Coffeehouse

"Cafe" redirects here; not to be confused with Cafeteria or Cafe (British).

For other uses, see Cafe (disambiguation) and Coffeehouse (disambiguation).

The Café de Flore on the Rive Gauche in Paris is one of the oldest coffeehouses in the city. Its famous clientele included writers and philosophers.

Brasserie Léopold in Aix-en-Provence

A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café (French: [kafe] ^ⓘ), is an establishment that serves various types of coffee drinks like espresso, latte, americano and cappuccino, and other beverages. An espresso bar specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks. Some coffeehouses may serve iced coffee among other cold drinks, such as iced tea, as well as other non-caffeinated drinks. A coffeehouse may also serve food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins, cakes, breads, pastries or doughnuts. Many doughnut shops in Canada and the U.S. serve coffee to accompany doughnuts, so these can be also classified as coffee shops, although doughnut shops tend to be more casual and serve cheaper fare (suiting take-out and drive-through, popular in those countries) than a coffee shop or café which provides more gourmet pastries and beverages. In continental Europe, some cafés even serve alcoholic drinks, and it is popular in West Asia to offer a flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah, called shisha in most varieties of Arabic or nargile in Levantine Arabic, Greek, and Turkish.

While café may mean a coffeehouse, it can also mean a diner, British café (also colloquially called a "caff"), "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport café, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place. A coffeehouse may share some characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but differs from a cafeteria (a canteen-type restaurant without table service). Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations. Some coffeehouse chains operate on a franchise model, with numerous branches around the world.

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: a coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups. A coffeehouse can serve as an informal social club for its regular members. From as early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening. The digital age saw the rise of the Internet café along similar principles.

Etymology

The word for coffee in various European languages

Café is the French word for both coffee and coffeehouse; it was adopted by English-speaking countries in the late 19th century. The Italian spelling, caffè, is also sometimes used in English. In Southern England, especially around London in the 1950s, the French pronunciation was often facetiously altered to /kæf/ and spelt caff.

The English word coffee and French word café (coffeehouse) both derive from the Italian caffè—first attested as caveé in Venice in 1570—and in turn derived from Arabic qahwa (قهوة). The Arabic term qahwa originally meant a type of wine, but after the wine ban by Islam, the name was transferred to coffee because of the similar rousing effect it induced. European knowledge of coffee (the plant, its seeds, and the drink made from the seeds) came through European contact with Turkey, likely via Venetian-Ottoman trade relations.

The English word café to describe a place that serves coffee and snacks (rather than the drink itself), is derived from the French café. The first café in France is believed to have opened in 1660. The first café in Europe is believed to have been opened in Belgrade, Ottoman Serbia in 1522 as a Kafana (Serbian coffeehouse).

The translingual word root /kafe/ appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Portuguese and French (café); German (Kaffeehaus or Café); Swedish (kafé or fik); Finnish (kahvila); Spanish (cafetería); Italian (caffè or caffetteria); Polish (kawa); Serbian (кафа / kafa); Ukrainian (кава (kava)); Turkish (kahvehane).

Early history

Ottoman Empire

Main article: Coffeehouses in Arabic culture

Ottoman miniature of a meddah performing at a coffeehouse

Storyteller (meddah) at a coffeehouse in the Ottoman Empire. The first coffeehouses appeared in the Muslim world in the 15th century.

The first coffeehouses appeared in Damascus. These Ottoman coffeehouses have also appeared in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula in the 15th century, then spread to the Ottoman Empire's capital of Constantinople in the 16th century and to Baghdad. Coffeehouses became popular meeting places where people gathered to drink coffee, have conversations, play board games such as chess and backgammon, listen to stories and music, and discuss news and politics. They became known as "schools of wisdom" for the type of clientele they attracted, and their free and frank discourse.

Coffeehouses in Mecca became a concern of imams, who viewed them as places for political gatherings and drinking, leading to bans between 1512 and 1524. However, these bans could not be maintained, as coffee became ingrained in daily ritual and culture among Arabs and neighboring peoples. The Ottoman chronicler İbrahim Peçevi reports in his writings (1642–49) about the opening of the first coffeehouse (kiva han) in Constantinople:

Until the year 962 [1555], in the High, God-Guarded city of Constantinople, as well as in Ottoman lands generally, coffee and coffeehouses did not exist. About that year, a fellow called Hakam from Aleppo and a wag called Shams from Damascus came to the city; they each opened a large shop in the district called Tahtakale, and began to purvey coffee.

