![Café de la Paix Paris France](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Caf%C3%A9_de_la_Paix_Paris_France.JPG)
Parisian cafés are a type of café found mainly in Paris.
Purpose
Parisian cafés typically serve as a center of social and culinary life in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
. They have existed since the 17th century and can serve as a meeting place, neighborhood hub, conversation matrix, rendez-vous spot, and a place to relax or to refuel for Parisian citizens.
Typical Parisian cafés are not
coffee shops
A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee of various types, notably espresso, latte, and cappuccino. Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks, such as iced coffee and iced tea, as well as other non-caf ...
, instead generally coming with a complete kitchen offering a restaurant menu with meals for any time of the day. Many also feature a full bar and even a wine selection. Among the drinks customarily served are the "grande 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), and "un espresso" (a small cup of black coffee). In many cases, the café sometimes doubles as a "
bureau de tabac", a tobacco shop 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
The Café de la Paix () is a famous café located on the northwest corner of the intersection of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Place de l'Opéra, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, 9th arrondissement of Paris, France. Designed in the Nap ...
,
Les Deux Magots
Les Deux Magots () is a famous café and restaurant situated at 6, Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris's 6th arrondissement, France. It once had a reputation as the rendezvous of the literary and intellectual elite of the city. It is now a ...
,
Café de Flore
The Café de Flore () is one of the oldest coffeehouses in Paris, celebrated for its famous clientele, which in the past included high-profile writers and philosophers. It is located at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Benoî ...
,
Café de la Rotonde
The Café de la Rotonde is a famous café in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France at 105 Boulevard du Montparnasse, known for its artistic milieu and good food. In its official website, La Rotonde defines itself as a brasserie and restaura ...
,
La Coupole
''La Coupole'' ( en, The Dome), also known as the ''Coupole d'Helfaut-Wizernes'' and originally codenamed ''Bauvorhaben'' 21 ('Building Project 21') or ''Schotterwerk Nordwest'' (Northwest Gravel Works), is a Second World War bunker complex in the ...
,
Fouquet's
Fouquet's Paris is a historic high-end brasserie restaurant in Paris, France. It is located at 99 Avenue des Champs-Élysées and is part of Hotel Barrière Le Fouquet's Paris. The menu, designed in collaboration with Chef Pierre Gagnaire, con ...
, Le Deauville, as well as a new wave represented by Café Beaubourg and Drugstore Publicis. The oldest still in operation is the
Café Procope
The Café Procope in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie is a café in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1686 by the Sicilian chef Procopio Cutò (also known by his Italian name Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli and his French name Fran ...
, which opened in 1686.
History
Coffee
Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world.
S ...
was introduced to Paris in 1644 by
Pasqua Rosée
Pasqua Rosée was a 17th-century servant who opened the first coffee-house in London and possibly Britain. He was born into the ethnic Greek community of the Republic of Ragusa (now southernmost Croatia). In 1651 he became the servant of Daniel ...
, who opened the first café in Paris on Place Saint-Germain, but the concept did not become successful until the opening of
Café Procope
The Café Procope in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie is a café in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was opened in 1686 by the Sicilian chef Procopio Cutò (also known by his Italian name Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli and his French name Fran ...
in about 1689 in rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain, close to the Comédie-Française. 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. Cafés became important centers for exchanging news, rumors and ideas and were often more reliable than newspapers. 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. 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." Women rarely entered cafés, but women of the nobility sometimes stopped their carriages outside and were served inside the carriage with cups on silver platters. During the Revolution, the cafés turned into centers of furious political discussion and activity, often led by members of the Revolutionary clubs. Following the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
and the Napoleonic Wars,
billiard room
A billiard room (also billiards room, or more specifically pool room, snooker room) is a recreation room, such as in a house or recreation center, with a billiards, pool or snooker table. (The term "billiard room" or "pool room" may also be us ...
s were added to some famous 18th-century cafés in Paris and other cities.
According to
Louis-Sébastien Mercier
Louis-Sébastien Mercier (6 June 1740 – 25 April 1814) was a French dramatist and writer, whose 1771 novel ''L'An 2440'' is an example of proto-science fiction.
Early life and education
He was born in Paris to a humble family: his father was a ...
, there were some six or seven hundred cafés in Paris before the Revolution; they were "the ordinary refuge of the idler and the shelter of the indigent". He says that in certain cafés, an academy could be found, where authors and plays were criticised. Mercier describes the serving wenches in the cafés as great flirts; they need to be virtuous because men constantly surround them.
During the Restoration period, the café was an important social institution, not as a place to eat but as an establishment to meet friends, drink coffee, read the newspapers, play checkers, and discuss politics. In the early 19th century, cafés diversified; some, called
cafés-chantants, had singing; others offered concerts and dancing. During the Restoration, many of the cafés began serving ice cream.
Mariana Starke
Mariana Starke (1761/2–1838) was an English author. She is best known for her travel guide to France and Italy which served as a popular companion for British travellers to the Continent in the early nineteenth century. She also wrote plays and ...
, the author of travellers' guides to Europe in the early 19th century, wrote of the cafés of Paris: "Ladies are also in the habit of frequenting the Cafés where tea, coffee, chocolate, etc. are served in the morning; and coffee, liqueurs, beer, lemonade, and ices in the evening. Most Cafés furnish what is called a déjeuner froid à la fourchette ... Parisians ... frequently take these meat breakfasts."
[Starke, Mariana (1832) ''Travels in Europe for the use of Travellers on the Continent and likewise in the Island of Sicily''; p. 478]
"There is nothing about the Paris streets which more definitely strikes the British or American visitor than the café life on the pavements ... The Paris café remains in their minds as the typical café--something so foreign that there is no equivalent for its name in the English language. The old English coffee-house was not a café in the modern sense, and it has vanished now. So is also vanishing the Paris café in its most characteristic form. There was a time when the best thought of France, in the arts and in politics, was to be found round such and such tables in such and such a café. The Frenchman's café was his club... The cafés of Paris are no longer part of her intellectual life, but they are certainly the chief feature of her streets; on pavements hardly wide enough for a honeymoon couple to walk on, a flimsy chair and an oak-grained tin table will defend against all-comers the right of every good Frenchman to enjoy upon the very streets of the loved city his Byrrh--and Frankincense."--George and Pearl Adam ''A Book about Paris''. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927.
See also
*
Bistro
A bistro or bistrot , is, in its original Parisian incarnation, a small restaurant, serving moderately priced simple meals in a modest setting. Bistros are defined mostly by the foods they serve. French home-style cooking, and slow-cooked foods ...
, a form of smaller, informal French restaurant
*
Brasserie
In France, Flanders, and the Francophone world, a brasserie () is a type of French restaurant with a relaxed setting, which serves single dishes and other meals. The word ''brasserie'' is also French for "brewery" and, by extension, "the bre ...
, a French restaurant which may brew its own beer
*
Sidewalk cafe
The SideWalk Cafe was a music venue and restaurant/cafe in East Village, New York City founded in 1985. It became a known venue for its underground music scene, and in particular, was known as being the center for Anti-folk in the United Stat ...
*
Viennese coffee house
The Viennese coffee house (german: das Wiener Kaffeehaus, bar, as Weana Kafeehaus) is a typical institution of Vienna that played an important part in shaping Viennese culture.
Since October 2011 the "Viennese Coffee House Culture" is listed as ...
, cafés and their culture in Vienna
*
Cafés and restaurants in Paris under Napoleon
References
Further reading
*Boyer, Marie-France (1994) ''The French Café''. London: Thames & Hudson (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
{{Types of coffeehouses
Restaurants in Paris
Types of coffeehouses and cafés