The waiter quit -- and I couldn't blame him!
My husband and I had been happily wandering around the French Quarter for hours before we decided on Cafe du Monde. I waited an hour for my food and watch 5 sets of patrons come and go. I was too exhausted to complain.... Firstly, they're not a cafe; the only thing they serve is donuts, coffee, and milk. Secondly, you're forced to sit at a DIRTY table. Yeah, you read that right. You seat yourselves at an unclean table, including the nasty, greasy coffee cup with some hooker's hepatitis lipstick stain and sticky, powdered sugar EVERYWHERE. Classy, no? Eventually, our waiter shows up, cleans your table (think, airborn powdered sugar), and takes our order. Can't be that hard -- coffee and beignets are all they sell. So, he disappeared. And I waited. And waited. The people around me waited too. For forty long, freakish minutes. The people watching is fun, and now and then a table of people hopped up on sugar will get into a powdered sugar fight. BTW, don't wear black. Finally, my blood sugar was so low that I considered licking the hepatitis sugar from the dirty plates at the next table. My husband went off to find the manager... This is when things got interesting. and I learned way more about how this "restaurant" runs than I wanted to. Apparently, there's a restaurant manger and a separate waiter manager. Restaurant manager showed up, promised to make it right and went off to find the waiter with my beignets. The waiter manager appeared minutes later seemingly annoyed and unapologetic. He brought with him a new waitress. Poor girl. She took my order, and rather than running off to fill it, she proceeded to take the order of everyone around me also. My blood sugar dropping and my blood pressure rinsing by the second. When she FINALLY returned 15 minutes later, she'd collected the food for four tables all at once. This is when I learned another charming tidbit about cafe du monde: their waiters pay out of pocket for your food. So, if you stiff them, you're stiffing the waiter, NOT the restaurant. I'd waited an hour at this point, and I had no intention of paying for my food. If I just took the food and left, the poor waitress would've been out $10 for something that was not her fault. My husband, donuts in hand, went off to find the manager, who still unapologetic and refused to comp the food. Flat out refused. And didn't apologize. Did I mention he didn't apologize? So, in effort to save the poor waitress, my husband handed those beignets to the manager and left. I commend my husband for being honest (more honest than me), but I could have killed him because, in the end, I was still starving.
So, in summation, the place is filthy. The service sucks. And I cannot comment on their food because I've still never had it.