A coffeehouse in Cairo, 18th century

Iran

The 17th-century French traveler and writer Jean Chardin gave a lively description of the Persian coffeehouse (qahveh khaneh in Persian) scene:

People engage in conversation, for it is there that news is communicated and where those interested in politics criticize the government in all freedom and without being fearful, since the government does not heed what the people say. Innocent games ... resembling checkers, hopscotch, and chess, are played. In addition, mollas, dervishes, and poets take turns telling stories in verse or in prose. The narrations by the mollas and the dervishes are moral lessons, like our sermons, but it is not considered scandalous not to pay attention to them. No one is forced to give up his game or his conversation because of it. A molla will stand up in the middle, or at one end of the qahveh-khaneh, and begin to preach in a loud voice, or a dervish enters all of a sudden, and chastises the assembled on the vanity of the world and its material goods. It often happens that two or three people talk at the same time, one on one side, the other on the opposite, and sometimes one will be a preacher and the other a storyteller.

Mughal Empire

Consumption of Turkish coffee is attested to in the Mughal court, and appears in Mughal art from the 16th century, as is the existence of qahwakhanas (coffeehouses) in Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi).

Modern history

Europe

"Discussing the War in a Paris Café", The Illustrated London News, 17 September 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War

In the 17th century, coffee appeared for the first time in Europe outside the Ottoman Empire, and coffeehouses were established, soon becoming increasingly popular. The first coffeehouse is said to have appeared in 1632 in Livorno, Italy, founded by a Jewish merchant, or in 1640, in Venice. In the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe, coffeehouses were very often meeting-points for writers and artists.

Austria

A Viennese café

The traditional tale of the origins of the Viennese café begins with the mysterious sacks of green beans left behind when the Turks were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. All the sacks of coffee were granted to the victorious Polish king Jan III Sobieski, who in turn gave them to one of his officers, Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Ukrainian Cossack and Polish diplomat of Ruthenian descent. Kulczycki, according to the tale, then began the first coffeehouse in Vienna with the hoard, also being the first to serve coffee with milk. There is a statue of Kulczycki on a street also named after him.

However, it is now widely accepted that the first Viennese coffeehouse was actually opened by an Armenian merchant named Johannes Diodato (also known as Johannes Theodat) in 1685. Fifteen years later, four other Armenians owned coffeehouses. The culture of drinking coffee was itself widespread in the country in the second half of the 18th century.

Over time, a special coffeehouse culture developed in Habsburg Vienna. Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, bon vivants and their financiers met in the coffeehouse, and new coffee varieties were always served. In the coffeehouse, people played cards or chess, worked, read, thought, composed, discussed, argued, observed and just chatted. A lot of information was also obtained in the coffeehouse, because local and foreign newspapers were freely available to all guests. This form of coffeehouse culture spread throughout the Habsburg Empire in the 19th century.

Scientific theories, political plans and artistic projects were worked out and discussed in Viennese coffeehouses all over Central Europe. James Joyce enjoyed his coffee in a Viennese coffeehouse on the Adriatic Sea in Trieste, then and now the main port for coffee and coffee processing in Italy and Central Europe. From there, the Viennese Kapuziner coffee developed into today's cappuccino. This special multicultural atmosphere of the Habsburg coffeehouses was largely destroyed by the later Nazism and Communism and can only be found today in a few places that have long been in the slipstream of history, such as Vienna or Trieste.

England

Main article: English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries

The first coffeehouse in England was opened on the High Street in Oxford in 1650–1651 by "Jacob the Jew". A second, competing coffeehouse was opened across the street in 1654, by "Cirques Jobson, the Jew" (Queen's Lane Coffee House). In London, the earliest coffeehouse was established by Pasqua Rosée in 1652. Anthony Wood observed of the coffeehouses of Oxford in his Life and Times (1674) "The decay of study, and consequently of learning, are coffy houses, to which most scholars retire and spend much of the day in hearing and speaking of news, in speaking vilely of their superiors." Pasqua Rosée was the servant of a trader in goods from the Ottoman Empire named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment there.

