“Belle Cala! Tout chaud!” was the cry of the Cala Woman in the French Quarter during the nineteenth century, as she roused cooks to their doors to buy hot rice fritters for the morning café au lait of their masters and mistresses. Or so the Picayune described the Cala Woman, “in quaint bandana tignon, guinea blue dress, and white apron,” on her head a cloth-covered bowl filled with “the dainty and hot Calas.”
While Tante Zoe has
