Outside of New Orleans, a new Mardi Gras experience: The King Cake Drive-Thru

A tire shop parking lot has become a popular destination for those craving the beloved treat. The only problem: which variety should you choose?

Of course, Mardi Gras is about boundless revelry: the weeks full of balls and the parades that shower the streets of New Orleans with beads. But underneath all that it is also a period of metamorphosis.

A Midwinter Tuesday turns from the most mundane day into a festival of frivolity and vice. People let go of the cocoons of their ordinary lives and emerge wrapped in feathers and sequins.

And this year, just outside New Orleans, a tire shop that, for as long as anyone can remember, had sold only auto parts, has become a bustling marketplace offering king cakes, the carnival season delicacy, in virtually every flavor imaginable.

All you have to do is drive up.

“Any idea what you want?” Tiffany Langlinais asked a customer who stopped by on Friday afternoon.

It's a tough question at the King Cake Drive-Thru. Bland or fluffy? Filled with cream cheese? What about strawberries, ice cream, even crawfish – or nothing more than the traditional plastic baby? Cakes from more than a dozen bakeries are offered.

Others have had the idea of ​​selling king cakes from several local bakeries in one location, such as King Cake Hub in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans. But the innovation of the King Cake Drive-Thru, which Ms. Langlinais opened in January with her fiancé, Mike Graves, is the added convenience of accessing that plethora of options without even having to get out of the car.

The drive-through has drawn nurses to morning shifts at the hospital, parents with cars full of children, tourists on road trips and people with limited mobility or weakened immune systems that prevent them from easily browsing bakeries. Even the food writer for the city's main newspaper, The Times-Picayune, passed.

“I'm surprised no one thought of it before you, Mike,” David Scripter said to Mr. Graves as he delivered an order of dozens of cakes from Bittersweet Confections, a bakery founded by his wife.

“Sometimes,” Mr. Graves said, “the best ideas are right in front of you.”

The drive-through, which takes over the parking lot of Duckworth Tires in suburban Metairie three days a week, often has a line of cars waiting when it opens at 7 a.m., and inventory sells out well before 7 p.m. stated closing time.

King cakes have always been a staple of Carnival season along the Gulf Coast, a crown of pastries served during a burst of gluttony and good times before the austerity and fish fries of Lent. (King cake season begins on January 6 – known as Twelfth Night, Epiphany or Epiphany Day – and ends this year with Shrove Tuesday, or February 13.)

A king cake, in what many consider its purest form, is a ring of brioche-like dough with a hint of vanilla, a crunchy layer of purple, green and gold sugar and a small trinket known as a fève – usually a plastic baby – baked into it.

“It's almost blasphemous to have cream cheese in it,” Pam Carr said recently when she placed an order that an ardent traditionalist would never make: a few cream cheese and chocolate cakes to share with her co-workers at a department store. “Those are the ones I like!”

King Cakes are another front in the famous New Orleans divide. There are those who believe that adhering to tradition means refusing to deviate from the way things have always been done, and those who insist that experimentation and interpretation are not an insult to the past, but a tribute.

“Anyone can put anything in a king cake now,” Bridgett Saylor Meinke said as she surveyed the drive-through selection.

She grew up on old-fashioned king cake, but was cautiously open to trying new-fangled varieties, like Brennan's banana foster (“Absolutely delicious,” she thought) and Joe's Cafe's strawberry cream cheese.

“That's the one I'm looking for today,” she said.

The drive-through menu varies from week to week, written on a white board by Ms. Langlinais. The couple buys the cakes at wholesale price from bakeries and sells them at a markup, with prices ranging from $17 to about $50 per cake. (They also come in different sizes.)

Last weekend there were plenty of traditional options, as well as bavarois from Caluda's, an almond cake from District Donuts, boudin or crawfish varieties from Clesi's Seafood, and lemon curd and vanilla bean cakes from Paw Paw's Donuts.

The one with Vietnamese coffee filling from Dough Nguyener's Bakery sold out quickly, as did Tartine's cinnamon cream cheese option.

Ms. Langlinais wanted to attract customers with their favorite offerings from well-known places, but also lure them to cakes they might not be familiar with. Those from Joyce's Sweets, a bakery in Ponchatoula, almost an hour away, are a good example.

Joyce Galmon is known for her pralines, but she has been making king cakes for 25 years, filling them with a filling of broken pralines she couldn't sell.

“Miss Joyce does not have social media,” Ms. Langlinais said. 'All you can do is call her. She doesn't have a website.”

In recent years, Ms. Galmon sold as many as 90 pies per season. She sold more than that in one weekend with the King Cake Drive-Thru.

It's a labor-intensive process that involves loosening the dough, lathering the praline filling and then letting the cakes rest and rise for several hours. The result: a sticky, crunchy burst of cinnamon and sugar.

“It puts me on edge,” Ms. Galmon said after delivering a new batch to the tire lot. “For me it was a hobby, but they made it bigger.”

For all the excitement the drive-through has created, it's a simple act. From the street it almost looks like a Covid testing location.

“No frills, as you can see,” said Mrs. Langlinais, “with our tent and tables and Mike's van.” She was referring to a ratty but reliable 2007 Kia Sedona that was missing the middle seat.

Jimmy Duckworth, the owner of Duckworth Tires, gave them a pretty good rental rate: a king cake a week. Last week he got his favorite, Tartine's cinnamon cream cheese variety.

“I've been very lucky in life,” he said. “Give them a break – why not?”

He nodded to Mr. Graves, who was busy helping customers.

“Look at him,” said Mr. Duckworth. “He is completely happy.”

A few years ago, Mr. Graves, 35, was a lawyer in Manhattan working in the financial industry. He then moved to New Orleans and started a new ice cream company called Bof Bars. He had no ties to New Orleans — he grew up in Chicago — but now he can't imagine leaving. He and Mrs. Langlinais plan to get married in March.

Ms. Langlinais, who also owns a marketing company, grew up in a shrimp family in Biloxi, Miss., immersed in the vast world of Mardi Gras.

She became something of a king cake connoisseur. She has tried more than 100 varieties. She keeps a spreadsheet with detailed notes. (“Enjoyed the light padding, but would like x3 so I could be truly happy,” she wrote of one encounter.)

“I know it's not a super-sophisticated operation,” said Ms. Langlinais, 33, “but we want it to feel like us.”

There have been setbacks. One day last month, Mr. Graves woke up at 3 a.m. to find that someone had done that broke a window on the minivan and stole 100 pies.

The whole endeavor was exhausting: the terribly early mornings rushing to pick up the cakes from bakeries or meeting points in random parking lots. The 12-hour days on your feet at the drive-through. And there are the urgent calls and text messages outside office hours.

“My child didn't tell me she had the baby!” said a friend desperate for a last-minute cake. (By tradition, whoever finds the baby is responsible for delivering the next cake.)

The drive-through is normally open Friday through Sunday, but customers have asked if the couple would be selling pies on Fat Tuesday.

No chance.

Duckworth Tires will be a tire shop again.

“I'm going to party,” Mr. Graves said.