“What the heck is a banyeah?” a friend muttered across the table at Taste of New Orleans when I mentioned that I didn’t see any beignets (spelled this way, pronounced that way) on the menu.

I asked the owner, New Orleans native Beth Mell, whether she served them.

“Oh, of course,” she said.

“So what’s a banyeah?” my friend insisted.

“It’s a Cajun doughnut,” she said.

Which is sort of true, and sort of not. Yes, the little, puffy bits of dough are fried in oil and delicious with coffee. No, beignets don’t have a hole in the middle or a special relationship with cops. They are more hearty sopaipilla than holeless doughnut. They’re very hard to find in Colorado.

And they can be addictive. The first time I visited New Orleans, I dragged my wife down to the famous sticky tables of Café du Monde (the world’s best-known beignet place) three times in one day, including a trip just before midnight, so I could get another fix of those sumptuous, sugary snacks.

I couldn’t wait to try them at Taste of New Orleans. But business first, we ordered lunch.

Taste of New Orleans opened in a small space in Old Colorado City that briefly held an Italian restaurant called Tuscan Sun. Much of Tuscan Sun’s décor still lingers, with a few plastic beads thrown in to add Mardi Gras flare.

The menu is classic Crescent City: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and New Orleans-style po’ boy sandwiches. Mell also has breakfast dishes that appear on some menus but not others.

Some plates are pretty good. Others are worth missing. The service can be slow, and 20 percent of the people I visited with had their drink spilled on them by the owner. But if you pine for New Orleans food, this is the real thing.

The shrimp po’ boy ($7.50), served “dressed” on a big, doughy roll with lettuce, tomato and mayo, had sweet, delicious shrimp in a crunchy, peppery batter. It was delicious, but the massive sandwich came with only about eight shrimp – a little more po’ than I would have liked and a far cry from the overflowing po’ boys you get at favorite po’ boy bars such as Domilise’s in New Orleans.

A spicy sausage po’ boy ($6.50) proved more generous.

The Red Beans and Rice ($6.50) had good things going for it. The smoky flavor of ham and the half an andouille sausage floating in the beans gave it welcome heat, but the rice was mushy both times we visited.

Same with the jambalaya ($6.50). It’s lovely stuff, with more of that spicy sausage stewed together with chicken in a hearty brown rue. It’s one of the few versions of this Creole dish I’ve ever had that was not swimming in too much salt, but again, the rice was overcooked to near disintegration.

Pecan-crusted French toast ($4.75) was a bigger disappointment. The innards of the rounds of sliced po’ boy roll were drastically undercooked and had only the slightest sprinkling of pecans.

I was happy to work through these things, though, to get to the beignets.

They came fresh from the fryer: three golden brown, puffed up pillows, too hot to touch, and slaked in powdered sugar.

When they landed on the table, there was no need to explain to my friend. Fried pastries are a universal language.

But there was something not quite right. These beignets were big. Very big. And so the insides weren’t fully cooked by the time the outside was golden brown. It left them dense and bready – more like a hush puppy than a light, puffy dessert.

After gushing about beignets all through the meal, I ate in silence.

“These are not bad,” my friend said.

It’s about all you could say.

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Contact the writer: nathaniel.glen@gazettedev.gazette.com

Taste of new orleans**(uneven)

Address: 2501 W. Colorado Ave.Contact: 633-6877Hours: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays-Thursdays, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. FridaysEntrees: $4.75-$13.50Vegetarian: SaladsAlcohol: NoCredit cards: Yes

The Taste of New Orleans Cafe at 2501 West Colorado Avenue Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette