Last Sunday Coffee Bar

A double espresso on the way to the airport is the use case this bar was designed for, and it happens to sit in one of the more formal hotel lobbies in downtown New Orleans.

Espresso in a kiosk

Coffee is the anchor. The bar is built around espresso and cappuccino, with the menu carrying espresso by the double and the quad, and Illy supplying the beans. It is a compact espresso-bar identity rather than a multi-roaster specialty café, and it does not pretend to be anything else.

The board widens past coffee as the day goes on. Boozy coffee drinks, pre-mixed cocktails, a range of beers and half bottles of wine mean the same small counter works as an afternoon drink stop, which is unusual for somewhere that starts serving at breakfast.

A small counter in a grand lobby

The contrast is the appeal. Last Sunday occupies a kiosk-sized nook on the lobby level of the Windsor Court, inside the hotel's arrival and circulation space rather than facing the street. The lobby around it is glamorous and distinctly old-money; the bar itself is quick, casual and entirely unbothered by that.

It sits within the hotel's wider dining programme alongside The Grill Room, The Polo Club, Le Salon and The Pool Bar, but it answers a far more direct need than any of them. There is also a small run of hotel merchandise on display, hats, ties and socks, which tells you the counter is as much a lobby fixture as it is a coffee bar.

Order a cappuccino, then keep it simple

Cappuccino or a double espresso is the right first order, and Illy is the house coffee, so the profile is classic Italian rather than light-roast specialty. Keep it simple, because the format rewards that far more than it rewards deliberation.

Food is house-made and spans pastries, sandwiches, salads and desserts, which covers a breakfast pastry, a lunch plate between appointments or something sweet in the afternoon. The hotel's own phrase for the counter is a one-stop shop, and for a lobby-level kiosk that is close to accurate. If the visit tips over into the evening side of the menu, a boozy coffee is the natural bridge from one half of the board to the other, and the surroundings make it feel like a better idea than it strictly is.