From 1670 to 1685, London coffeehouses began to increase in number, and also in political importance due to their popularity as places of debate. By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England. The coffeehouses were great social levelers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism. Entry gave access to books or print news. Coffeehouses boosted the popularity of print news culture and helped the growth of various financial markets including insurance, stocks, and auctions. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. The rich intellectual atmosphere of early London coffeehouses was available to anyone who could pay the sometimes one penny entry fee, giving them the name 'Penny Universities'.

Though Charles II later tried to suppress London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public still flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the wits gathered around John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden. As coffeehouses were believed to be areas where anti-government gossip could easily spread, Queen Mary II and the London City magistrates tried to prosecute people who frequented coffeehouses as they were liable to "spread false and seditious reports". William III's privy council also suppressed Jacobite sympathizers in the 1680s and 1690s in coffeehouses as places that they believed harbored plotters against the regime.

By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the City. According to one French visitor, Abbé Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government", were the "seats of English liberty".

Jonathan's Coffee-House in 1698 saw the listing of stock and commodity prices that evolved into the London Stock Exchange. Lloyd's Coffee House provided the venue for merchants and shippers to discuss insurance deals, leading to the establishment of Lloyd's of London insurance market, the Lloyd's Register classification society, and other related businesses. Auctions in salesrooms attached to coffeehouses provided the start for the auction houses of Sotheby's and Christie's.

In Victorian England, the temperance movement set up coffeehouses (also known as coffee taverns) for the working classes, as a place of relaxation free of alcohol, an alternative to the public house.

Finland

Café Ekberg in Helsinki in 2024

Finland's first coffeehouse, Kaffehus, was founded in Turku in 1778. The oldest coffeehouse still operating in Helsinki, Café Ekberg, was founded in 1852.

France

Pasqua Rosée, an Armenian by the name Harutiun Vartian, also established the first coffeehouse in Paris in 1672 and held a citywide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò, his apprentice, opened the Café Procope in 1686. This coffeehouse, which still exists, was a popular meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

Hungary

The first known cafés in Pest date back to 1714 when a house intended to serve as a café (Balázs Kávéfőző) was purchased. Minutes of the Pest City Council from 1729 mention complaints by the Balázs café and Franz Reschfellner café against the Italian-originated café of Francesco Bellieno for selling underpriced coffee.

Italy

Caffè Florian in Venice

During the 18th century, the oldest extant coffeehouses in Italy were established: Caffè Florian in Venice, Antico Caffè Greco in Rome, Caffè Pedrocchi in Padua, Caffè dell'Ussero in Pisa and Caffè Fiorio in Turin.

Ireland

In the 18th century, Dublin coffeehouses functioned as early reading centers and the emergence of circulation and subscription libraries that provided greater access to printed material for the public. The connection of the coffeehouse with virtually every aspect of the print trade was evidenced by the incorporation of printing, publishing, selling, and viewing of newspapers, pamphlets and books on the premises, most notably in the case of Dick's Coffee House, owned by Richard Pue; thus contributing to a culture of reading and increased literacy. These coffeehouses were social magnets where different strata of society joined to discuss topics covered by the newspapers and pamphlets. Most coffeehouses of the 18th century would eventually be equipped with their own printing presses or incorporate a book shop.

Today, the word café – also spelled cafe, but always pronounced as two syllables – is used for most coffeehouses. It has also come to be used for a type of diner that offers cooked meals (again, without alcoholic beverages) which can be standalone or operating within shopping centres or department stores.

Portugal

Statue of Fernando Pessoa by Lagoa Henriques, next to the A Brasileira café, in Chiado, Lisbon

The history of coffee in Portugal is usually said to have begun during the reign of king John V, when Portuguese agent Francisco de Melo Palheta supposedly managed to steal coffee beans from the Dutch East India Company and introduce it to Brazil. From Brazil, coffee was taken to Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, which were also Portuguese colonies at the time. Despite this story, coffee already existed in Angola, having been introduced by Portuguese missionaries. During the 18th century, the first public cafés appeared, inspired by French gatherings from the 17th century, becoming spaces for cultural and artistic entertainment.

