. Each spoonful carries with it to your taste-buds the knowledge that it’s been cooked slowly and for a very long time. And all that love the menu says goes into preparing this dish, it is strongly felt for a long time after the bowl is empty.

This is a meal I will never forget. It has a place in the top three of my life. Thank you, Chef Chase, for that.

We visited three: St. Louis Cathedral (and joined the crowd for the meal prepared for the masses); St. Francis X. Seelos Church in the Bywater (hearing the name of St. Francis X. Seelos always makes me think of St. Mary’s Assumption which in turn makes me sad about its closing), and St. Joseph Church on Tulane Avenue (those pics of the heads at the base of the columns really drew me to them today).

My fave of the day? Easy–the Louis Prima memory cake at the Cathedral.

Enjoy the pics!

[Show as slideshow]

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I am always leery of fiction set in New Orleans, especially the French Quarter. It is such a fine line to write about the inhabitants of the Quarter without getting clichéd.

My fears were unwarranted. As soon as I started it, I loved it. And as each page turned, I loved it more. And when I got to the end, I wanted more.

I love that Lummis describes B. Sammy Singleton’s cat as I would describe mine, thusly: “Even my cat Rowan had decided she’d rather take her chances as a scavenging outdoor orphan than reside under the same roof with me.” I gotta repeat that: a scavenging outdoor orphan. That is SO my cat.

I love this partial description of one of the coffee shops chronicled in the book:

Next: A host of plastic dolls indiscriminately integrated into the décor. Because while I suppose there’s something “New Orleans” about dolls, in this case we’re not talking about anything as interesting as the Anne Rice collection or Mardi Gras king cake babies (the latter of which are additionally thought-provoking in that people occasionally choke to death on them). Nor is there anything even remotely attractive about the dolls now under consideration. No, these are nothing more than poor-quality cast-offs that never should have been mass-produced in the first place, with missing limbs and crayoned faces and torn-out hair, the kind passed over by desperately poor children in thrift stores. Apparently somebody dropped a tab of acid, made a run on Thrift City, raided the kindergarten supplies aisle at Wal-Mart, and went to work on these babes in a way that would do Timothy Leary proud, nailing them to the walls in a final manic burst of adrenalin before lapsing into unconsciousness.

I love Lummis’ description of New Orleans as Sammy sits in Jackson Square reconsidering his decision to have moved from New York City:

Sure, the place has its share of problems (you know a city’s corrupt when top school officials embezzle millions from their own pitifully impoverished districts). But just as there’s something to be said for living in the City that Never Sleeps, there’s something downright sublime about residing in a town that peddles itself as the City That Care Forgot, where Time does business in pajamas and takes frequent catnaps. And undeniably, New Orleans has made the concept of laissez-faire into an art form dating back at least to the Civil War, when it became the first major city of the Deep South to be occupied by Union forces, which remained throughout the last three years of the war. The alternative, I suppose, would have been for the citizens of the Paris of the South to fight back. But as the ships of General Farragut came up the Mississippi in 1862, the closest the people of New Orleans came to taking up arms was to stand alongside the levee brandishing their parasols and shaking their fists.

My hands-down favorite part was the description of Sammy’s first visit to St. Louis Cathedral. When I was reading this section, I was putting Sun down for a nap and she asked me to read to her. So I read her what I was reading. And maybe that act of reading that particular passage aloud is what made it so powerful. But when I finished the last words of that chapter, I had to stop. I had a frog in my throat and tears in my eyes.

The mistake that could be made about this book is that it’s merely fluff: A non-native gay man’s exploits in coffee shops. It starts out highly-caffeinated and colorful. But Lummis is a researcher. You know that Sammy’s trips to the Historic New Orleans Collection were also Lummis’. Not being a local, Lummis earns his right to write about the city not just by having lived here for several years but also by learning her history.

And although this book is in parts dark, and some of the history difficult to read, the honesty with which Lummis writes carries you through. He is a gifted writer, and this gem is a gift to New Orleans. Now do yourself a favor and buy it as a gift for yourself. You can buy it at various locations on the website, or at Octavia Books if you are uptown or Faubourg Marigny Art & Books if you are downtown.

The good news is that this is just the first of three installments to this one novel. So there’s more coming!

Cable lived among, and wrote about, the Creoles in Louisiana.  He was one of the first authors to write fiction set in New Orleans and about her peoples.  He even captures the dialect of the Creoles.

Where Cable really, really shines are his descriptions.  His attention to detail in describing buildings in the French Quarter, many of which are still standing today, is magnificent.  (For a double treat, get your hands on Stanley Clisby Arthur’s “Old New Orleans: Walking Tours of the French Quarter”–Arthur takes your hand and walks you down Royal and Bourbon stopping at all the many notable buildings, including the very real inspirations of Cable.)

