Richard Gabriel: The French Quarter’s Cala Man
The French Quarter house where cala vendor Richard Gabriel lived at the time of this 1938 photograph by Richard Koch, Library of Congress. Koch didn’t identify the man, but he meets the description of Gabriel.
May 2025The long-gone street vendors of the Creole delicacy “calas” were mostly women. But the last one was a man named Richard Gabriel.
- by Laura Guccione
In the bygone days of New Orleans, street vendors, or marchands in French, traversed the city. From the oyster man to the vegetable seller, the praline woman – and the purveyors of something found only in New Orleans: the cala.
Calas, also called beignets de riz (rice doughnuts) or rice cakes, were popular fried rice fritters finished with a dusting of powdered sugar and eaten for breakfast, usually on Sundays and special occasions.
This delicacy, specific to the Creole cuisine of New Orleans, was traditionally served along with a piping hot cup of café au lait to start the day. Calas can be found today, but rather than a flat fritter, they tend to be made from an unleavened dough rather than a yeasted batter.
A calas vendor, an 1886 wood engraving by E.W. Kemble, The Historic New Orleans Collection, 1974, 25.20.126
According to Mrs. Cecelia Williams, born in the mid-1800s, the specialty’s popularity peaked around 1864 as a “necessary part of the First Communion breakfast, wedding breakfast, the first breakfast in Lent, or Sunday breakfast.”
Cooked in the home by the mother or aunt, they were gently warmed in a covered plate over boiling water until the family returned from church. Finished with a sprinkle of powdered sugar, the calas were served to the delight of all present.
As times changed, this home-cooked confection took to the streets, and selling them became a commercial venture for some. On Sundays, the cala sellers showed up in full force and were remembered fondly, many by name.
Throughout oral and written history, women have been acknowledged as the sole sellers of calas in New Orleans. There was Tante ‘Toinette, – familiar Creole French for Aunt Antoinette and a nod to the traditional preparers of the Cala in Creole homes – who peddled her calas to people of both races every morning beginning at 5am, up and down the streets of the bustling city.
On Sunday, Tante ‘Toinette’s busiest day, she set up on the corner of Ursulines and Chartres streets, close to St. Mary’s Church, waiting for mass to end and the inevitable departure of parishioners. Sunday morning shoppers who’d been picking up the makings of a meal at the French Market also passed that way.
Tante “Toinette advertised her goods by singing “Belle cala! Tout chaud, Madame, two cents!” or “Beautiful cala! All hot, Madame, two cents!”
A street vendor named Clementine also lingered in the mornings at the same intersection. She sold traditional Calas au ris (rice) and Calas aux feves (beans). These black-eyed pea fritters, also shortened to Calas ofevre in the songs of the vendors, disappeared from Creole cuisine's history but were “highly seasoned with hot pepper and salt.” To attract customers, Clementine sang:
Ala marchand calas, ala marchand, Calas, Calas, Calas tout chaud jord!
(Here is the Cala vendor, here is the Cala vendor, Calas, Calas, very hot today!)
Another familiar “Aunt,” Tante Caroline, appeared without fail every Sunday on Royal Street behind the St. Louis Cathedral – a perfect spot to summon the Catholic Creoles as they emerged from mass, hungry for breakfast. She kept the Calas warm on her furnace of hot coals and a pan.
The drawing of a woman that closely matches the description of the “Calas Tout Chaud” woman, although the given location was on “Charters Street.” Created in 1930 - 1940 by Meredith Pierce. The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2006.0297.3
History recounts one vendor known only as the Calas Tout Chaud woman, whose name took on the meaning of what she sold. She set up in a Canal Street doorway with a cane basket filled with Calas, dressed in a wide blue calico covered by an apron with a matching tignon and large hoop earrings. However, cala sales were not confined to the streets. Madame Cedreaux sold calas from her home on Villere and St. Anthony streets.
But by 1940, Mr. Gabriel was the last cala vendor in New Orleans.
It’s quite intriguing that the final cala vendor in the city turned out to be a man, defying the common expectation that such roles were typically held by women, challenging assumptions and adding to the already rich history.
