Parisian café

A Parisian café is a type of café found mainly in Paris, where in addition to serving food and drink it can serve as a meeting place, neighborhood hub, and place to relax in a congenial atmosphere.[1]

Typical Parisian cafés are not mere coffeehouses, but generally include a complete kitchen offering a restaurant menu with meals for any time of the day. Many also feature both wine and a full bar. Drinks customarily served include the grand crème (large cup of white coffee), wine by the glass, beer (un demi, half a pint, or une pression, a glass of draught beer), un pastis (made with aniseed flavour spirit, usually named by a brand like Ricard, 51, Pernod), and un espresso, or un express (a small cup of black coffee). [2] In many cases, the café sometimes doubles as a bureau de tabac that sells a wide variety of merchandise, including metro tickets and prepaid phone cards.

Some of the most recognizable Paris cafés include Café de la Paix, Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, Café de la Rotonde, La Coupole, Fouquet's, Le Deauville, as well as a new wave represented by Café Beaubourg and Drugstore Publicis. The oldest still in operation is the Café Procope, which opened in 1686.

History

Coffee was introduced to Paris in 1644 by Pasqua Rosée, who opened the first café in Paris on Place Saint-Germain,[3] but the concept did not become successful until the opening of Café Procope in about 1689 in rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, close to the Comédie-Française.[4] The café served coffee, tea, chocolate, liqueurs, ice cream, and confiture in a luxurious setting. The Café Procope was frequented by Voltaire (when he was not in exile), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot and D’Alembert.[5] Cafés became important centers for exchanging news, rumors and ideas and were often more reliable than newspapers.[6] In 1723 there were about 323 cafés in Paris; by 1790, there were more than 1,800. They were places for meeting friends and for literary and political discussion.[7] Hurtaut and Magny wrote in their ‘’Dictionnaire de Paris’’ in 1779: "One gets the news there, either by conversation or by reading the newspapers. You don’t have to encounter anyone with bad morals, no loud persons, no soldiers, no domestics, no one who could trouble the tranquility of society."

See also

• Bistro, a form of smaller, informal French restaurant
• Brasserie, a French restaurant which may brew its own beer
• Sidewalk cafe
• Viennese coffee house, cafés and their culture in Vienna
• Cafés and restaurants in Paris under Napoleon

Further reading

• Boyer, Marie-France (1994) The French Café. London: Thames & Hudson ISBN 0-500-01622-4 (pp. 113–116 contain a list of 45 "cafés of character" in Paris, 2 in Saint-Ouen, and 8 "cafés within the great brasseries")
• Fitch, Noël Riley (2006) The Grand Literary Cafés of Europe. London: New Holland; 160 pp
• Fitch, Noël Riley (2005) Literary Cafés of Paris; new ed. River City Publications.
• Fitch, Noël Riley (2007) Paris Café: Sélect Crowd. New York: Soft Skull Press; 120 pp.

External links