Coffee Cafés: The Coffee Revolution in Paris

“There’s a new revolution underway in Paris, and like most French revolutions, it began in a café and confronts an injustice: the very bad coffee.

To lament the caustic Parisian brew that often passes for espresso—an express, or petit noir—is by now a given, but until 2005 few café customers took much notice. It was easy to overlook the coffee for the ritual: the demitasse, the tidy sugar packets, the people-watching and newspaper reading, the table outside in the sun (maybe), the right to linger all morning or all day for the price of a cup. This is café culture, but it’s not coffee culture—a distinction central to the movement that is rapidly gaining momentum in the French capital.

Considering the state of coffee pretty much anywhere, it’s not exactly sporting to pick on the French, but we foreigners do because we expect them to know better. Why wouldn’t a people that raised food to an art form care more about the first thing they toss back in the morning? Why is a superb meal in a great restaurant destined for a bitter end?”