Several cafés emerged in Lisbon such as: Martinho da Arcada (the oldest café still operating, having opened in 1782), Café Tavares, and Botequim Parras. Of these, several became famous for harboring poets and artists, such as Manuel du Bocage with his visits to Café Nicola, opened in 1796 by the Italian Nicola Breteiro; and Fernando Pessoa with his visits to A Brasileira, opened in 1905 by Adriano Teles. The most famous was the Café Marrare, opened by the Neapolitan Antonio Marrare, in 1820, and frequently visited by Júlio Castilho, Raimundo de Bulhão Pato, Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano and other members of the Portuguese government and the intelligentsia. It began its saying: Lisboa era Chiado, o Chiado era o Marrare e o Marrare ditava a lei (English: 'Lisbon was the Chiado, the Chiado was the Marrare and the Marrare dictated the law').

Other coffeehouses soon opened across the country, such as Café Vianna, opened in Braga, in 1858, by Manoel José da Costa Vianna, and visited by important Portuguese writers such as Camilo Castelo Branco and Eça de Queirós. During the 1930s, a surge in coffeehouses happened in Porto with the opening of several that still exist, such as Café Guarany, opened in 1933, and A Regaleira, opened in 1934.

Romania

In 1667, Kara Hamie, a former Ottoman Janissary from Constantinople, opened the first coffee shop in Bucharest (then the capital of the Principality of Wallachia), in the center of the city, where today stands the main building of the National Bank of Romania.

Switzerland

In 1761 the Turm Kaffee, a shop for exported goods, was opened in St. Gallen.

Gender

An English café at the close of the seventeenth century: men hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffee pots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present is separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.

The exclusion of women from coffeehouses as guests was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe. In Germany, women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned in the mid-17th century. Émilie du Châtelet reportedly cross-dressed to gain entrance to the Café Gradot, in Paris.

Women did work as waitresses at coffeehouses and also owned and managed coffeehouses. Well-known women in the coffeehouse business were Moll King in England and Maja-Lisa Borgman in Sweden.

Americas

Argentina

Café Tortoni is a café in Buenos Aires frequented by Jorge Luis Borges among other public figures.

Coffeehouses are part of the culture of Buenos Aires and the customs of its inhabitants. They are traditional meeting places for porteños and have inspired innumerable artistic creations. Some notable coffeehouses include Confitería del Molino, Café Tortoni, El Gato Negro, and Café La Biela.

United States

Caffe Reggio on MacDougal Street in Manhattan, founded in 1927

The first coffeehouse in America opened in Boston, in 1676. However, Americans did not start choosing coffee over tea until the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War. After the Revolutionary War, Americans briefly went back to drinking tea until after the War of 1812 when they began importing high-quality coffee from Latin America and expensive inferior-quality tea from American shippers instead of Great Britain. Whether they were drinking coffee or tea, coffeehouses, like those in Great Britain, were places where business was done. In the 1780s, Merchant's Coffee House on Wall Street in New York City was home to the organization of the Bank of New York and the New York Chamber of Commerce.

Coffeehouses in the United States arose from the espresso- and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses of the Italian American immigrant communities in the major U.S. cities, notably New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. From the late 1950s onward, coffeehouses also hosted entertainment, most commonly folk performers during the American folk music revival. Both Greenwich Village and North Beach became major haunts of the Beats, who were highly identified with these coffeehouses. As the youth culture of the 1960s evolved, non-Italians consciously copied these coffeehouses. The political nature of much of 1960s folk music made the music a natural tie-in with coffeehouses with their association with political action. A number of well-known performers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan began their careers performing in coffeehouses. Blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins bemoaned his woman's overindulgence in coffeehouse socializing in his 1969 song "Coffeehouse Blues".

A Starbucks coffee shop in Knoxville, Tennessee with a drive-through

In 1966, Alfred Peet began applying the dark roast style to high quality beans and opened up a small shop in Berkeley, California to educate customers on the virtues of good coffee. Starting in 1967 with the opening of the Last Exit on Brooklyn coffeehouse, Seattle became known for its thriving countercultural coffeehouse scene; the Starbucks chain later standardized and mainstreamed this espresso bar model, now prevalent throughout the country.

