re: Old School Mckenzie's king cake is the best king cake

Agreed. We always got one from the Mckenzies inside Schwegmann. I heard that tastee donuts sells them now.

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with the original McKenzie’s king cake. On one hand, it was the only thing we knew as kids in the 60’s and 70’s in NOLA and we considered it a real treat every year. On the other hand, when more cinnamon roll style cakes came about with cream cheese filling, it took the cake to a new level of goodness.
The problem is that there are so many inferior king cakes out there now that taste bad or like chemicals with too much filling in them and it’s a pain in the azz to find a good one. Also, have become expensive.
I think maybe it’s just the nostalgia I have remembering childhood and getting that brightly colored brioche to eat. I don’t think I really miss eating king cake except for the experience. Those were times when we all weren’t walking around eating candy bars, chips and soda every day so it was a treat.

A fresh, soft Mckenzie's in my memory is fantastic. A fresh Randazzo's is fantastic, but I don't live where I can get one fresh off the line.

King cake is not hard to make if someone in your house can bake (that happens to be me) that has even rudimentary knowledge of bread making. We don't indulge much, but on the weekends I'll make them for my kids if they come in. Can control the ingredients and bake to the temp that suits you so you don't end up with a dry, insipid sweet roll.

I'll add that ingredients to make are dirt cheap, its the labor that makes them expensive.

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It's not an edgy, hot take. King cakes are generally terrible and as far as crawfish go, I boil them all the time and they're good, but look at what you have to do to those things to make them edible. It's food that crawls out of a frickin' mud puddle. Of course it's overrated.

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When I was a kid they were cheap ways to feed a crowd. Crawfish were less than $10 for a 40 pound sack, and king cakes were like 3 or 4 feet long and could feed 30 kids. Today both of these traditional Louisiana foods are much more expensive than they used to be even if you adjust for inflation, so I would agree that now they are overrated.

It is hard to beat a fresh Randazzo king cake. I try different ones every year and give them to customers and they all ask if it is the Randazzo one. I do like Sucre, but tried Twin Burger's king cake this week and have to say its pretty dang good. Not too sweet and fresh.

As someone who grew up in NOLA, even i think the king cake obsession is weird .

That said, speaking of McKenzie’s Bakery- I remember a funny anecdote from the early 2000s when they reopened after having been closed for a while (maybe a couple years ?) and there were lines around the block at whichever location reopened first.. there was a lot of complaining that the products ‘didnt taste the same as before’’ and that the new owners made too many changes to the products.. . eventually someone figured out that the new ownership had a different way of doing things and that the products that the new McKenzie’s sold were different becuase they were actually ……. FRESH .

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I don't remember anyone in my family preferring McKenzie's to Randazzo's,

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They didn't, because the Mckenzie's king cake sucked back then too.

that's a cake not a king cake

Old school McKenzies king cakes sucked dick

Dong Fong’s are gross too.

Go get a Randazzo’s one like a real baw.

My mom worked there and we ate lots of their king cakes. Turtles, petit fours, and buttermilk drops. Good stuff.