Café Brûlot

Café brûlot (French for “burnt coffee”, also called café brûlot diabolique) is New Orleans’ most theatrical coffee. Brandy – often with orange liqueur – is heated with sugar, cinnamon, cloves and strips of orange or lemon peel in a silver brûlot bowl, then set alight. The server ladles the flaming spirit over a spiral of clove-studded citrus peel, so the oils sparkle in the flames, before pouring in hot, strong coffee to put out the fire.

It’s served in small demitasse cups as a dessert drink: sweet, spicy and fragrant, with burnt-sugar and orange notes and the warmth of brandy. Many New Orleans restaurants use dark-roast coffee with chicory, the city’s traditional style.

Café brûlot belongs to the city’s grand old Creole restaurants – Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Galatoire’s and Commander’s Palace still prepare it tableside – and ordering it is as much about the show as the drink.

Café brûlot is usually credited to Jules Alciatore, son of Antoine Alciatore, who founded Antoine’s restaurant in the French Quarter in 1840. Jules is said to have introduced the drink in the late 1880s, drawing on the French habit of flaming brandy-soaked sugar and adding it to coffee. The attribution is widely repeated but not firmly documented.

Other stories circulate: one links the flaming theatrics to the pirate Jean Lafitte, another claims the coffee and spices disguised alcohol during Prohibition. The writer Sue Strachan, author of a book on the drink, doubts the Prohibition tale – you need alcohol to make the flames in the first place.

Tableside café brûlot became a signature of New Orleans’ grand Creole restaurants, served from ornate silver-plated bowls. The equipment became harder to find from the 1980s, but bartender Dale DeGroff revived the drink in New York at the Rainbow Room in 1996, and Antoine’s, Arnaud’s, Galatoire’s and Commander’s Palace still serve it.