The Pumpkin Spice Latte Is Back. We Make the Syrup Ourselves.

By Kevin Pedeaux

It's fall, and in a coffee shop fall means the pumpkin spice latte. Ours is back on the menu at Magazine Street and Metairie Road, and the syrup in it is one we make ourselves.

The thing about a pumpkin spice latte is there's no pumpkin in it. There never really was. Starbucks sold theirs for twelve years before they put any actual pumpkin in it in 2015, and even now it's a little puree in a lot of syrup. Pumpkin spice is the name of the spices you put in a pumpkin pie, not the pumpkin. Cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove. That's what you're tasting when you taste pumpkin pie, and it's what you're tasting in the latte.

So we make our own. We cook those four spices down into a syrup in the shop, the same way we make our chai. Most shops pour pumpkin spice out of a bottle, and if you read the label it's sugar, water, and "natural flavors." Ours is the actual spices, so it's got some bite to it.

How does it taste? Like the spoonful of pumpkin pie filling with the most spice in it, in a latte. It's not candy sweet. The spices that work really well in a pumpkin pie work really well in a latte.

It's on the menu now, hot, with a little cinnamon on top. Come get one.

Order ahead