Chicory: The Root of Today’s Coffee Break

Jim Wandersee and Renee Clary provide a tantalizing trip through the Chicory underground, resurfacing in the French Quarter of New Orleans. All we’re missing are the beignets—and are we missing them!

Half-dollar-sized Chicory flower head consists of many individual petal-like flowers, squared-ended and toothed

Chicory, also known as Coffeeweed, Succory, and Ragged-Sailors, is a landlubber—a sky-blue member of the Aster (Asteraceae) family. Beautiful as Cichorium intybus (pronounced ”sigh-co’-ree-um inn’-ta-bus”) is, it’s not grown commercially for its flowers but as a salad foliage crop (radicchio) or as a root crop. Herein lies the “coffee connection”: this Chicory’s roots have been used for hundreds of years as a coffee substitute and a coffee additive— and to some people’s joy, it doesn’t contain any caffeine.