It was very picturesque, the Rue Royale. The rich and poor met together. The locksmith’s swinging key creaked next door to the bank; across the way, crouching mendicant-like in the shadow of a great importing house, was the mud laboratory of the mender of broken combs. Light balconies overhung the rows of showy shops and stores open for trade this Sunday morning, and pretty Latin faces of the higher class glanced over their savagely pronged railings upon the passers below.  At some windows hung lace curtains, flannel duds at some, and at others only the scraping and sighing one-hinged shutter groaning toward Paris after its neglectful master.

~”Posson Jone’.”

A few steps from the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, brings you to and across Canal Street, the central avenue of the city, and to that corner where the flower-women sit at the inner and outer edges of the arcaded sidewalk, and make the air sweet with their fragrant merchandise.  The crowd — and if it is near the time of the carnival it will be great — will follow Canal Street.

But you turn instead, into the quiet, narrow way which a lover of Creole antiquity, in fondness for a romantic past, is still prone to call the Rue Royale. You will pass a few restaurants, a few auction-rooms, a few furniture warehouses, and will hardly realize that you have left behind you the activity and clatter of a  city of merchants before you find yourself in a region of architectural decrepitude, where an ancient and foreign-seeming domestic life, in second stories, overhangs the ruins of a former commercial prosperity, and upon every thing has settled down a long sabbath of decay. . . .

~”Madame Delphine.”

Cables’ description of NOLA characters are equally as satisfying.

All New Orleans, at least all Creole New Orleans, knew, and yet did not know, the dear little Doctor.  So gentle, so kind, so skilful, so patient, so lenient; so careless of the rich and so attentive to the poor; a man, all in all, such as, should you once love him, you would love him forever. So very learned, too, but with apparently no idea of how to show himself to his social profit — two features much more smiled at than respected, not to say admired, by a people remote from the seats of learning, and spending most of their esteem upon animal heroisms and exterior display.

~”Madame Délicieuse.”

Kristian Koppig was a rosy-faced, beardless young Dutchman. He was one of that army of gentlemen who, after the purchase of Louisiana, swarmed from all parts of the commercial world, over the mountains of Franco-Spanish exclusiveness, like the Goths over the Pyrenees, and settled down in New Orleans to pick up their fortunes, with the diligence of hungry pigeons.  He may have been a German; the distinction was too fine for Creole haste and disrelish.

~”‘Tite Poulette.”

Cable writes of mysteries afoot and tales of unrequited love; Cathedral priests and mulattoes; immigrants and landlords. He spins yarns of ghost-sightings and decades-old secrets; trickery and tom-foolery. And all the while, he writes with love — love of New Orleans and her then-not-unlike-today melting-pot denizens.

Anyone attempting to amass a NOLA library must have this collection on his shelf.  And its many locations mentally noted in his head for when a trip downtown ensues.

As the name states, this book is dark. Many of the contributing authors write mystery or crime novels; many of the stories involve crimes and the NOPD.

It is a beautiful night. Despite this shit here. Sweet and soft, balmy. Dark. I know that sounds odd to say. The night is dark. But it is. Here in New Orleans, it is really dark. One or two things I know about New Orleans. The nights are darker here. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I’m not talking about human darkness. About evil, or shit.  I’m talking about the quality of the night. The feel. I been everywhere, all over this country. The Gulf of Mexico. Jamaica. I’m telling you. I seen a lot of darkness, stayed up a lot of nights. It’s just a fact. The nights are darker here.  Palpably darker. And thicker. You can reach out and stroke the darkness. Touch it. Run your hand over it, like somebody’s skin, or a piece of soft cloth. Got a soft feel to it, New Orleans nights. The nights are always softer here. No matter what else has happened. No matter what kind of horror show. The nights are always soft. I can’t tell you how many times, how many blood-soaked crime scenes I been privy to, how many murders. I just stepped away, stepped outside, into the night, and been struck by how thick and soft and sweet and downright dark the nights are here. Struck dumb. It’s a mystery.

Eric Overmyer’s Marigny Triangle.

There were stories that did nothing for me. I read them, and I immediately forgot them. And I am grateful that such stories were, in fact, short.

There were stories I devoured and wished wouldn’t have ended so quickly. One that sucked me in and left me wanting more was Laura Lippman’s Pony Girl.

Back to the girl. Everybody’s eyes kept going back to that girl. She was long and slinky, in a champagne-colored body stocking. And if it had been just the body stocking, if she had decided to be Eve to some boy’s Adam, glued a few leaves to the right parts, she wouldn’t have been so . . . disturbing. Funny how that goes, how pretending to be naked can be less inflaming than dressing up like something that’s not supposed to be sexy at all. No, this one, she had a pair of pointy ears high in her blond hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail. She had pale white-and-beige cowboy boots, the daintiest things you ever seen, and — this was what made me fear for her — a real tail of horsehair pinned to the end of her spine, swishing back and forth as she danced.  Swish. Swish. Swish. And although she was skinny by my standards, she managed the trick of being skinny with curves, so that tail jutted out just so. Swish. Swish. Swish. I watched her, and I watched all the other men watching her, and I did not see how anyone could keep her safe if she stayed here, dancing into the night.

