Dong Phuong: Bake me a (king) cake as fast as you can - NOLA.com

Want to ship a Dong Phuong king cake to a friend out of town? You’re too late, unless you want to box it up yourself.

The Vietnamese bakery in New Orleans East created a pretty new website for 2019 that allows customers to order online, but less than two weeks into Carnival season all of the available shipping days are booked.

Most of the king cakes produced at the bakery at 14207 Chef Menteur Highway are sold onsite, but the bakery does have four retail outlets selling small batches on wholesale delivery days, which are Mondays and Thursdays through Sundays.

Those businesses, however, usually sell out within an hour of receiving their orders.

The best way to ensure you’ll get a king cake is to reserve one online at the website for pick-up in New Orleans East. As of Friday (Jan. 18), however, the soonest available pick-up date was Feb. 11.

The popularity of these light, moist brioche-style king cakes with scalloped, crispy edges and cinnamon flavor never seems to wane. The cakes, which are smeared with a sweet and tangy cream cheese icing sprinkled with purple, green and gold sugars, come in unfilled traditional cinnamon or filled with cream cheese, pecan, strawberry or a new 2019 flavor: coconut.

The bakery owners declined to be interviewed this Carnival season saying they are already working at capacity trying to keep up with the public’s demand.

The already popular bakery got a boost in January 2018, when it received a James Beard Award as an America's Classic, an award given to long-running, family-owned restaurants.

Dong Phuong bakery wins James Beard's America's Classics award

The demand for the cakes grew so high that on Feb. 1 of that year, the bakery stopped supplying wholesale accounts to the 10 outlets then selling them and only sold the cakes out of its New Orleans East shop for the remainder of the 2018 season.

Then in May of that year, the U.S. Department of Labor ordered the bakery to pay 43 employees more than $127,000 in back wages to settle overtime and record-keeping violations. A spokesman for the Labor Department said the payments were settled and the investigation was completed in July 2018.

Store manager Arthur Laughlin said the business has taken steps to correct the issues raised by the labor department and to adjust employees’ working schedules, in a report by WDSU-TV.

The bakery, which was opened in 1982, and makes miniature loaves of French bread, banh mi sandwiches and other sweets, is open Monday and Wednesday through Sunday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It delivers wholesale king cake orders only on Mondays and from Thursday to Sunday to four outlets: Joey Jeanfreau’s, 2324 Paris Road in Chalmette;, Mr. Bubbles Sandwich House, 925 Behrman Highway in Gretna; Pho Cong Noodle & Grill, 1200 U.S. 190 Business in Covington; Nesbit’s Poeyfarre Market, 925 Poeyfarre St. in the New Orleans; and Zuppardo’s Family Supermarket at 5010 Veterans Memorial Blvd., Metairie.

Uyen Vu, owner of Pho Cong Noodle & Grill, who is a family friend of the bakery owner, may be the only one around to have Dong Phuong king cakes on Tuesdays. That’s because Vu picks up 30 cinnamon and cheesecake cakes herself each day, making two stops on Mondays, one in the morning to sell that day and another in the afternoon to sell the following Tuesday.

“It’s so quick,” she said of the cakes that go on sale at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday. Her restaurant is closed on Sundays.

Vu does allow customers to come in, pay cash and order a single cake, which she then sets aside for pick up. This Friday and Saturday, however, most of the 30 king cakes are already ordered and pre-paid, so few will be available.

At Nesbit’s Poeyfarre Market, approximately 40 king cakes arrive between 9 and 10:30 a.m. each delivery day. Owner Beau Nesbit has a system for handling the demand: As the line forms, each person waiting for the cake is given a card to reserve his spot.

“If you don’t have a card, you’re probably not going to get one,” said Nesbit, who has been selling Dong Phuong cakes since he opened in 2011. “I don’t want people to wait around if they don’t have a chance at one.”

On the West Bank, about 30 king cakes are delivered Mondays and Thursdays through Sundays, between 8:45 and 9 a.m., to Mr. Bubbles Sandwich House in Gretna, which has sold the king cakes for several years.

“I would say every morning there are about 10 people waiting in line before we open the doors and we usually sell out by 9:30 or 10 o’clock,” Vy Nguyen, a manager at the shop, said.

The same is true at Joey Jeanfeau’s. The cakes arrive on Mondays and Thursdays through Saturdays around 7:50 a.m. The store opens at 8 a.m. and the cakes are gone by 8:30 a.m., said Mattie Leidienger, Joey Jeanfreau’s daughter. Jeanfeau’s is closed on Sundays.

“By 7:30, there is a line and the parking lot is full,” she said. “By 8:15 a.m., we are running really low.”

At Zuppardo’s, where perhaps the largest number of wholesale cakes are sold, 80 to 120 cakes arrive between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. every day except Tuesday and Wednesday.

“I don’t have any now,” Joey Zuppardo, an owner of the family-run grocery store, said on Thursday at 11 a.m. “They came in at 10 and they were gone by 10:30 a.m.”

“People start lining up,” he said. “Some people that are in line don’t get one.”

•••

Ann Maloney writes about home cooking and dining out for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. She can be reached at amaloney@nola.com. Follow her on Twitter at @wherenoleats, on Instagram at @wherenolaeats and join the Where NOLA Eats Facebook group Subscribe to the free Where NOLA Eats weekly newsletter here.

Let's block ads! (Why?)