The Bayou Beast is back. He's pouring at all three CR Coffee shops starting today, and like every year, he's back for a limited time. He'll head back to the bayou on Halloween.
If you've never met him, he's an iced latte made with pandan, topped with warm fall spices, and he's the reason we have something else nice and cold to hand you in August and September besides a hot pumpkin spice latte.
That's really the whole inspiration behind this drink. Every year the fall menus land in late August, and every year it's still ninety-something degrees here. Nobody's curling up with a hot latte in a New Orleans September. You're sweating your way back to the car. So we went the other direction and built a cold one with a little autumn in it, just enough to remind you the heat isn't permanent.
Pandan is what pulls it all together. It's a leaf they use all over Southeast Asia, sort of the vanilla of that part of the world. Sweet, a little grassy, with some coconut. Nothing else on our menu tastes like it. It's also where the color comes from, so if you're looking at that swamp green in the bottom of the cup wondering what we put in there, that's the pandan.
The fall spice goes on top, and that's the part that makes it feel like fall instead of just a cold sweet drink. Cold underneath, a little spice on the nose.
You can get him at all three shops: Magazine Street, Old Metairie, and our stall inside St. Roch Market. Magazine and Old Metairie take online orders for pickup.
One more thing worth saying out loud: the Halloween date is real. He runs mid July through October 31, and then he's off the menu until next summer. If you wait, you wait a year.