From the 1960s through the mid-1980s, churches and individuals in the United States used the coffeehouse concept for outreach. They were often storefronts and had names like The Lost Coin (Greenwich Village), The Gathering Place (Riverside, CA), Catacomb Chapel (New York City), and Jesus For You (Buffalo, NY). Christian music (often guitar-based) was performed, coffee and food provided, and Bible studies convened as people of varying backgrounds gathered in a casual setting that was purposefully different from traditional churches. A book published by the ministry of David Wilkerson titled A Coffeehouse Manual, served as a guide for Christian coffeehouses, including a list of name suggestions for coffeehouses.

Contemporary history

See also: List of coffeehouse chains

Coffeehouses often sell pastries or other food items.

A café may have an outdoor section (terrace, pavement or sidewalk café) with seats, tables and parasols. This is especially common in Europe. Cafés offer a more open public space than many of the traditional pubs they have replaced, which were more male-dominated with a focus on alcohol.

One of the original uses of the café, as a place for information exchange and communication, was reintroduced in the 1990s with the Internet café or Hotspot. The spread of modern-style cafés to urban and rural areas went hand-in-hand with the rising use of mobile computers. Computers and Internet access and contemporary decor help to create a youthful, modern place, compared to the traditional pubs or old-fashioned diners that they replaced.

Africa

Egypt

Coffeehouses in Egypt are colloquially called 'ahwah /ʔhwa/, the dialectal pronunciation of قَهْوة qahwah (literally "coffee") Also commonly served in 'ahwah are tea (shāy) and herbal teas, especially the highly popular hibiscus blend (Egyptian Arabic: karkadeh or ennab). The first 'ahwah opened around the 1850s and were first patronized mostly by older people, with youths frequenting but not always ordering. There were associated by the 1920s with clubs (Cairo), bursa (Alexandria) and gharza (rural inns). In the early 20th century, some became crucial venues for political and social debates.

Ethiopia

In Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, independent coffeehouses that struggled before 1991 have become popular with young professionals who do not have time for traditional coffee roasting at home. One that has become well-known is Tomoca, which opened in 1953.

Asia

India

In India, coffee culture has expanded in the past twenty years. Chains like Indian Coffee House, Café Coffee Day, and Barista Lavazza have become very popular. Cafés are considered good places to conduct office meetings and for friends to meet.

China

In China, an abundance of recently started domestic coffeehouse chains accommodate businesspeople for conspicuous consumption, with coffee prices sometimes even higher than in the West.

Malaysia and Singapore

In Malaysia and Singapore, traditional breakfast and coffee shops are called kopi tiam. The word is a compound of the Malay word for coffee (as borrowed and altered from English) and the Hokkien dialect word for shop (店; POJ: tiàm). Menus typically offer a variety of simple foods based on egg, toast, and coconut jam, plus coffee, tea, and Milo, a malted chocolate drink that is extremely popular in Southeast Asia and Australasia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia.

Indonesia

In Indonesia, traditional coffeehouses are called kedai kopi, rumah kopi, or warung kopi which is often abbreviated as warkop. Kopi tubruk is a common drink in small warkop. As a coffee drink companion, traditional kue is also served. The first coffeehouse in Indonesia was founded in 1878 in Jakarta and named Warung Tinggi Tek Sun Ho.

Philippines

In the Philippines, coffee shop chains like Starbucks have become the prevalent hangouts for upper- and middle-class professionals in such districts as the Makati CBD. However, carinderias (small eateries) continue to serve coffee alongside breakfast and snack dishes. Events called "Kapihan" (fora) are often held inside bakeshops or restaurants that also serve coffee for breakfast or merienda. A number of places often called "cafés" serve not just coffee and pastries but full meals, often international cuisine adapted to Filipino tastes.

Thailand

In Thailand, the term "café" not only is a coffeehouse as understood elsewhere, but in the past was considered a bar serving alcoholic drinks during a comedy show on stage. This type of business flourished in the 1990s, before the 1997 financial crisis.