Another that charmed me was James Nolan’s Open Mike, appealing to the Raymond Chandler fan in me:

I made it to the Dragon’s Den on a sticky Tuesday evening, with a woolly sky trapping humidity inside the city like a soggy blanket. It had been trying to rain for two weeks. The air was always just about to clear up but never did, as if old Mother Nature were working on her orgasm. I carried an umbrella, expecting a downpour. The place was right next to the river, and hadn’t seen a drop of paint since I last walked in the door thirty years ago, with all my hair and a young man’s cocky swagger. A whistle was moaning as a freight train clacked along the nearby tracks, and the huge live oak out front shrouded the crumbling façade in a tangle of shadows. An old rickshaw was parked outside, where an elfin creature with orange hair sat scribbling in a notebook. He shot me a look through thick black plastic glasses, and then went back to writing.

There were many that spoke of revenge and redemption; that defined loss and sorrow:

Here it was, two weeks after the funeral, and only now had Rita finally been able to summon the strength to clean out Sammy’s closet.

When she pulled the closet door open, Sammy’s scent assaulted her. She buckled at the knees and had to grab the door frame with one hand and push hard against the knob with the other just to keep from falling. It was like Sammy was hiding in the closet and had come charging out when she opened it.

Kalumu Ya Salaam’s All I Could Do Was Cry.

And others that addressed the resiliency of New Orleanians, such as Maureen Tan’s Muddy Pond:

Another helicopter flew overhead, its clatter magnified as the sound bounced off the swamped houses below. It was on its way, Sonny was certain, to pluck unfortunates from their rooftops. To rescue people whose lives were endangered. But because that did not describe Sonny’s situation, it didn’t occur to him to signal for help. He didn’t need rescuing. As others had evacuated, he’d prepared. He had food and water, the company of his cats, a battery-powered radio, and a dry attic. No matter if it took a week or two or even three, Sonny knew that eventually the water would recede. Then his neighbors would return.

Then there were others that glared the light on all too true facts about the city:

Chad worked as a waiter in a Quarter restaurant, and from all appearances, never seemed to have any friends. Who would miss him? He wouldn’t show up for work, they’d write him off — people tend to come and go quickly in New Orleans, especially now — and that would be the end of it. Unless a family member missed him, filed a missing-persons report, and really pressed the cops — which wouldn’t do much good, unless his family was wealthy and powerful.

You have to hate New Orleans sometimes.

Greg Herren’s Annunciation Shotgun.

In all, there are eighteen short stories; ten set pre-Katrina and the others touching on the storm in one way or another.  In each story, New Orleans is as much a character as any of her denizens created in these stories. All of the stories are dark. But, like it or not, they all have components of truth in them of what New Orleans is about and who her people are. The truth isn’t always pretty. But this group of collaborators sure makes it worthwhile to learn just a little bit more about the dark underbelly that can be New Orleans.

For starters, they offer four flavors, cinnamon, praline, strawberries and cream, and chocolate.

These cakes are not as “mini” as the other contendors, nor as cheap.  But they have every right to be in this fight.

I tasted all but the chocolate.  The appearance, texture and flavor of the three I tried were spot on.  The certainly taste the most like their regular-sized counterparts.  What makes these cakes shine is that they are perfectly flaky and perfectly moist.

Out of the three, my favorite was the praline one.  I am a real traditionalist when it comes to flavoring my kingcakes, so for me to like the cinnamon but prefer the praline one, that is saying a lot for the praline cake.

My one critique of the Butcher’s kingcakes, and it is my general criticism of kingcakes overall, is that they are too sweet.  That white icing coupled with the granulated sugar–there is an actual crunch of sugar as you bite down–causes my teeth to hurt after just a few bites.

So, where do the Butcher’s kingcakes fall in the Mini Kingcake Wars with Hubigs and La Dolce Nola?  At the top.  These cakes, in a blind test, taste the most like their regular counterparts.  In fact, these are better than many kingcakes being offered in traditional bakeries all over the city.

Get downtown for this one.  You won’t regret it.

UPDATE: I’ve now tasted Cochon’s chocolate mini kingcake too.  I still prefer the praline one best.   The chocolate is not a very sweet chocolate, and I like that about it.  But the overwhelming taste is still cinammon.  I don’t think they need to ramp up the chocolate flavor but rather tone down the cinammon to let the chocolate be more of the star.