Don Saltero's was a

coffee house A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee, espresso, latte, Caffè americano, americano and cappuccino, among other hot beverages. Many coffeehouses in West Asia offer ''shisha'' (actually ...

based in

Chelsea, London Chelsea is an area in West London, England, due south-west of Kilometre zero#Great Britain, Charing Cross by approximately . It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the SW postcode area, south-western p ...

, founded in 1695 by James Salter. Don Saltero's was distinct from other seventeenth and eighteenth century London coffee houses in that it contained many

cabinets of curiosities Cabinets of curiosities ( and ), also known as wonder-rooms ( ), were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, t ...

. Don Saltero's was originally a barbers shop until

Sir Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British ...

began to donate unwanted objects from his own collections into the hands of James Salter, his former travelling servant. James Salter, or Don Saltero as he began to be known, displayed these objects in his place of business and the barbers shop evolved into Don Saltero's Coffee House and Curiosity Museum. Objects included taxidermy monsters (crocodiles, turtles, rattlesnakes), which local gentlemen including scientist Sir

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

and Sir Hans Sloane liked to discuss over coffee. Don Saltero's proprietor promoted his coffee shop as a place of marvels and wonder. An advertisement placed in

Mist's Weekly Journal Nathaniel Mist (died 30 September 1737) was an 18th-century British people, British Printer (publisher), printer and journalist whose ''Mist's Weekly Journal'' was the central, most visible, and most explicit opposition newspaper to the British ...

in 1728 ran:

Monsters of all sorts here are seen, Strange things in Nature, as they grew so, Some relics of the Sheba Queen, And fragments of the famed Bob Crusoe. Knick-Knacks, too, dangle round the wall, Some in glass cases, some on the shelf, But what's the rarest sight of all? YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT SHOWS HIMSELF.

Richard Steele Sir Richard Steele ( – 1 September 1729) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright and politician best known as the co-founder of the magazine ''The Spectator (1711), The Spectator'' alongside his close friend Joseph Addison. Early life Steel ...

recorded a chance visit to Don Saltero's in ''

The Tatler ''Tatler'' (stylised in all caps) is a British magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. It focuses on fashion and lifestyle, as well as coverage of high society and politics. It is targeted towards the British upper and upper-middle cla ...

''.

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

, also noted visiting "Don Saltero's curiosities" when in London.Benjamin Franklin, ''Autobiography'' in William L. Andrews, ed. "Classic American Autobiographies" (NY: Mentor Books, 1992), 115.

References

1695 establishments in England History of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea {{London-struct-stub