The first real coffeehouse in Thailand opened in 1917 at the Si Kak Phraya Si in the area of Rattanakosin Island, by Madam Cole, an American woman living in Thailand at that time. Later, Chao Phraya Ram Rakop (เจ้าพระยารามราฆพ), a Thai aristocrat, opened a coffeehouse named "Café de Norasingha" (คาเฟ่นรสิงห์) at Sanam Suea Pa (สนามเสือป่า), next to the Royal Plaza. Café de Norasingha has been renovated and moved within Phayathai Palace. In the southern region, a traditional coffeehouse or kopi tiam is popular with locals, like many countries in the Malay Peninsula.

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  A coffee shop in Bacoor, Philippines
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  Rumah Loer, a contemporary-style coffee shop (Indonesian: rumah kopi kekinian) in Palembang, Indonesia
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  A shop specializing in drip coffee in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand

Australia

The Federal Coffee Palace, built on Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1888, was the largest and grandest "coffee palace" ever built. It was demolished in 1973.

Centre Place, Melbourne. Australia and New Zealand have competing claims to being the birthplace of the "flat white".

In the 19th century, coffeehouses such as the Collingwood Coffee Palace or the Federal Coffee Palace in the center of Melbourne were started and were part of the temperance movement.

In modern Australia, coffee shops are ubiquitously known as cafés. Since the post-World War II influx of Italian and Greek immigrants introduced the first espresso coffee machines to Australia in the 1950s, there was initially a slow rise in café culture, particularly in Melbourne, until a boom in locally owned cafés Australia-wide began in the 1990s. Alongside the rise in the number of cafés has been a rise in demand for locally (or on-site) roasted specialty coffee, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. A local favorite is the "flat white".

Europe

In most European countries, such as Spain, Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and others, the term café means a restaurant primarily serving coffee, as well as pastries such as cakes, tarts, pies, and buns. Many cafés also serve light meals such as sandwiches. European cafés often have tables on the pavement (sidewalk) as well as indoors. Some also serve alcoholic drinks (e.g., wine), particularly in Southern Europe. In the Netherlands and Belgium, a café is the equivalent of a bar, and also sells alcoholic drinks. In the Netherlands a koffiehuis serves coffee, while a "coffee shop" (using the English term) sells "soft" drugs (cannabis and hashish) and is generally not allowed to sell alcoholic drinks. In France, most cafés serve as lunch restaurants in the day, and bars in the evening. They generally do not have pastries except in the mornings, when a croissant or pain au chocolat can be bought with breakfast coffee. In Italy, cafés are similar to those found in France and known as bar. They typically serve a variety of espresso coffee, cakes and alcoholic drinks. Bars in city centers usually have different prices for consumption at the bar and consumption at a table.

United Kingdom

The patrons of the first coffeehouse in England, The Angel, which opened in Oxford in 1650, and the mass of London coffeehouses that flourished over the next three centuries, were far removed from those of modern Britain. Haunts for teenagers in particular, Italian-run espresso bars and their formica-topped tables were a feature of 1950s Soho that provided a backdrop as well as a title for Cliff Richard's 1960 film Expresso Bongo. The first was The Moka in Frith Street, opened by Gina Lollobrigida in 1953. With their "exotic Gaggia coffee machine[s],... Coke, Pepsi, weak frothy coffee and... Suncrush orange fountain[s]" they spread to other urban centers during the 1960s, providing affordable, warm places for young people to congregate and an ambience far removed from the global coffee bar standard set in the final decades of the century by chains such as Starbucks and Pret a Manger.

Espresso bar

Interior of an espresso bar in Baliwag, Philippines

The espresso bar is a type of coffeehouse that specializes in coffee drinks made from espresso. Originating in Italy, it has spread throughout the world in various forms. International chains include Starbucks Coffee, based in Seattle, U.S., and Costa Coffee, based in Loudwater, U.K. (the first and second largest coffeehouse chains respectively), although the espresso bar exists in some form throughout much of the world.

