Coffee Call

So, uh… directly after I ate my snack of Southern Candymakers, we headed out to Coffee Call, a local coffee place that Jenn frequents. She’d told me prior to my trip that there was another beignet place, closer to her, that if I liked, I “could have beignets every day” that I was there. She also mentioned that they did them slightly different from Cafe du Monde; aside from regular beignets, they offer what they call “beignet fingers” which is basically the beignet dough sliced into ‘fingers’ before being fried.

For research purposes – to properly compare, you understand? – I ordered both. The above is actually an off-menu size of beignet fingers, called the ‘single finger’ because Jenn informed me that a small order is “enough to feed a family” and while I like fried dough, that much fried dough might put me in a coma.

First, the beignets: not quite as much of a snowdrift of powdered sugar this time. The beignets themselves were a little oily, slightly denser than I anticipated, and doughy. Still good – a nice chew to them, very lightly sweet, and fried nicely, but perhaps not as light and grease-free as the Cafe du Monde ones. I am trying not to compare, but the honest reality is that I adore the ones I eat at Cafe du Monde and haven’t had much beignets elsewhere that I really enjoyed, so the comparison is going to be made. While I happily ate two of these (foisting one onto Jenn), there are definitely not the type of beignets you can stuff your face with repeatedly without feeling sick.

But the fingers! Well, given that they are made the exact same way with the exact same dough, the notable difference here is the increased surface area while frying, which leads to a different resulting texture. Slightly more chew to it, more ‘crust’, and I thoroughly enjoyed these. Less puffy, fluffy interior – the regular beignets sort of had a fluffy biscuit interior – and just fried goodness. If I return to Coffee Call, I’d skip the beignets in favor of fingers, every single time. Which, honestly, looking at all the tables around us, seemed like everyone else had already concluded as well.

The coffee was nothing special (I’m no connoisseur), but good to wash down the fried dough (and no, I didn’t add sugar to it).

Overall… having one of these in my area would be a very dangerous thing. I enjoyed my beignet fingers, and wouldn’t mind if that was something I could get here. Unfortunately, it seems very much like all the beignets in NYC are pretty much garbage in comparison to anything down in Louisiana. Boo…