Since 1929, Mr. Gabriel, fondly called “the Cala Man,” meandered down Claiborne Avenue to St. Bernard Avenue, singing this song:
The little Jamaica boy he say,
More you eatta, more you wanna eatta.
Get ‘em while they’re hotta, hot cala:
Tout chaud, Madam, tout chaud.
From St. Bernard Avenue, he traveled up Derbigny Street to Lapeyrouse, turning down Prieur Street to Annette. From there, he went to Galvez, ending at Pauger Street, chanting another sweet song to sell his sugary treats:
Tell ‘em what they do you, take off that Saturday frown,
Put on that Sunday morning smile to last the whole day ‘round
Tout chaud, Madame, tout chaud:
That’s how two cups of café, fifteen cents cala can make
You smile the live-long day.
Tout chaud, Madame, tout chaud:
Get ‘em while they’re hot! Hot cala!
According to information gleaned for U.S. Census reports, Richard Gabriel was born in St. Charles, Louisiana in 1880 and in 1903, married his wife, Angelia Nelson in New Orleans.
1910 finds the young couple living at Angelina’s grandparent’s house at 1218 - 1220 Burgundy Street in the French Quarter. The classic Creole cottage had been built in 1811 by Antoine La Rionda (now referred to now as La Rionda Cottage). Angelina’s grandfather, Medard Nelson, a schoolteacher, purchased the home in 1887 and ran a school there “which was open to all races in defiance of the emerging Jim Crow laws of the era.”
In 1910, Mr. Gabriel listed his occupation as a merchant, “retail vegetables.” But by the 1920s, the young family had moved into their own place on Galvez and he was a laborer.
After the 1929 stock market crash that kick-started the Great Depression – Gabriel at least temporarily held on to his job at the Sewerage and Water Board, but his family has moved back to the Nelson’s family home in the Quarter.
The dependency building of 1218 Chartres Street, date unknown, Vieux Carré Virtual Library. This building probably served as Medard Nelson’s schoolhouse and may have housed the kitchen where Richard Gabriel’s calas were made.
As the depression deepened, a significant number of people tried to make ends meet by becoming street vendors. Mr. Gabriel, too, returned to his original job as a merchant – but this time, selling calas rather than vegetables.
Much of what we know about Richard Gabriel today is from the Federal Writers’ Project - a depression-era New Deal program that gave writers jobs documenting the history and culture of this country. Gabriel makes appearances in surviving interviews, stored in the Cammie Henry Research Center in Natchitoches, at the Northwestern State University of Louisiana.
From there, we learn that Mr. Gabriel upgraded his selling apparatus with a pushcart to lightly steam the fritters - resembling the rig hot peanut sellers would use. Passersby would have been tempted with a waft of the familiar scent, along with another song:
We sell to the rich, we sell to the poor,
We give it to the sweet brown-skin, peeping out the door.
Tout chaud, Madam, tout chaud!
Git ‘em while they’re hot! Hot cala!
A 1940 piece from Writers’ Project describes him thus:
“Mr. Gabriel wears ordinary clothes, but is always tidy and clean. His complexion is dark brown, his features thin, his hair curly and close cut. As he peddles along the street, his songs tell a story of days that have almost passed away…
Mr. Gabriel is fifty-eight years old and very humorous and pleasant to all who meet him.”
A page from the Writers’ Project from the Cammie G. Henry Research Center.
No one remembers when Gabriel retired from his cala trade, but he passed away in 1973 at the age of 92, ending a much-beloved Creole tradition and breaking an essential link to the city’s cuisine culture.
Cala song found in the WPA Archives at the Cammie G. Henry Research Center, Northwestern State University of Louisiana at Natchitoches.
WPA archives at Natchitoches
Twitty, Michael W., Rice. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
The Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration of the City of New Orleans. The WPA Guide To New Orleans: The Federal Writers’ Project Guide to 1930s New Orleans. New York: Pantheon Books, 1938.
Saxon, Lyle, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant. Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1998.
Tooker, Poppy. Louisiana Eats!: The People, the Food, and Their Stories. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 2013.