Paris- coffee society

The second European destination, after Venice – Italy, that needs to be mentioned is the port of Marseilles, France: coffee was imported and transshipped here.

It was not until 1669 that Turkish coffee became a fashionable commodity in Paris, thanks to sailors and merchants from Marseilles. In fact, of the total output of about 1.9 tons of Mocha coffee (from Egypt) arriving at the port of Marseilles, only one-third was brought back to Paris for retail sale to consumers, the rest was re-exported to Northern Italy, Switzerland and other Northern European countries. However, Marseilles was only a port for importing and exporting coffee at that time – it was not until 1671 that the first ground coffee shop opened in this port city.

In July 1669, the Turkish ambassador Soliman Aga (Mehmet IV) arrived in Paris to meet King Louis XI V. However, the French king ignored him for a long time – but the ambassador was patient: he rented a magnificent, luxurious mansion right in the capital of Paris, where he received many famous French figures every day. Aga served coffee in porcelain cups to welcome his guests. Everyone wanted to try this drink, and he came into contact with many important French figures – men and women. The French elite first came into contact with coffee through this channel. In 1672, an Armenian named Pascal arrived in France and opened the first café in Paris. From then on, a series of others sprang up rapidly. However, by 1695, the French police declared that “cafés were often the gathering places of thieves, swindlers, and other rascals,” so they had to comply with a “curfew.”

Cafés appeared in France in the 17th century. Initially, the equipment used in French cafés was “localized” oriental tools: for example, roasting equipment was not just pans but changed to cylindrical form, made of tin or brass, not using fire to heat but using steam or gas. The most famous French unit in the production of coffee equipment was Peugeot (1840). Traditional tools were still used in households until the 1920s. Even hand-held, wooden coffee grinders could still be found in private homes in the 1960s, with box-shaped drawers.

The French proverb says “coffee boiled is coffee spoiled: café bouillu, café foutu” and in fact they knew how to brew it in a more skillful way: instead of boiling the coffee grounds in boiling water, they just soaked the grounds, thus preserving the flavor. This method of brewing can be considered the “velvet revolution” in the French coffee industry since 1710, with the appearance of the pot and filter bag. The coffee grounds were put into the bag, then boiling water was poured over them. Nearly 100 years later, Jean Bapstite de Belloy contributed a more important invention: the coffee filter. Boiling water was poured from above, the coffee dripped into the cup at the bottom. The original drip brewing device was made of tin, then transformed into porcelain. This method is called De Belloy: a porcelain filter brewing device, with very small holes for boiling water to flow through the coffee grounds. These tools are still used today.

It is believed that the great writer Balzac, who drank about 50 cups of coffee a day, also applied the De Belloy brewing method mentioned above. In his literary work Traité des excitants modernes (1839), roughly translated as Interesting Things, Balzac wrote that “when coffee is brewed in a ceramic filter in the form of De Belloy, one can use cold water to brew it, and it seems that the coffee brewed with cold water is even more delicious than with boiling water.” The great writer was apparently “obsessed” with coffee, which led him to write masterpieces in French, including Eugenie Grandet, in which the character Charles instructs his aunt to brew coffee with a Chaptal pot. The Chaptal coffee pot is actually a variation of the De Belloy, in which people use Mocha coffee beans mixed with finely ground Bourbon and Martinique beans. Balzac was a connoisseur of coffee, spending all day to find the right beans to his liking.

King Louis XV was also a coffee connoisseur, enjoying only the coffee grown in Versailles in his own greenhouses. The king even roasted and ground coffee himself in golden pans and mortars. The list of French aristocrats who loved coffee is long: Madame de Pompadour, Fontenelle, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Napoleon… The common people also had access to coffee starting in 1736, when coffee beans grown in the West Indies began to be imported into France. This was a new type of bean, so the cost was lower, stimulating higher coffee consumption. Coffee gradually replaced soup in the French breakfast. This phenomenon was recorded in the newspaper La Vie privee des Francaise (1782) as follows: “In the market space of France, women were seen selling hot coffee with milk all over the streets.”

In the 19th century, French workers drank coffee to fight hunger and cold. The author Emile Zola described in his novel Germinal: for miners in northern France at that time, the role of coffee was no less than that of bread. Similarly, the author Pierre Jakez-Helias in his book The Horse of Pride also described that “Breton women could buy coffee at any price, the whole village would be fragrant with coffee and everyone could breathe easier.” Indeed, coffee has become a deep tradition of the French people. The French people come together at the coffee table.

