New Orleans Coffee and Chicory in the Vietnamese Style

My favorite place for coffee and chicory is Ba Mien Vietnamese restaurant in New Orleans East, a neighborhood where many Vietnamese immigrants settled in New Orleans after the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Though coffee and chicory is the standard in New Orleans, it’s actually rare to find at the fancy coffee shops. My guess is since it has its own flavor to which you wouldn’t want to add flavored syrups, the cappuccino-swirl-extra-shot-with-oat-milk-and-a dash-of-sugar-free-salted-caramel coffee shops would rather just not sell it. Furthermore, with it being so commonplace and, to New Orleanians, the typical cuppa joe, most people won’t spend fancy coffee shop money on it either.

Ba Mien’s chicory coffee is special but simple and budget-friendly: just CDM coffee with chicory, hot water, and sweetened condensed milk. What ups the ante is that they use the Vietnamese single-cup metal coffee filters called phins and serve it in beautifully decorated cups and saucers. The recipe below includes preparation instructions for iced chicory coffee (cà phê sữa đá) and for serving the coffee hot (cà phê sữa nóng).