PARIS LIFE ❘ CAFÉ CULTURE
“PEOPLE WHO ARE ALONE AT HOME COME TO THE CAFÉ… YOU HEAR PEOPLE SPEAKING, YOU CHAT WITH THE WAITER…”
says, “with the owner saying, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that…’ – kind of bringing them up.” And young people weren’t the only ones who took advantage of low overheads to cultivate community.
“People who are alone at home come to the café,” explains Rambourg. “You hear people speaking, you speak, you observe, you have your drink. You chat with the waiter.” But with the shrinking of the middle class, Cassely says, “there’s less of this sort of working class café, the people’s café”. Those in search of inexpensive hubs turn to alternatives. For young people, who, Cassely asserts, deem classic cafés ‘corny’, McDonald’s now plays the role of corner café. “There, too,” he says, “you’re allowed to order at any hour, and to have only a little, or nothing at all.”
SIGN OF THE TIMES Writer Sylvia Sabes cites the surge of smartphones as another element deterring people from truly engaging in café culture; for Cassely, the smoking ban has led many to fl ee. And others are abandoning the café for a different reason: the poor quality of the namesake product. “Parisian café culture has never been about the coffee,” says Sabes. “I asked a friend about his café habits, and when he tells me about his favourite cafés, he talks about the way the light falls on the counter, or his conversations with the woman working behind the bar.”
“Whatever you’re drinking or eating is the backdrop,” claims Lindsey Tramuta, author of The New Paris. “It’s the accessory to the overall experience.” But modern Paris has witnessed a craft coffee revolution, dotting the capital with spots where the quality of the coffee is very much the point. And this, reckons Tramuta, is to the detriment of the café. “I believe that all the foodie cafés play an important role in endangering Parisian café culture,” she says. “Suddenly, getting a coffee is about the coffee and not at all about the culture of it.”
While due to a combination of factors – shorter opening hours, higher prices, smaller surface area – many experts claim there’s room for both, the presence of these spaces is leading to what Cassely calls a “segmentation or fragmentation” of the landscape. “The status of the café… I wouldn’t say it’s gone backwards,” he says, “but it’s a bit more complex.” Today, many cafés are populated more by tourists than by locals,
40 ❘ FRANCE TODAY Oct/Nov 2023
Xavier Denamur at Au Petit Fer à Cheval
contributing to what culinary journalist Domenico Biscardi calls their “museifi cation or touristifi cation”. He says these historical spaces have become attractions, losing out on sincerity and accessibility in favour of price hikes and queues out the door.
“Maybe for a tourist just passing through, there’s an authentic or charming side,” says Cassely, “but they can exist a bit out of time.”
But some cafés hold strong – thanks to a bit of reinvention. Paris’ offi cial coworking spaces are far more expensive than the traditional café, and, unlike craft coffee shops, which usually eschew computers, cafés often welcome workers. Benezet’s Quai Extérieur near Gare de l’Est was one of the fi rst adopters of free wi-fi in the neighbourhood, with an outlet at nearly every table. “It’s essential,” he says. “A café with no wi-fi is a café that’s not with the times.” This makeover may even extend not just to food, which, Tramuta opines, has long been “really average, mediocre even”, but to coffee, which she dubs “just foul”, an issue Xavier Denamur, the owner of several Marais cafés, attributes in part to many establishments choosing low-end lines from distributor Cafés Richard, which, as of 2020, controlled 14% of the café market across France. An individual café’s lack of rigour is also part of the problem, he says. When Denamur fi rst opened his café, Les Philosophes, in 1990, he immediately
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