Today’s review is a bit of a teaser. I want to get a few things out of the way before I dive in. First, Manny Randazzo’s is probably my favorite traditional New Orleans king cake, especially the cream cheese king cake. There, I said it. In my humble opinion, it’s the very best. Second, the name Randazzo is literally synonymous with king cake, at least in New Orleans. I am willing to bet that if you wanted to play some bizarre word association game with New Orleanians, you would get a 100% rate of accuracy by yelling “Randazzo’s” and waiting for them to respond “king cake.” I’ve never played this game I just invented, but that’s how you would win it. Third, this is not the Randazzo’s review that I wanted to write. For this reason, I vow that it will not be the only Randazzo’s review in this year’s collection. I present to you, readers, the Manny Randazzo’s Royal King Cake.

On a recent afternoon in the office, I received a mass email informing everyone that a vendor had gifted us a Randazzo’s king cake. Given that I was actively participating in a Zoom meeting, I quickly emailed (and texted) my colleague to ask if she would quickly grab me a slice. And bring it to my office. And photograph the king cake. Lol. (She had actually been the one to send the mass email, and she’s been keeping up with The Cause, and she generally gets me, so I figured I’d phone in a favor.) 

My colleague dropped off the slice to my desk and I looked at it for a minute, a bit puzzled. It was definitely “filled,” but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the precise nature of the filling based on sight alone. Had I not been on a Zoom call, I would have utilized at least three more of my senses to get to the bottom of this, but I was on camera. (I feel very strongly that it is poor form to eat on Zoom calls. Don’t come at me.) So I waited for a minute and then emailed another colleague to ask if she could please check to see what flavor this was. PRIORITIES. She responded that it looked like apple and cream cheese. And while this didn’t exactly sound far fetched, I figured I would know if Randazzo’s made an apple and cream cheese king cake. So as soon as my call ended, off to the internet I went. By the time I made it past all of the notifications that Randazzo’s is SOLD OUT FOR SHIPPING and made it to the in-store availability section of their website, I knew what we had on our hands. It was the “Royal King Cake,” which is described as follows:

“Can’t decide on a filling? Our royal king cake is the perfect sampler, with one section of strawberry, one section of lemon, and one section of apple filling.”

Now, I had never paid much attention to this because I’ve only ever had plain/traditional/cinnamon and cream cheese king cakes from Manny Randazzo’s (did I mention they are INCREDIBLE?), but the use of the term “filling” is a bit of a misnomer here. The “filling” is actually placed on top of the cake, so it’s really more of a topping if you want to get technical, and I do. I’ll also say that prior to this year, I probably would have told you that I don’t have strong feelings on whether filling should be baked inside of the king cake or layered on top, but guess what? Now I do. And I think filling inside the cake is THE WAY. That’s not to say that a cake with its filling on top is a deal breaker, but I have found that, of the filled cakes I’ve tried this year, those with the fillings baked inside the dough are superior. Is it anecdotal, or is it science? That’s for you to decide.

I’ll also shamelessly admit that under other circumstances, I would have helped myself to a slice of each flavor, but this was a gift to the entire office (and not a gift to me that I was sharing with the office, or a gift from me that I was sharing with the office, both of which are different from this scenario), so that felt entirely too selfish. Also, there was the whole part where I asked a colleague to bring me a slice because I was on a Zoom call. Details, details. But the slice I got was the slice I would have chosen for myself—apple. I love apple things! I generally like strawberry filling but feel it can be hit or miss. I like certain lemon things but, this was sort of… a highlighter-yellow lemon, which wouldn’t have appealed to me anyway.

Let’s discuss the filling first. I’m just going to say it—the apple filling was okay but not great. It was perhaps not very good. I didn’t have that much of a problem with the consistency, although the word I had in my notes was “viscous” if you were curious about my initial impression. But my real issue was that it tasted on the very artificial end of apple, and I’m more of a fresh fruit kind of gal. But also, I guess it comes with the territory. It didn’t claim to be a farm-to-table king cake, now did it? I also thought the apple flavor was INCREDIBLY heavy on the cinnamon spice flavor. And I’m a sucker for hot apple cider, mulled wine (!!), mulling spices, and all things of that nature. I even like apple cinnamon oatmeal. And you should see the ridiculous amount of Organic Vietnamese Cinnamon I put in my morning smoothie. (Try it if you haven’t!) But here, it just didn’t work for me with the Randazzo’s king cake (which, did I mention, is maybe my favorite traditional king cake of all time?). And, unfortunately, it kind of spoiled it for me. I wanted it to be a cream cheese Randazzo’s and it wasn’t. It was an apple slice of a Royal Randazzo’s, and that’s not quite the same thing.

I was torn on whether to describe the rest of Randazzo’s cake here, because on one hand, it feels wrong not to. But on the other hand, it feels even more wrong to bury my opinions on the perfection that is the Randazzo’s king cake in a subpar review of a cake with a filling I didn’t personally enjoy. I want to give Randazzo’s the review it so rightfully deserves, so I do plan to get a Randazzo’s cream cheese and do this again. But as a brief description for the uninitiated, this is a traditional hand-braided sweet dough with plenty of cinnamon that practically melts in your mouth. This king cake also has traditional white icing and purple, green, and gold sprinkles. According to Manny Randazzo’s website, “[e]ach Manny Randazzo King cake is prepared and baked by Manny himself.” I mean, huge if true. But I would almost believe it because that’s how good it is. More on this in a forthcoming review.

Relatedly, I’m also saving the full Randazzo’s family drama for my next review. In fact, there are so many legal issues involved that I feel like I might be able to co-opt my next Randazzo’s review into a CLE. A few different people inspired this idea: one colleague who said I needed to compare all of the cakes on the Randazzo family tree so that she could take a position on the family feud once and for all; and a former colleague-turned-law professor who recently told me that the law school at which she now teaches uses the Randazzo family king cake drama to teach successions/wills/estates. You really can’t make this up. Anyway, stay tuned.

I’ll conclude this review with full transparency. Apart from the filling, the rest of the cake was Randazzo’s perfection, of course. But if [insert your favorite food here] was covered in a thick layer of [a food you don’t hate, but don’t really like either], you probably wouldn’t be excited to have a [second thing] covered [favorite thing]. (Editor’s note: I came up with this part in my notes and was going to go back and fill in own examples, but everything I came up with sounded borderline vulgar, and I actually think it works even better as a king cake mad libs. You’re welcome!) “No,” you’d say; “why is this [favorite thing] covered in [gross thing]?” Which is how I felt about this cake. 3.5 stars.