New Orleans Café au Lait

Chicory coffee is New Orleans in a cup. The tradition came from necessity during the Civil War when coffee was scarce and folks stretched their supply with roasted chicory root. Turned out the combination was better than either ingredient alone. The chicory adds an earthy sweetness, cuts the bitterness, and produces that distinctive dark, almost chocolatey flavor that makes tourists line up at Café Du Monde at three in the morning.

My grandmother Evangeline drank café au lait every single day of her life. She heated the milk in a little copper pot that had belonged to her mother, and she poured the coffee and milk into the cup simultaneously from about a foot above the table. Said it mixed better that way and cooled it just enough to drink. I still do it the same way at Lagniappe, and my customers think it's theatre. It's not. It's just the way things are done.

The secret is scalding the milk, not steaming it. You want it hot and slightly thickened from the heat, with tiny bubbles around the edges of the pan. This gives body to the drink that steamed milk cannot match. And you pour equal parts: half coffee, half milk. That's the tradition. Anything less is just coffee with a splash of milk.