This article explores the unique experience of Parisian cafes, emphasizing their role as social hubs and cultural indicators. It highlights the influence of foreign, particularly Australian, coffee culture on the Parisian scene.
What you need to know about Paris is this. You don’t need to see Monet’s waterlilies or Napoleon’s tomb. You can, and you probably will. But if you really want to know what Paris is about, you’re better off sitting in a cafe, soaking up conversational murmur and the clink of cups on saucers. Cafe terraces are like opera boxes: the place from which to watch the passing drama of Paris .
You can live out a fantasy, and imagine yourself a bohemian, existentialist thinker, 1960s student, or one of those French movie stars ageing disgracefully. Les Deux Magots was once the hangout of poets such as Verlaine and Rimbaud and the philosopher Sartre, but these days you’re more likely to find politicians and tourists.You can just be yourself, too, but don’t we travel to escape ourselves and get a taste of other people’s lives? Parisian cafes are nothing like Australian ones or, for that matter, Italian or Argentine ones. You’ll learn more about Paris culture from a cafe terrace than from a museum. There are so many cafes in Paris that listing them would fill volumes longer than Proust. But while the capital has long had good cafes, good coffee is a newer phenomenon. Only in the last 15 years have quality coffee houses offered superior coffees and contemporary coffee styles. One of the first was KB Cafe Shop whose owner Nick Piegay returned from Australia inspired to improve the Parisian coffee scene. Another cafe, Holybelly, is run by French couple Nicolas Alary and Sarah Mouchot, who spent five years in Australia. Among other foreigners, Australians themselves have influenced the Paris coffee scene, including Tom Clark at Coutume, which has become a cafe franchise and speciality-coffee distributor, Di and Will Keser at Hardware Société, and Matthew Sloane at the surf-inspired O Coffee. The latter serves up flat whites and toast with Vegemite or avocado in a chic interior of marble and blonde wood, and has an amiable antipodean atmospher
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