The center of French coffee is Paris, where many intellectuals, artists and politicians gather. As mentioned above: Pascal was the first man to open a coffee shop in Paris and although he later went bankrupt, he started a series of other coffee shops. Their owners at that time were often Armenians, Syrians or Greeks. A notable feature of French cafés during this period was that they did not last long because people associated cafés with cheap, common drinking places and coffee drinkers did not want to be seen as such common “drinkers”. They were afraid to go to cafés.

The first person to understand the role of the café space was a Frenchman of Sicilian origin named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who came to France when he was only 20 years old. In 1672, at the age of 22, he worked as a hired hand in Pascal’s café and in 1686 he bought three small houses next to each other on the rue Fosse-Saitn-Germain, knocked down the dividing walls to build the Café Procope: very formal with decorative glass, marble tables. This café was located opposite the Jeu de Paume theatre and a few steps away from the Odeon theatre. The café quickly became a gathering place for teenagers, playwrights, actors and musicians. Women who were too shy to enter the café were also served: they could sit in a carriage and the staff would bring them coffee.

The Café Procope lasted quite a long time. In the 18th century, when the Enlightenment spread to France, it gathered many famous figures: Buffon, Diderot, Rousseau and even D’Alembert (with the idea of the Encyclopedia). Not to mention Voltaire, Fontenelle, Condorcet and Crebillon. The success of this café inspired many other cafés to be established, and by 1720 there were hundreds in Paris.

The café was indeed the place that acted as a catalyst for the French Revolution. La Regence and Mecanique were places where the Enlightenment gathered and debated. Most of these cafés have died down to this day.

One last noteworthy event: on July 12, 1789, at the Café De Foy, the then French Finance Minister Jacques Necker was dismissed and Camille Desmoulins took advantage of the situation to incite the masses to take up arms against the king. The actions that followed are history.

In the 19th century, France witnessed a phenomenon: many people from the working class of Paris became café owners, when the city had more boulevards and opera houses. The French bourgeoisie often gathered in cafés on the Rue Tortoni, or at the corner of the Italiens-Taibout intersection. Those who had problems with honor could arrange to duel with their opponents in these cafés, in private rooms. In addition to coffee, many cafés also had billiard tables for guests to enjoy. This type of billiard café first appeared at the Grand Café in 1895. This was also the first place to show a primitive type of animation, in which the pictures were moved quickly to create movement. Regarding coffee products, besides the traditional types such as black coffee, coffee with milk, French cafes also served other variations: coffee mixed with cognac or strong alcohol, called gloria. The most popular type of alcohol mixed with coffee at that time was Calvados from Normandy, hence the name café-calva.

In the 20th century, French cafés were the gathering place of many artists, intellectuals and academics. Names that can be mentioned include Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Breton, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemmingway, and Pablo Picasso. After World War II, the Saint-Germain des Pres became the literary center of the country. Author Leon Paul Fargue writes in Toxic: “Our age still regards the café as one of the equivalents of the nightclub and the cabaret, and they are the most unpleasant of all French institutions…”

Today, France has about 70,000 cafés serving 5 million people every day. This number is decreasing, as the habit of using fast food is growing and people prefer to stay at home instead of going to a café to order a cup of black coffee. The French now prefer to buy coffee and equipment, then create their own café space right in their own homes. In cafés as well as in their own homes, people want to enjoy coffee that is similar to Italian espresso. If at home, they use small coffee machines, using hot water and milk-making equipment for cappuccino. However, in cafés, it is difficult to have a perfect cup of espresso in the Italian style: the brewing method is not simple. In addition, the French coffee-making equipment is not as superior as that of the Germans. The reason for this phenomenon is: France is affected by many negative, traditional influences in the enjoyment of coffee. First, because of inheriting the Middle Eastern way of roasting too dark, the French were unable to retain the true flavor of coffee. Second, the French also had a tradition of mixing coffee with chicory, which lost much of the coffee flavor. The third reason was economic: in the late 19th century, lasting until the 1960s, the French domestic market had a secondary demand for coffee with Robusta beans imported from African colonies. So once again, this country had a demand for cheap, low-quality products. As a result, the French market had a large amount of café au lait with more than half of the coffee beans being Robusta. It was only until today that French roasters began to look for excellent Arabica beans to have the right coffee product.

Collected.