Bananas Foster Was Born When Bananas Were A Booming Business

Bananas Foster is the darling of any dessert menu. It's hard not to love this magical combination of warm spices, punchy rum, melty-sweet vanilla ice cream, and caramelized bananas, which is ideally flambéed (and made fancy) at tableside for extra delight. It may seem like a timeless classic, but Bananas Foster was actually invented in relatively recent history, and for surprisingly practical reasons.

Bananas Foster is one of the many unique and tasty food items that originated in New Orleans (a category that also includes the iconic Hand Grenade cocktail and oysters Rockefeller). By most accounts, the flambéed fruity dessert was first whipped up at Brennan's Restaurant in 1951, where it's still served to this day. As legend has it, Bananas Foster was born after Brennan's owner asked his head chef to create a dish incorporating bananas, or possibly after he challenged his sister to prepare a new dessert for his friend, New Orleans Crime Commission chairman Richard Foster. 

The exact details are lost to history, but what is clear is that in the early 1950s, New Orleans was a major hub for banana imports from Central and South America. This meant the potassium-rich yellow fruit was cheap and easily accessible at produce markets in New Orleans, a factor which no doubt fostered the invention of Bananas Foster.

New Orleans' banana boom may have produced Bananas Foster, but it wasn't all so sweet. The Big Easy was a major port of entry for banana imports from Central and South America through the first half of the 20th century. Multiple major fruit companies were based in the city, and millions of bananas flooded into the Port of New Orleans every year. However, workers at banana plantations in many Latin American countries were subject to harsh and unsafe conditions for very little pay, and the powerful New Orleans-based fruit companies frequently interfered in the politics of banana-exporting countries to further their financial interests. Despite the corruption and exploitation (or, more likely, because of it), New Orleans' banana trade petered out by the late 1950s. 

Bananas Foster was born at the tail end of the Crescent City's banana boom, but that certainly hasn't impeded the dessert's flaming success. These days, Bananas Foster is internationally renowned. Its iconic and easy-to-love flavors have inspired cake-like dessert cocktails, flamboyant French toast, and even Bananas Foster Flambé-flavored Crazy Cups K-Cup pods. In less than a century, Bananas Foster has firmly established itself as one of America's most beloved culinary innovations, and we hope it continues to make diners go bananas well into the future.