"There are worse things... anyone else remember that horrid Chickory stuff?"

(and I'd LOVE to find real raw Chicory again to add to my mix...it has disappeared from stores, and I will NOT buy those pre-mix things, like Luzianne.)

I dearly love the local coffee-and-chicory blend indiginous to New Orleans ~ but I know how nasty a poorly proportioned mixture can be (that is, when there's too much chicory and not enough coffee). I can only imagine how disappointing it must be to resort to straight-up chicory as a substitute for coffee rather than as an additive.

The use of chicory-for-coffee in New Orleans dates back to the Civil War, when the port was blockaded by Union forces, making real coffee unavailable. The situation must have been very much like that of Europe in WWII, when chicory served as "ersatz coffee" for a lot of unhappy caffeine addicts on both sides of the conflict.

I'm not sure anyone knows why Orleanians developed a taste for the coffee-and-chicory blend once the port reopened and once again became the continent's main point of entry for real coffee beans. Perhaps supplies of the real stuff were just that limited; maybe money was so tight that almost all the imported bean needed to be "sold up the river," leaving locals with a short supply of real coffee that needed to be supplemented.

In any event, over the years, blenders developed a mix wherein just enough chicory was used to enhance the flavor, aroma, and "strength" of coffee without overwhelming it. Different local brands provide slightly different proportions of the mix; the cheapest (unsurprisingly) include the highest concentration of chicory versus coffee.

CDM brand (named for the famous Cafe du Monde) is perhaps the worst offender, with the "green" taste of chicory overwhelming the real coffee flavor. I cannot believe that the stuff sold in supermarkets under the CDM name could possibly be the same blend brewed and sold at the actual Cafe on Jackson Square, which is invariably quite excellent, and should always be ordered "au lait," that is, brewed strong and then mixed half-and-half with hot milk. (You can order your coffee black at the Cafe du Monde; they just mix it half-and-half with water rather than milk.)

Luzianne used to be a favorite local brand of chicory-coffee, but it has fallen out of favor among locals of late. I don't know if they changed their formula, or what. The favorite local brand for the past twenty years or so, by far, is Community Coffee New Orleans Blend.

When I first came here 35 years ago, Community Coffee was pretty much unheard of, and most people brewed Luzianne, French Market, or Union brand coffee at home. Community is a Baton Rouge company ~ not quite local ~ which was very successful in taking over the metro New Orleans coffee market sometime around the early 1980s.

Community Coffee has a website and ships LOTS of their product around the nation and the world. Bill, you might risk the price of a single 13-oz bag (plus shipping) before giving up on any and all pre-mixed chicory coffee blends. Also, you can buy straight chicory from Community via mail order if you don't trust their blenders and just want to continue mixing your own.

And, oh yeah, getting back to the main topic: Chicory, since it's not coffee, does not contain caffeine. That is undoubtedly part of the reason why straight chicory is so disappointing as a substitute for coffee. (Flavor is also a factor, of course.) However, in a coffee/chicory blend, where the addition of the chicory makes the coffee darker and more strongly flavored, the caffeine content is actually somewhat less than that of pure coffee. As noted above, dark-roasted coffee is actually lower in caffeine than "light" coffee, and the coffee customarily blended with chicory for the New-Orleans-style blend is customarily dark-roasted.

Which means that a cup of thick, dark chicory coffee is actually kinda "weak" from a caffeine-addict's viewpoint ~ really no more stimulating than "half-caf." So don't hesitate to have an after-dinner cup of local coffee when you dine at your favorite upscale or neighborhood New Orleans restaurant. You won't be up all night; you'll just be temporarily rejuvenated for the drive home.