The espresso bar typically has a long counter with a high-yield espresso machine (usually bean to cup machines, automatic or semiautomatic pump-type machine, although occasionally a manually operated lever-and-piston system) and a display case containing pastries and occasionally savory items such as sandwiches. In the traditional Italian bar, customers either order at the bar and consume their drinks standing or, if they wish to sit down and be served, are usually charged a higher price. In some bars there is an additional charge for drinks served at an outside table. In other countries, especially the United States, seating areas for customers to relax and work are provided free of charge. Some espresso bars also sell coffee paraphernalia, candy, and even music. North American espresso bars were also at the forefront of the proliferation of public Wi-Fi access points to provide Internet services to people working on laptop computers.

The offerings at the typical espresso bar are generally quite Italianate in inspiration; biscotti, cannoli and pizzelle are common traditional accompaniments to a caffè latte or cappuccino. Some espresso bars even offer alcoholic drinks such as grappa and sambuca. Nevertheless, typical pastries are not always strictly Italianate and common additions include scones, muffins, croissants, and even doughnuts. There is usually a large selection of teas as well, and the North American espresso bar culture is responsible for the popularization of the Indian spiced tea drink masala chai. Iced drinks are also popular in some countries, including both iced tea and iced coffee as well as blended drinks such as Starbucks' Frappucino.

A worker in an espresso bar is called a barista. This is a skilled position that requires familiarity with the drinks being made (often very elaborate, especially in North American-style espresso bars) and a reasonable facility with some equipment, as well as the usual customer service skills.

Gallery

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  "Café" neon sign in Breda, Netherlands
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  Café Mélange, Vienna
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  Café Kampela, Helsinki
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  The Grey Owl Coffee shop in Norman, Oklahoma
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  A café in a former church, Utrecht
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  Roadside café with a summer terrace, Buryatia, Russia
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  Interior of a kopitiam, Malaysia

See also

• Café society
• Caffè sospeso
• Cat café
• Cha chaan teng, Hong Kong-style café
• Coffeehouse culture of Baghdad
• Coffee service
• Death Cafe
• Dog café
• English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries
• Greasy spoon
• History of coffee
• Kafana
• Kissaten
• Kopi tiam
• List of coffeehouse chains
• Manga café
• Teahouse
• Turkish coffee

Further reading

• Marie-France Boyer; photographs by Eric Morin (1994) The French Café. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Brian Cowan (2005), The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, Yale University Press.
• Markman Ellis (2004), The Coffee House: A Cultural History, Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Ellis, Markman (2004). The Coffee-House: A Cultural History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Homsi, Nada; Hendawi, Hamza; Mahmoud, Sinan; Oweis, Khaled Yacoub (2023-02-24). "Coffee houses of the Middle East: inside the region's historic cauldrons of culture". The National. Abu Dhabi. Archived from the original on 2023-04-30. Retrieved 2023-04-30.
• Robert Hume. "Percolating Society", Irish Examiner, 27 April 2017. p. 13.
• Nautiyal, J. J. (2016). "Aesthetic and affective experiences in coffee shops: a Deweyan engagement with ordinary affects in ordinary spaces". Education & Culture, 32(2), 99–118.
• Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You through the Day. New York: Parragon Books, 1989. ISBN 1-56924-681-5.
• Tom Standage (2006). A History of the World in Six Glasses, Walker & Company, ISBN 0-8027-1447-1.
• Antony Wild, Coffee: A Dark History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 9780393060713; London: Fourth Estate, 2004 ISBN 1841156493.
• Withington, Phil. "Public and Private Pleasures." History Today (June 2020) 70#6 pp. 16–18. Covers London 1630 to 1800.
• Withington, Phil. "Where was the coffee in early modern England?" Journal of Modern History 92.1 (2020): 40–75.
• Yaşar, Ahmet (2003). The Coffeehouses in Early Modern Istanbul: Public Space, Sociability and Surveillance (M.A.). Istanbul: Boğaziçi University. Archived from the original on 2022-04-05. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
• Ahmet Yaşar, "Osmanlı Şehir Mekânları: Kahvehane Literatürü / Ottoman Urban Spaces: An Evaluation of Literature on Coffeehouses", TALİD Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatür Dergisi, 6, 2005, 237–256. Talid.org.

External links

• Media related to Cafés at Wikimedia Commons