Samedi

Photos by Robert Hannant

The pies may return, but New Orleans is mourning the loss of an icon today. The Hubig's Pies factory burned to the ground in a massive, pre-dawn fire that reached five alarms fire before it was all over.

The blaze started just before 4:30 a.m. in the fryer room of the 90-year-old Marigny factory located at 2417 Dauphine Street, according to the New Orleans Fire Department. Several employees in the building at the time of the fire were able to escape to safety, but the building was fully engulfed in flames when fire crews arrived.

As the five-alarm scorcher progressed, the front wall of the factory collapsed. When it was all over, the factory was a pile of charred wreckage. The blue and-white Hubig's sign outside the factory, which was just as much of an icon to downtown New Orleans residents as the pie's distinctive packaging featuring Savory Simon, lay bent and burned among the building's remains.

The destruction wrought by the flames was not only to the building, however. Dozens of workers are now out of jobs. On a larger scale, the pie-devouring public of New Orleans will feel the loss of the only spot where the company produced the much-loved single-serving New Orleans confection. Whether filled with chocolate, apple, citrus or fashioned into a King Cake, Hubig's is a New Orleans staple. It's reliable as a child's breakfast in a pinch, an on-the-go snack or the fulfillment of a sweets craving on any sort of day.
 

Each morning, Hubig's delivered fresh boxes of pies to countless New Orleans locations. Tomorrow, they will be unable to do so. In the French Quarter, the sudden void produced a run on the pies at some locations.
 

At Esplanade Mini Mart, a worker named Muhammad said the stop ran out by 8 a.m.
 

Aunt Sally's Pralines was expecting a delivery from Hubing's this morning, but it never got there.
 

"I have four Hubig’s left. I was thinking about going on Ebay,” store manager Becky Hebert joked. (This person wasn't joking)
 

She said her husband and a friend scoured various shops in the city hoping to get one last pie this morning, but the spots they tried were sold out.
 

Larry Tusa, co-owner of Central Grocery, said he and his brother bring Hubig's pies to his 93-year-old father every morning at his retirement home in River Ridge.
 

"My father’s been through the Depression, Betsy, Vietnam, Katrina. Losing Hubig’s will be up there for him,” he said.
 

Hubig's owner Drew Ramsey doesn't want that loss the be permanent. Even while the factory was still smoldering, he said he planned to rebuild.
 

It wouldn't be the first time the only Hubig's factory that survived the Great Depression came back.
 

“They came back from Katrina," Hebert, of Aunt Sally's, said. "We know
how hard that was as a family business. We want them back.”