Café Du Monde Mail Order

This guide to the Café Du Monde stand in New Orleans starts during the Civil War, when a Union blockade choked off real coffee beans and cooks reached for a bitter root called chicory to stretch what little they had left. It follows the stand that opened at this corner of the French Market selling that wartime substitute anyway, and traces why New Orleans kept drinking it on purpose long after real coffee came back on the ships. You will hear about the men who ran the counter across the generations that followed.